Sleeping bags take up too much space

[Macchina]

Which ones? Mine sure doesn't.

You’re right, I just looked at mine. I was thinking it was the size of 4-5 Nalgenes (it is) but measured out that’s closer to 10 liters as a whole volume.

 

[foamantelope]

Sleeping bags, even down, take up a lot of space. I pack light on number of items, and my tent and bag/pad take up at least 75% the volume in my pack (I do use the smallest pack possible).

As many other said, the eVent compression sacks are a must. Something like Western Mountaineerings Extremelite series compress to an unbelievable level. Others, like their Gore series, not so much.

Sleeping warm/bringing warm clothes is a blessing, cause you can take less bag.

 

[taskswap]

I’ve also seen guys with long skinny stuff sacks and the bag is strapped to the side of a pack, but that’s usually an odd bulky solution.

I can speak to this. A year or so ago I picked up this:

Medium-Plus Pillow Dry Bag

Zpacks Offers the Best Lightweight Backpacking Gear: The Ultralight Medium-Plus Pillow is Identical in size to the Medium-Plus Dry Bag but features soft micro fleece sewn to one half of the interior. Simply flip the dry bag inside out and fill it with your spare clothes and gear to use as a pillow!

zpacks.com

Z-packs makes a combo dry bag / compression sack just for this purpose. It's insanely light and cheap for what it does. It's a dual-purpose item. You can use it as a stuff-sack for your sleeping bag (you need the medium-plus to fit most average quilts/down bags) and although it doesn't have as many straps as a proper "compression bag" it does pretty well at that. And it's waterproof, which is a plus IMO. At night, the idea is, you flip it inside out and you can stuff a few clothing items in it. One side has a felt surface that makes a half-decent pillow.

I like it as a useful piece of gear, but just like a swiss army knife, it does a lot of things, but none of them "100% great". You can't quite get things as compressed as a proper compression bag, and while it's not bad as a pillow, it's not as nice as the generic inflatable one I usually use. That being said, at 1.6oz for <$60 it's not a BAD option.

If all you want is a dry bag/compression sack combo and you want something ultralight, consider garbage bags. I use the compost bags with "no chemical additives, compost-pile ready" on the packaging because they also don't have any odor/perfume in them. They cost nothing, are insanely light and you can squish them into any shape that fits your bag. You can carry a spare in case one gets a hole but in my experience they still work even with a small hole or two, at least for the remainder of a trip. They also make great pack liners for meat hauling and emergency dump sacks if some of your clothes get wet.

 

[Qpski]

In many trials I always find that using a stuff sack takes up less room than loosely packing your gear. I can fill up "empty" space just as well using sacks. And I don't even use compression sacks. Just the stuff sacks my bag or tent come in.