… and who isn’t? I mean, who doesn’t like to put things in boxes and compartments and hidey-holes?
Anyway, my husband and I finally got a vacation booked for March. It’s less than a week long and in the continental U.S., so though we have to fly, we’re not going to check a bag.
I had to examine the luggage situation. I pulled out my current carry-on, which I couldn’t remember from the last time we travelled, but it turned out to be a duffel bag with 2090 cubic inches of storage space. A standard 21" wheelie carry-on has about 2500 cubic inches, so I decided I needed one. Thank you Amazon Prime!
Then Amazon helpfully introduced me to these beauties. Isn’t that BRILLIANT? No more shuffling around under my six shirts and three pairs of pants to find one pair of socks that, it turns out, are in a side pocket of my bag. I ordered a set of small cubes and a set of medium cubes. Then I ordered a multi-size set to give my husband for his birthday, which is before our vacation. THEN I ordered multi-sized sets in different colors for my parents, because they’d never buy something so awesome for themselves.
By the way, order the cubes from ebags.com. Same price as Amazon but free shipping.
Now I’m wondering if I need a hanging toiletry organizer that is less bulky than the Vera Bradley one I currently have. Hmmmmm…
I love my packing cubes. It’s not so much the packing, as the unpacking that gets me. I am not capable of opening my bag without needing to take everything out and fling it all over the room. This means that today, my favorite things in the world are scattered around various hostel floors around the globe. I’ve probably clothes entire third world nations with left behind sweaters.
With the packing cubes, there is a limit to how much damage I can do unpacking. It’s perfect.
The grid-its look good for people who travel with really a lot of electronics. My husband and I are gonna do this trip with just our phones and 7" tablets, and we can share chargers, so I don’t think I have an excuse to buy one this time.
I’m a bag-aholic. I’m doing everything I can to resist buying a new rolling duffel (bigger than a carry on, smaller than our 2 existing duffels) for our upcoming trip to NEW ZEALAND for 3 weeks. The anticipation is one of the best parts, and packing/ unpacking/ deciding you’ve got to have new organizers is traditional with me. I’ve already bought a new daypack (for hiking) and a new daypack (for casual use), got some packing organizers for Christmas, and borrowed a mid-size rolling suitcase from my parents (trying to fend off that impulse to buy a new one). So yeah, packing nerd.
In fact, I’m going to go downstairs right now and see how much of the stuff on my detailed list can fit in the borrowed suitcase.
I haven’t tried it yet, but a couple of years ago read an article that advocated rolling clothes instead of folding them when attempting to pack a suitcase.
That’s what the pictures of the packing cubes show. I’m going to try it. I’m just taking jeans and tshirts (and some sequiney tank tops!) on this trip, so there’s no big potential for disaster.
Hope the medium-size rolling duffel works for you. I once took an enormous one on a month-long trip to Italy and got royally screwed by it–I couldn’t pick it up and had big problems taking trains.
Here’s the article I mentioned. It advocates rolled clothes based on the experience of several flight attendants. They claim that you can fit more clothes with fewer wrinkles by rolling instead of folding.
By the way, my newer 21" carry-on bag has four wheels instead of two, which means that it can roll when standing straight. That makes it a little easier to move through the airport. I recommend it.
I use this method to pack a week’s worth of clothes into a carry on. Very few wrinkles. The key is to have your darkest shirt or a “throw away” (i.e. one you don’t intend on wearing) on the bottom of the stack to keep your good clothes clean.
I have the eBags packing cubes and use them a lot (I travel for work), but for longer trips using only carry on luggage, I love these compression bags. Put your clothes inside, zip the top, and squeeze the air out. No vacuum needed. I can fit so much more stuff in my carry on using those bags. I can’t comment on the wrinkles - I tend to bring items that don’t wrinkle badly when packed.
Years ago we started using a UPS to make our life easy. No, wait, not a UPS, just plain UPS. About three to five days before we leave, into a box goes anything we could possibly want on vacation–including our Keurig. It gets shipped to the destination hotel a few days before we fly, and all we take on the airplane is a tiny carryon full of trivialities. No worrying about airline liquid limits, etc., and little worry about how things are going to fare in a suitcase. Return trip is just as easy–most concierges will handle seeing a box off to UPS, or a simple call to them will arrange a pickup. Fees are small enough to compete with airline baggage fees.
Plus, there’s a sublime joy in walking off the plane and heading directly to the rental car/home.
I skip all the poetry too. I have friends who plan out their packing, and do it the night before their trip. What? Please. I throw a bunch of clothes and toiletries in a rolling bag then off to the airport.
Yup, that’s my style. I go between the Netherlands and the UK about once a month. If I spent more than 5 mins packing it would be all I ever did in my life. My obit would read: “She packed suitcases. A lot.”
So I am literally the world’s fastest packer. One time I was handing in uni work, and came home with exactly 10 mins before I had to leave the house to catch the flight. I still had to do everything, incl. print boarding pass, get all stuff, find passport, decide what books to bring for more uni work, separate liquids etc. I got it done, though with the help of a flatmate check listing. He was epic, shouting at me: “Pill? Toothbrush? Something nice to wear for Christmas? Boarding pass? Passport? Shoes? Knickers? Books? Laptop? Phone? All chargers? Go! Run!”
I will concede that I once switched countries while all my worldly knickers did not. Had to go out and by 2 five-packs in the morning
But no, you can keep your packing gadgets and clever tips and tricks! It’s just more thinking about shudderpacking.
