From the archives: Here’s one of our favorite stories with helpful tips for Smarter Living.

Now that nearly every airline is charging baggage fees, travelers are motivated to pack as efficiently as possible. And who knows more about packing than professional flight crews? In interviews with a dozen flight attendants and pilots, one theme emerged: to pare down and still have everything needed at the destination, think strategically.

Where you’re going and what you’ll do there should guide packing, but it is most important to know your absolute essentials.

“I try to pack everything I’ll need to survive,” said Leigh Johnson, a retired American Airlines captain. The ability to wash shirts and underwear is important to him, so Mr. Johnson brings laundry soap. And because he often arrives at the airport for a flight before the restaurants open, he packs food.

“I’m not wasting my hour of preflight looking for something to eat,” he said, explaining that he seals bananas, bread and plastic containers of olive oil in plastic bags and tucks them inside his packed shoes. A surprising number of pilots and flight attendants say they always carry food. “More flight attendants carry food than don’t,” said Heather Poole, a flight attendant and travel blogger at www.heatherpoole.com. Professional travelers also pack personal electronics like e-book readers and laptops. Patrick Smith, an airline pilot who writes the Salon column Ask the Pilot, often brings a camera so he can post his travel videos online.