Hullo, new Everyday Carry

My everyday carry knolled out on a sheet: wallet, lip balm, umbrella (remember the umbrella!), headphones, keys, grocery bags, phone (mocked up with a glove in a case), pens (2!), access card, metro card, loose euro coins, waist bag

Ever since I discovered the Everyday carry page on Wikipedia, and its excellent example of knolling, I've been wondering what my everyday carry (EDC) might end up looking like one day.

When I was younger, I didn't really need to worry about it much. I had a backpack, that got filled with different items depending on whether I went to piano or swimming lessons, a phone filled my pocket for emergencies (it was one of those flip-phones with pre-touch Symbian, what a great time to have been alive!), and on occasion I wore a blue watch gifted by a relative. I vaguely recall using a thin blue wallet, and I probably had a key with me. But really, life was simple back then: I was out only for a few hours, and even if I did forget something, at worst I was never separated from home by more than a long walk and a doorbell ring.

With time, my responsibilities grew. I found a pocket knife and it sometimes made its way in the backpack when out in the forest. A clipboard with a bulk of loose squared sheets of paper followed me around for sketching. My first laptop had to sometimes be lugged out of town. An umbrella slowly became a necessary ingredient of every backpack. But still, there wasn't anything like an everyday carry: nothing I considered so important that I could never forget it at home. (Okay, except perhaps the phone. Especially when I was old enough for a touchscreen phone. Yes, I might have gotten addicted in some way. Yes, it is useful to have a phone in a wide variety of situations.)

This all changed when I moved out on my own. Suddenly, I could be out for the whole day, and come back late—without any phone battery left, without anyone else at home. I could even get stranded somewhere in town that's multiple hours away by foot. I could get even stranded in a different town, if I was adventurous enough!

After a few close calls with almost-forgetting things, I decided I needed a mental checklist. I very simple:

I just recite those three in order, and haven't forgotten them yet. So, that would count as an early form of my EDC.
For years, that worked out just fine.

During the winter, I had a jacket that permanently held the wallet and some assorted headphones and gloves. Autumn and spring, the gloves had to go. And for summer... well, at first, I tried carrying the wallet in a pocket, but it ended up too bulky. So it went in whatever backpack I carried that day.

Then.. I had that fun mishap with my metro card.
It used to be in my phone's case, but now it needs to go in its own separate, zipped pocket. Which in summer means I must carry a backpack, just for the metro card; and thankfully I have one of those tiny Quechua backpacks that are quite popular around here.

Also, at some point, I was listening more to music, so now I have headphones I want to carry around everywhere. Which also cannot go into a pair of pants' pockets. Which means they also need to be moved from backpack to backpack.

Work necessitating frequent backpack changes and adding an extra access card to the summer backpack was the final straw. I could no longer keep track of all the random items, and whether they made their way into the right backpack for the day.

Thankfully, with tribulation came the salvation. (Or something. See, look, fancy words, whee!) A colleague at work always carried a waist bag (/ fanny pack) on their shoulder. And after chatting, I was convinced I need to buy myself one too!

So... here it is! You can see it in the photo at the top (repeated on the right, for your convenience), in the lower right corner. It holds all the tiny things I might otherwise forget:

_My everyday carry, again
My everyday carry, again

The EDC is completed by just two more items:

Sadly, the umbrella didn't fit in the waist bag. It can be hung from the strap, but.. that's about the least comfortable way to carry an umbrella I've considered. So, in the backpack it stays.

I'd like to expand the waist bag with some napkins, wet wipes, and/or adhesive bandages. Those have the same kind of "useful in niche situations" charm as the umbrella, the lip balm, the pens, and the grocery bags, and likewise take minimal amounts of space. So it only makes sense to add them to the list!

But now that I have a place to store an everyday carry, I can finally say I have one.

And it's such fun! ✨

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