Packing hacks for the savviest of travellers.
We no longer dread packing for trips because of these tips.
Are we still in revenge travel mode? We are, aren’t we? With the Holiday season approaching, we especially have to go all out.
As we pack for the next flight we’re eager to jump into however, there comes that familiar and dreadful stress of having to pack—again. It’s such a pain to have to figure out essentially how to fit all your essentials into your luggage in order for your home-away-from-home to truly feel like home. Here’s our list of ingenious tried-and-tested packing hacks that saved our necks in our past few trips.
- Pack complete outfits
- Pack according to your itinerary. If travelling for business, pack complete outfits for different meetings and events. For leisure, roughly map out the outfits needed according to the items in your itinerary: what kind of restaurants are you going to eat at? What type of travel are you going to be doing? While pedantic, you wear everything you take and nothing goes to waste.
- Pop shoes in shower caps
- Enclose your shoes in the one–use plastic shower caps that are complimentary in most hotel rooms. It prevents the often–dirty soles making contact with your clothes and they're not as bulky or inflexible as shoe bags. Going hand-in-hand with this tip is using the insides of the shoes themselves as additional storage.
- Save bath, body and skincare samples
- Saving all bath, body, and skincare samples allows you to have a full suite of products for any trip—and it saves yourself space and weight.
- Line belts along the edges of your suitcase
- …instead of rolling them into spirals. They take up less space, which means you can pack more.
- Travel with a hardshell suitcase
- If you’re not the type to unpack, a hardshell suitcase with a zipped top half can function as your dresser. Pack methodically, with different things in different sections of the suitcase. This way when you get to your hotel, you pop it open and have two large, super–organised shelves with everything you need. The Carl Friedrik Check-In Luggage is perfect for this.
- Pack a collapsible bag
- A collapsible duffel bag like the Rains Hilo Weekend Bag can be used as either a second carry–on or an additional checked bag. This saves you from scrambling to repack an overweight suitcase at a crowded check–in counter.
- Squeeze air out of toiletries
- There is nothing worse than getting to your hotel only to find a half–empty tube of lotion has exploded in your bag. But if before you travel, you squeeze the air out of your toiletry bottles to create a vacuum effect that sucks lids and caps on tight, you’ll thank yourself later.
- Invest in a luggage scale
- Invest in a portable luggage scale and take it with you. You don't want to end up at the airport with an oversized bag, trying to re–pack, throw away things, or worse, paying for excess baggage. The UTC Essentials Digital Luggage Scale features a clear digital display, accurate measurements in kilograms or pounds, a built-in 1m measuring tape, and a weight level indicator to provide visual cues.
- Find a new use for carabiners
- Carabiners are super handy for when you buy more than you expected and need to make extra room in your bag. A water bottle, slippers, hiking shoes… Just clip them onto any loop on the outside of your bag and away you go. The different iterations of Heroclip are ingenious carabiners that can hold up to 60lbs in weight, and can even expand into hooks in case you need to suspend your bags.
- Use packing cells
- Packing cells are game changers—one for tops, another for pants, one for underwear, one for belts and socks and a small one for chargers. The cells occupy the bottom compartment of my hard–shell suitcase and in the top go shoes, hair dryer, novels and other essentials.
Urban Traveller & Co. now has the Black Ember Packing Cubes. Lightweight, flexible, and built with expandable, breathable elastic mesh, Packing Cube is the optimal option for organising your packed essentials while maximising your luggage capacity. Black Ember Packing Cubes come in a Large 13 x 12 x 4.5 inch size capacity that can hold 12 liters, and a Small 13 x 6.5 x 4.5 inch dimension that holds 7 liters. Black Ember Packing Cube and other ingenious packing/travel solutions are available at all Urban Traveller & Co. stores and online at www.urbantravellerco.com.