Whether it’s travelling, hiking, camping, bushcraft or Milsim, being and staying organised is absolutely essential. Not only do you need to make sure you have everything you need, you need to be able to find it in your kit when you want it. I do a lot of the above, and recently invested in a set of Helikon Pakcells to help make all my trips so much easier.

Flicking through Instagram on the way back from a business trip yesterday, I saw a few examples of Milsim camping setups in the UK where the floor next to the kids pop up tent is just littered with plastic supermarket carrier bags and to be frank, there’s just shit everywhere. It’s a common sight, especially with the quantities of kit that some players carry with them. If you’re living out of the car in the safe zone then I understand its easy enough to just sling everything back in and deal with it later, but at proper weekend events it’s better to keep things simple and tidy. I’m not that bad that everything is alphabetical and has printed labels on it, but I do like to know where stuff is.

For years, I’ve relied on drybags for most things and I organise my stuff into “kits” so I know it’s all together; wash kit, cook kit, spare clothes etc. It makes life so much easier when you’re sat in your shelter at night wanting some food and knowing you need the red drybag with your cook kit, plus the yellow one which has the food in for example. Absolutely fine, but then I saw something better…

These are Pakcells. Anyone in and around the outdoors community has undoubtedly heard of or owned something made by Polish company Helikon – they have a huge range of well priced and decent kit and I have a few bits already and no complaints. I picked this set of three up from Amazon (I wanted the free next day delivery). They do come in a range of colours and camouflage patterns, although I went with black because this is going to stay in my bag which is camouflaged anyway, and they just stand out against my camping kit which is all green and camo. But you have options if you want or need them. I’ve included a Pepsi can for scale because people can relate to that more easily than me throwing numbers in. And I don’t have a tape measure handy anyway.

As you can see, there’s a small, medium and large bag in this set. Why take them over a simple drybag? Well…

For starters, when you put your kit into a drybag you invariably end up with a ball shape, and filling your sack full of balls doesn’t always make the best use of space and can be uncomfortable with those balls slapping against your back. Obviously, there are exceptions such as a basha or shelter which would still roll into a drybag anyway but these Pakcells are nicely rectangular. I’m primarily going to use them for clothing, so with items folded they stack in a bag quite nicely, although you can fit pretty much anything you want into them. I took the medium bag as an example to see what fits in it…

If you’re Airsofting, it’ll fit two sets of BDU’s in glorious DPM master race no bother and probably space for a Shemagh too. For the indoor Airsoft kids with the click-clack knee pads, probably just one set but that’s enough spare clothing.

Or, six tee shirts and two pairs of thermal pants for sleep kit and adverse weather conditions. That’s a lot of outfit changes.

Or, a German Army mess kit containing BCB Fire Dragon stove, utensils, fire starting and mini towel plus a load of MRE meals and Fire Dragon fuel. This isn’t measured out, I just have boxes of rations in the kitchen that I tipped in, so I reckon you could get a weeks worth but by then you’d be desperate for a KFC on the way home.

The larger Pakcell will take more of course, and the small one is ideal for underwear, socks, spare hat and gloves, although you can use them for any bits of kit you want. It made more sense to me to get the set than buy individually, but you might pack your kit differently. There is an XL available separately but I think I’d use that more for holidays than packing light into a bergen for a 24hr kit, and an XS size but I can’t think I’d need that for anything at the moment. The three pack just makes more sense to me. The material is ripstop polyester and although it isn’t Goretex or has taped seams, it’s rubberised on the inside and would certainly keep a little bit of rain off. The bags are very lightweight which does matter when you’re packing to go anywhere – saving grams on every item soon adds up.

What sets them apart though for organisation and storage are the little design features that make these so much more useful than a simple bag. Obviously you’ll have noticed the compression straps on the back – these allow you to tighten the pack up enough without wrapping all the way around and preventing access. The access is via a diagonal zip on the front which opens up the whole thing very nicely so that you can find what you need more easily – diagonally obviously being the longest zip opening possible. If what you want is at the bottom of a drybag, you have to pull everything out of the damn thing then stuff it all back in so I’m loving the easy access. The zip has a nice rubber toggle which is a godsend at night with gloves on, especially if you’ve had to go toilet in a bush in the dark and accidentally pissed all over your hands. It happens.

Both ends of each bag have nice big rubberised carry handles as well so you can pull it out of your rucksack easily, and they’re useful for hanging it up on a nearby tree branch or a carabiner off the paracord holding your tarp up so you can have your stuff where you need it. There’s also a velcro panel if you wanted to add your name or some wording to tell you what’s inside. It doesn’t have USB ports, built in LED strip lighting or controls for your central heating, but it does what it’s designed to do and does it well. I’ve only had them a few trips but they’re holding up absolutely fine so far, with no loose threads or anything looking remotely damaged.

I like finding simple little things that make a big difference, and these Pakcells are an excellent idea. It’s far too easy to stock up on too much kit these days and end up with very heavy, unwieldy and untidy rucksacks (or cars). I want everything in one bag, neatly and organised, and ready to go.

Life goals.

(Not sponsored by Helikon but if they’re reading this, please get in touch…)