I don’t scroll through Facebook very often because every other post seems to be about someone I knew in high-school getting pregnant, engaged, or starting drama.
But hey, as an admitted social media addict, I still have to get my fix at least once a week.
In these quick scrolls, I usually mass tag the same 3 people in as many funny videos as I can and catch up on what grade the teen mom’s children are going into. One of my favourite things to come across though is the “life-hack videos” that mass pages often share.
I came across a travel hack recently which I HAD to try. As an avid frequent traveler, I’m always looking for things to make the trip easier.
This hack was: instead or folding your clothes like you normally do, you roll them, and when I say roll them, I literally mean make an outfit-burrito.
The concept was simple, you take your pair of pants/shorts, set your shirt on top, fold them in half (so the bundle won’t be super long) and roll them together. Then, to fasten your t-shirt sushi, you put a sock on each end to seal the deal.
It looked perfect, practical, and sure to save tonnes of space, so I gave it a try.
I was traveling Europe for a month, and so made 16 pre-planned outfits which I rolled into a bundle. Despite it definitely freeing up about 25% of the space in my suitcase, it took a lot longer than I anticipated to pre-sort each outfit and then proceed to roll them together.
If I’m honest, I’m the worst last-minute packer, and this can definitely be attributed to my tendency to procrastinate, so needing to take time in advance to pack really threw me off. In addition to that, even though most outfits worked properly, I found some clothes such as hoodies still couldn’t do this as they were too bulky, and needed to be traditionally folded.
From the first outfit I put on, I realized a major problem- this makes shirts and dresses SUPER wrinkly, and if your hotel room didn’t have a steamer, you were screwed. The wrinkles were far worse than those acquired by traditional folding, and honestly were quite frustrating.
In addition to this, if I changed my mind about an outfit and wanted to mix and match another pair of pants with a shirt, it would be a big process and I’d need to un-roll and re-roll several clothing bundles- NOT IDEAL.
Having a pair of socks per outfit also seemed extremely high, and I’d start losing socks way more than if I were to have only placed 3 pairs.
Overall, yes- the hack did save me a LITTLE bit of room in my suitcase. However, this was at the sacrifice of much of my time, wrinkled clothes, and a few pairs of socks. Halfway through the trip, I threw in the towel and decided to unroll all my clothes and pack them normally (and guess what? They still all fit in my suitcase just fine)
If I had to commend this hack for one thing, it was this: it made me put thought into everything in my suitcase, which ended up helping me on the long run. When I last minute pack, I often skip the step of putting thought into what goes in, and just throw it in anyways.
Would I use this hack again? Probably not- unless I’m backpacking for a week and don’t have access to a suitcase.
Happy packing!
Cheers,
Chloë