The real thing nobody talks about is how cubes change your laundry math on a long trip. After day 7 or 8 you stop unpacking everything and just pull one cube out at a time, so the stuff you already wore doesn't get mixed back in with the clean stuff. On a 4 day trip none of that matters because you never hit that point where the bag starts eating itself. Two weeks is where the system actually kicks in, and that's probably why people who only do long weekends swear it's a waste.

Four years of zip ties doing that much damage seems off to me. I've had the same zip tied bundles behind my setup since 2019 and when I finally cut them last month the cables were fine, no cracks, no bends, nothing. The real killer is usually heat and cheap cables, not the tie itself. You can get them snug without strangling the wire, the trick is leaving a little give so it can't bite into the jacket. If yours cracked that bad you probably cranked them down way past what the cable needed.