There was a brief giddy moment in time when my children required almost no packing to go anywhere. They'd outgrown the huge plastic toys, travel cribs, booster chairs, etc... And they were still small enough that their clothes took up almost no room.
For a short time there, I could pack all their stuff into one backpack.
But now... They require almost as much clothes as I do, and they need their own backpacks, and pillows and blankets and masses of outdoor survival clothing and suddenly we're right back where we started.
It's neat to see how it changes, though!