How to organize your backpack — a guide from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has told of what he carries with him in his travel backpack. Living as a nomad for the past nine years, taking 360 flights and traveling over 1.5 million kilometers during that time, the businessman has learned how to optimize his luggage from a 60-liter shoulder bag with a separate laptop bag to a 40-liter backpack that can contain the laptop bag. We would not be surprised if he is also a master of origami. 

To fit everything in one backpack, Vitalik puts various sub-bags laid out separately. IT all fits in the backpack without much effort to pack and unpack. Inside the backpack, there are bags for: 

• T-shirts;
• underwear;
• socks;
• toiletries;
• dirty-laundry;
• medicine;
• laptop.

What’s in the backpack?

Electronic devices

• Electric shaver. About 5cm long and 2.5cm wide at the top. No charger or handle is required: it’s USBC pluggable, and your phone is the charger and handle.
• Charger for phone and laptop. USBC-friendly charger, which can charge both at the same time. About 5x5x2.5cm.
• Portable microphone.
• A 20000 mAh laptop-friendly power bank.
• Laptop (with laptop stand).

Clothes

For clothing, Vitalik advises finding a tradeoff between price, cm3, and the dress looking reasonably good. Fortunately, many of the more modern brands do a great job of fulfilling all three at the same time!

The bag with clothes includes:

• 8 T-shirts;
• 8 pairs of underwear;
• 8 socks;
• heat-tech tights;
• heat-tech sweater;
• packable jacket;
• Shorts that also double as a swimsuit;
• some heavier shoes you can just wear, and some very cm3-light alternatives, such as flip-flops.

According to Vitalik, dressing in layers is a good idea: it lets you cover many possible temperature ranges with fewer clothing items.

Here’s how to combine clothes depending on the weather.

Medicine

The medicine bag contains a combination of various life-extension medicines such as:

• metformin;
• ashwagandha;
• some vitamins;
• covid defense gear;
• a CO2 meter;
• masks;
• antigen tests;
• fluvoxamine.

Not particularly optimized things

Vitalik said that not everything you have to be designed around cm3 minimization. And he has four items in his backpack that are not particularly optimized.

• laptop bag;
• socks (the brand face of which he is);
• sweatpants for indoor use;
• phone-friendly gloves.

You can read Vitalik’s post in full here. Many other people have made their guides on how to organize backpacks. You can find their stories on the subreddit /r/onebag