Ah, super — thanks for the clarification! I'm travelling just now, but will think through this carefully once I'm home again.
You're right, there are a lot of bags there. I'm definitely open to changing things if I see a better approach; it might be that in this case I will change some stuff, I just want to think through the trade-offs.
This stuff is also somewhat situational; I understand the AT to be fairly wet, I'd trim back some on sacks on the dryer PCT for example.
In that context, the garbage bags are for handling rain (use partly tied to not using a true tent), and I reckon the bread bags to be essentially clothing. I didn't consider the "waist pouch" a bag any more than I did the backpack itself. OP sack plus Ursack work together as a food bag. It really depends on how this stuff is categorized, but at the same time it's also weight that I'm carrying no matter what category it's in — it's just a matter of (re)questioning whether the utility of each item merits the weight.
So if I understand you correctly, all of your various first aid contents are just loose in your misc bag? If you carry a little paper and pencil/pen, those are separate/loose in their. If you carry two ear plugs (one per ear) you have to separately sort through the misc bag to find each earplug? Surely if you carry any sort of pills (vitamins, ibuprofin, whatever) you don't have all of them loose in the overall misc bag??
I'm not criticizing or anything, just looking for the more extreme cases to ensure that I understand what you're suggesting. For example, maybe you carry your first aid kit in the case it came in and don't consider that a 'bag', while I ditched the yellow carry case in favor of a ziplock, etc.
Travelling, so won't be responding for a while (FYI).
