What actually fits in a twelve inch bag

Bag measurements are printed as three numbers and read as one. Almost everyone looks at the width, decides twelve inches sounds about right, and finds out two weeks later that the folder goes in at an angle and the water bottle lies on its side.

Take the things you carry, measure them, and see which of our widths takes them. That is the question answered from the end that matters.

The letter-size folder is the whole argument

A US letter folder is 9 by 11.5 inches, and it wants to go in flat. That needs an opening a little wider than 11.5, not because the paper is bigger, but because a bag narrows towards the top and the folder has to clear the sides on the way down.

Thirteen inches across does it. At 12.5 the folder goes in at a slight angle and comes out with a soft bend at one corner; at twelve it bends properly. That single inch is the difference between our four-piece top handle tote and our five-piece shoulder tote, and it is the reason the five-piece is the one people buy for work.

Depth is what takes an object with a shape

Width decides what goes in flat. Depth decides what goes in at all. Below five inches a bag takes flat things like a tablet, a folder or a phone, and anything with a shape sits on top of them. That is how a lunch box in a shallow bag ends up riding above the opening and pushing the zip apart.

At six inches the lunch box goes down beside the folder instead of on top of it. In this catalog that is the large hobo, and it is the only bag here with that number. The rest run 4.7 to 5.9, which is a tablet, a folder, a small bottle lying down, and not much else with corners.

The laptop is a different measurement

Laptops are sold by the diagonal of the screen and bought by the width of the case. A 15.6 inch machine is about 14.1 inches along the long edge with the lid shut, and it is that number the bag has to clear.

Width alone is not enough for a laptop, because a machine dropped loose into a tote rides against the zip and the corners. What it needs is a sleeve: a padded pocket the right size, so the laptop cannot shift. One bag in this catalog has one, cut for 15.6 inches, and the rest do not.

One thing that sleeve does not do is save you time at an airport. The screening agency asks travelers to take the laptop out of the bag and put it in a bin of its own for X-ray, and the only cases that escape that are the ones built to open completely flat. Ours is not. Pack the machine so it is the last thing in, and the line moves as fast as anyone else's.

Where our own widths land

Five numbers cover this catalog. The medium crossbody set is 12.6 inches across and 4.7 deep: a phone, a card holder, keys and a paperback. The top handle tote and both satchels are 12.5 by about 10 by 5.5, which is a tablet and a slim folder.

The five-piece shoulder tote is 13 by 10.3 by 5, the width where a folder lies flat. The large hobo is 13.5 by 14.2 by six, which is the deepest thing here. And the slouch hobo is 15.7 across, wide enough that a folder, a lunch box and a paperback sit side by side rather than stacked.

How to check before you order

Put the things you carry on a table and measure the widest and the deepest of them. Those two numbers are your size, and both are printed on every product page in the order they are measured: width, height, depth.

Then check one more thing, which is not a size at all. Strap drop, the distance from the strap at your shoulder to the top of the bag, decides whether the bag rides under your arm or hangs at the hip. Ours run 6.2 to 10.7 inches, and on a bag you carry in a coat for half the year, the longer number is the one that stops the bag fighting the sleeve.