I recently completed a trip where I had 22 or 23 pounds total. That's close enough to 10% of my weight that I can handle it, but I don't like to deal with a 23-pound bag.

Many people traveling for work--I was speaking at a conference--can't get the total down to 18 pounds. My conference didn't require dress clothing, but it required a laptop for the presentation--I used a netbook--as well as the handouts, source book, and so forth. Also, the conference was held on a college campus, with dorm housing (no hotel amenities, not even soap), and with a schedule that would have made hand laundry difficult.

This is where, I think, a strict doctrinal commitment to carrying only one bag is undesirable. As much as a dislike carrying one 23-pound bag, I find it easy to carry one 17-pound convertible bag and a 6-pound messenger bag. And the messenger bag was useful during the conference.

I'm at the point, however, of weighing every item I might pack and entering the weights in a spreadsheet. For a trip with all stays in hotels (no dorms, no homes of relatives or friends) I could jettison about 2 pounds worth of robe, slippers, etc. And now I know that an Ex Officio T-shirt weighs at least an ounce less than one from TravelSmith.

My father, in the 1950s, traveled with a leather 2-suiter that weighed 20 pounds empty, and close to 50 pounds filled. When he began traveling by air in the 1960s, there was still a 44-pound limit for domestic flights and he grudgingly changed to a Skyway bag that was about 10 pounds empty.