How can I, a very tall lady, maximise my rucksack space?

I have had a long obsession with ‘efficient packing’ and ‘space saving hacks’ and ‘small spaces’ and ‘travelling light’ and, as such, have watched countless youtube videos and read many blogs about it. The thing I have noticed about most of these is that the women doing the packing around about 5ftnothing with child-sized feet, thus having no problem packing 5 pairs of shoes and 20 outfit changes into their rucksack. I, on the other hand, am 6ft2 with size 42 feet. All my clothes are larger than handkerchiefs (well, apart from bikinis) and, on the whole, I imagine it will be trickier for me to pack as much into my 40L rucksack as your average gal. Yes yes yes I know lots of tall blokes go travelling but let’s face it, they’re happy with 5 Tshirts, some flipflops and a pair of swimming trunks (I exaggerate. Sort of).

Whilst Alex has been merrily planning our trip and researching all the best places to go and getting thoroughly excited about the whole thing, I have been doing extensive research into what I can bring and how little I can manage with. I’ve been looking at trainers, sandals, packing cubes, microfibre towels, compact make up, solid toiletries, capsule wardrobe ideas (because I, perhaps rather naively, want to look nice), the packability of various clothing items I own and, maybe most importantly, how to cut down my ’emotional support craft kit’ (as any other manic crafters know, you must have a project with you at all time). Additionally, I like the idea of being as eco as possible (although I realise the hypocracy of this statement as I spend money buying new things, sometimes from that large online shopping conglomorate that we should probably not endorse) and so have been looking at products that have a minimal impact upon the earth that I intend to visit… grossly increasing my carbon footprint in the process ‘cos flying. Arguably this research has brought me as much joy as planning the trip has Alex… I hope.

So as we get closer to leaving the sunny (ha) shores of Britain, I shall post a packing gallery and general nerdery about what I’m excited to use etc. I will probably subesquently do a post about all the useless things that I never used and have had to lug around with my around south America. This will all, undoubtably, be within the scope of being ‘rather tall’ and ‘having dodgy knees/bad back/crock hips’ etc because lets face it, I’m hardly in the first flush of youth and even when I was this lanky chassis often failed.