How much is not enough

After having done a test pack to evaluate how well we could cope with a miserly luggage allowance of just 16.5kg the cold hard facts have to be faced up to. We are using two Mountain Equipment duffle bags of 100 litres and 120 litres which have starting weights of 2.2kg and 2.5kg respectively. So straight away we are cut to 14kg of clothing and kit before the 2.6kg of boots leaves me with 11.4kg. The tripods we specially purchased for pack ability and weight feel awfully heavy at 1.4kg each. The list of clothing we have already prepared is starting to look a bit optimistic but we can but try. The first attempts at packing come in at a hefty 20.1kg and 23kg which even I admit is a lot better than I thought it would be. With two further rethinks and discarding what seems to me to be an awful lot of warm clothing and our only pairs of shoes the totals are down to 14.2kg and 15.87kg. These weights are well within the 16.5kg limit but we still need to fit the coats in at 1.5kg and 1.7kg each, mine will definitely have to go in but the Boss might just wear hers. Knowing what airports are like temperature wise I couldn’t wear mine without melting and there’s no way I would want to carry it around. We unpacked the bags and wrote down the revised inventory and realised we hadn’t taken any pictures of the piles of clothing we had to somehow get into the bags. So everything was laid out on the bed and the photos were taken, then everything was hung up and put back into draws and pods till it is used again. After updating the relevant spread sheet and much shaking of heads about the pared to the bone list of clothing thoughts of tackling the hand luggage were put on hold for another time.