You know the stuggle: you are going on a holiday, looking for flights and then the first questio is: hand luggage only or are we booking aditional check in luggage? In most cases you can actually say yes to hand luggage only, even if you are not a very minimalist packer. There are some pretty easy things you can do to get more thigns on the airplane than just fit in your bag.
wear coat, cardigan and scarf/carry it. pack things into things. stuff your pockets (especcially of your coat and so on) with things. take a book in your hand when entering the plane act like your reading while wating in line for boardng). Bad message first: THey dont actually check the size of your handluggage at the ssecurity but riht when entering. Good thing about it: you can still cheat in a number of ways.