Having a similar floor plan highwall (HW) minus the slide, I can tell you my experience has been that I actually pack less than when I had a normal height PUP. It doesn't seem like that should be the case, but maybe it had everything to do with my method of moving my PUP gear from the old one to the new one:
Do not put it in the new PUP if I haven't actually used it, EVER, or even if not recently.
I ended up with a pile of gear in the corner of my garage that didn't make it into the HW.
Additionally, we decided to take advantage of more of the built-in items of the HW, so we actually use the inside stove for a fair amount of cooking, other than bacon and other meats - those still get, cooked outside on a single-burner Coleman (reduction in size and weight). We use the RV-Que that came with the HW and uses the existing LP tanks instead of bringing along a grill and a set of extra tank(s) for it, and so forth. It's small things that add up in big ways.
It really boils down to what you want to do and where do you want to do it. There are those who will never cook inside and will chose to bring along all that is required for outdoor cooking. That's fine. Everything is a trade-off. At this point, I'm opting for less stuff to have to manage and move around without really sacrificing much of the outdoor experience. We spend most of our time outdoors, eat outdoors and play outdoors, but we certainly have the benefit of managing less stuff and being able to fully utilize the equipment that comes with the PUP to its full potential, as we choose, and as others choose to or not to use.
One qualitative way I can measure this is the amount of stuff we place in the PUP's isle when towing. With the previous PUP, we used to fill it up full and hang the kids bikes off of some place on the TV or PUP.
Now, the isle is filled with the kids bikes, four camp chairs, an extra step stool because I did an axle over/under conversion and maybe the jerry can when we are not camping with water hookups. That's it.
The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) we have less stuff because we utilize more of the onboard systems, 2) with the extra length and height of this larger HW PUP, there is more onboard storage and while remaining true to #1, everything has a place that is out of the way. Thankfully, I have many compartments that are mostly empty and even one main deep drawer that is completely empty.
You most certainly can overload a PUP and especially a HW because of the extra storage afforded. Always give careful thought to what you put into a PUP for weight and usability reasons.
