My husband wants to make a video of me packing a suitcase for YouTube since we fly a lot. I go to my computer and learn that videos of “How to Pack a Suitcase” are a thing. Marie Kondo has made one (with over three million views). I can pack a carry-on in an hour and travel for six weeks and, in today’s minimalist approach to packing, that means I have a skill. One video compares packing to Tetris, the puzzle game, another gushes over packing cubes. Forget all that.

How did people pack before YouTube? In fact, how did they pack before luggage? Warfare led to luggage, like it led to so much of the technology of life. During the Crusades, early wheelies carried weapons. Simple suitcases followed with eight centuries of heavy lifting when people who traveled had servants. In 1972, help was scarcer, so a luggage executive in Massachusetts patented a suitcase with a strap and four attached wheels after a family vacation in Aruba. He was atypical because men usually thought wheels less masculine. Women flying alone favored wheels on suitcases.

If I agree to pack my dresses on camera, I plan to address the fold versus roll debate. Let me just say now that roll is the way to go, with mounds of tissue paper to prevent wrinkles, something that works on fabrics, but not faces. But whatever I do, or you do, or anyone does, isn’t it the adventure you’re packing for that matters—the world for which you’re willing to sit hours in a cramped seat and then live out of a small bag?

Susana H. Case has authored nine books of poetry, most recently, If This Isn't Love (Broadstone Books, 2023) and is co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press, 2022), awarded Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize.