Careful thought, sequence needed for good packing

We’ve all felt stressed out while doing our last-minute holiday packing.

Here are eight helpful tips when packing to leave the concrete jungle and head to the coast.

• Don’t stack your clothes – store them rolled up:

A great way to save suitcase space and make sure that your clothes don’t crease, is to store them in tight rolls instead of stacking them on top of each other.

• Use vacuum bags:

Vacuum compression bags are invaluable for packing bulky objects such as jackets, children’s clothes, soft toys and bed linen. Such a method of packing will save you some serious space.

And when the time comes to pack for home, vacuum bags will prove handy once again – for storing dirty laundry.

• Employ the ’pyramid’ principle:

First, pack your shoes by arranging them along the suitcase walls. Next, pack large clothes, such as pants and skirts. Don’t roll them up – lying spread out at the bottom of the suitcase, these clothes will serve as wrapping for the rest of your things. Now, roll up your noncreasing clothes – they will form the middle layer of the ’pyramid.’ After that, roll up and pack the lighter/easily creased items.

Finally, pack the highly creasable things, cosmetics, accessories, documents, and small fragile objects – place them at the top of the ’pyramid.’

• Buy travel-size cosmetics:

All of us feel the temptation to pack our holiday suitcase with as many tubes and jars as possible. However, you’d be wise to resist this urge, in favor of taking more useful things. While on holiday, try to make do with travel-size versions of your favorite cosmetic products.

• Pack small things the right way:

When it comes to packing small objects such as USB memory sticks, pocketbooks, hairpins, tights, socks, sunglasses and reading glasses, place them inside packed shoes, cosmetics boxes, document folders and suitcase pockets. As for your jewelry items, you can store them inside a pillbox.

• Don’t pack more medicine than necessary:

There’s no point in trying to fit the entire contents of your medicine cabinet, into your holiday suitcase. Choose a more sensible approach, by selecting only the most essential drugs. Don’t pack more than one pill sheet of each type of medicine – that will suffice to deal with any emergency.

• Don’t leave empty spaces:

When packing suitcases, you might decide to leave some room for any souvenirs you might acquire during your holidays. Such a decision could cause your packed clothes to become seriously creased during the journey.

To prevent that, you should fill the empty spaces with small items of clothing or lumps of wrapping paper.

• Only take what’s really useful:

Things like notebook covers, camera cases, hairdryers and travel guides should remain at home. Wrapping your electronic gadgets in a soft beach wrap or a hoodie, will give them adequate protection throughout the journey. Paper travel guides can easily be replaced with smartphone apps. As for sorting out the hairdryer issue – you can make do with the one provided at the hotel.

By following these easy-to-memorise packing tips, you’ll always stay in control of the situation and make the best use of even the smallest of suitcases.