Tag Archives: packing tips

Buzzfeed’s Packing Tips: Use Mine Instead

Travel

Buzzfeed took a swing at some packing tips, as you can see in the video below. Good effort, guys an’ gals, but some of those tips aren’t too useful. (Besides, you just recycled your own article, there, didn’t ya?)

  • The binder clip as a razor cover is cool in theory, but probably quite awkward in practice. Just use the plastic cover the razor came with, or, failing that, a piece of duct tape folded over.
  • Two shoes to pack a bottle of wine? Not space-efficient at all. Besides, aren’t you using those shoes to store your socks and underwear? For wine, just use bubble wrap.
  • Using tissue paper to avoid wrinkles: not sure how well that works, but you’ll end up with shredded tissue paper covering all your stuff in a real-life travel scenario.
  • As Buzzfeed itself suggests, that toothpaste-in-a-straw idea is just silly. You will get stopped at security.
  • A plastic bag will help you save space if you vacuum-seal it. Otherwise a plastic bag will help you keep stuff organized, but that’s about it. I use a plastic carrier bag to sequester my dirty clothes.
  • For hiding valuables, you can also use a pair of y-fronts. Hide cash in the fly of your dirty briefs. Nobody’s gonna check them without kevlar gloves.

Check out some Jet Trash packing tips below the video player, and you’ll be on your way with style and ease.

Ultra-Light Packing: Liquids

Travel,

How to Pack Liquids for Carry-On-Only Travel

I hate checking luggage. Between the bullshit fees and the chances of your bag ending up on a different continent, it’s just not worth the hassle. For many travelers, the deal-breaker for carry-on-only travel is liquids. You can only fit so much in that little plastic bag.

I’ve optimized my liquids for a two-week trip, as you can see in the pics below. The trick is to forget about the containers that your soap, hair gel, sunscreen, detergent, shaving cream, etc. came in, and use your own.

I use a Nalgene screw-top container for my face soap, and empty film canisters for moisturizer (I’m over 35) and hair gel. I use a Muji clear-plastic tube for shaving cream, and a 1.25 fl. oz. GoToob for sunscreen. The little blue Muji plastic vial is for extra-strength detergent, for the all-important sink-wash.

I also carry a sample-size bottle of hand sanitizer, a stain-stick, and some contact lens solution.

If my journey was for less than two weeks, or if there weren’t a mix of casual, semi-casual and business-ish events, the liquid set could be trimmed down even more. Indeed, normally I buy sunscreen at my destination and just leave it when I come home: this is my recommendation for ultra-light packing. However, sometimes you must break your own guidelines… I still have some awesome SPF30 from Australia that I love.

Film canisters are your best friends for packing liquids. Secure the lids with tape if you’re feeling squeamish about spills. You can see that I labeled the caps, since the contents look the same, and I have to accomodate for coming back after a late night/early morning.

Also, I realize that something like Castile soap could replace the toothpaste, face soap, and detergent if I really wanted.

Liquids ready for ultra-light packing

The bag, as you can see below, also has my razor and an extra blade, which I keep in a reused plastic tube that came with an old digital camera. Camera stuff repurposes really well. The toothbrush is from Trader Joes. I really dig their toothbrushes.

Plastic bag with liquids, razor, floss, and sense of adventure

Scott Hadfield has an amazingly spartan packing list, which is worth checking out as well.

What are your favorite carry-on liquid packing tips?

Tangle-Proof Your Headphone Wires

Travel

Manu Cornuto vs Headphones: Tangle-Free Wrapping

From Lifehacker we have a simple and rockin’ technique to keep your headphone wires from becoming a tangled quagmire of misery.

Basically, you just do the manu cornuto (aka the devil horns), and tuck the earbuds behind your bent middle- and ring fingers. Then, wrap the rest of the wire figure-eight style around your extended index finger and pinkie. Wrap the tail around the middle of the figure-eight a few times, and tuck it through one of the loops.

Done and done. When you pull the tail free, your headphone wires will unfurl gracefully and tangle-free. 

 

This is doable with bigger headphones (behind-the-head or noise-reducing/cancelling): just drape the headset over your wrist, and then get on with the hard-rockin’ figure-eight.

How to Pack a Sportcoat for Travel

Travel,

Traveling with a Sportcoat: Simple, Wrinkle-Resistant Jacket Folding

This is fantastic: a brilliantly simple method of packing a sportcoat for your carry-on luggage in a way that won’t wrinkle the crap out of it.

This is a different technique than that demonstrated in the Stewardess Packing Tips, where the sportcoat is layered at the bottom of the bag. I can’t wait to combine the two.

From 1bag1world, via Put This On. I love how the urge to add annoying music to the video was avoided, and how he pauses during the demonstration so you can see exactly what’s going on. Well done.