The first year I traveled full-time, I brought everything. Two of most things, three of a few. My backpack was a contingency plan with shoulder straps. Somewhere around year four, I started pulling items out instead of adding them in and the trips got smoother, not worse. What began as overpacking slowly became a system, and the system turned out to be the thing that actually reduced the anxiety the overpacking was trying to solve. Most of us run the same check before leaving