Summertime is my favorite time for travel but packing for trips seems to always get put off until the last minute. Learn some packing tips and trips from the experts and instantly up your packing game. Take up less space for clothes, get more organized and leave more room in that suitcase for the things you want to bring home but never end up having room for!
Packing Hacks for Travel
1. Roll, Don’t Fold Clothes
Rolling is the packing tip everyone has heard and most of us do halfway. Rachel at DIY in PDX commits to it properly, and her reasoning is the useful half: rolled clothes wrinkle less and more of them fit in the same bag. That only pays off if what goes in already coordinates, so she picks one color palette for the trip and builds a capsule wardrobe out of it instead of packing outfits. She hasn’t checked a bag in years. The line I keep thinking about is her shoe count though: three pairs to Australia when her Converse alone would have done it, which is where the space in your suitcase actually went.
2. Pack Blazers Inside Out
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Turns out the proper way to pack a blazer is by turning it inside out. This helps prevent wrinkling and should have you showing up looking like your jacket was freshly pressed.
3. Fold Your Jeans to Save Space
You can fold a shirt any old way and get away with it. Jeans don’t let you. This one is ours: fold the jeans in half lengthwise, fold in the crotch, fold the waistband down, then bring the legs in and tuck that last edge under so the bundle locks itself instead of springing open the moment something heavy lands on it. It’s demonstrated on jeans, and jeans are where it matters most, but the same tuck holds any heavy pair of pants. If you are a roller by nature, this is the one thing I would still fold. The step by step is on our post and it takes longer to read than to do.
4. Keep A Pair of Earrings Together with a Button
Earrings enter a suitcase as pairs and exit as widows, and this button trick ends the tragedy for good. Push each pair’s posts through the holes of a spare button, fasten the backs, and the two travel as one tidy unit that never separates in transit. Buttons weigh nothing, cost nothing, and hide in any pocket of a toiletry bag. It is the kind of packing tip that sounds too simple to matter until the morning you dress for dinner without excavating your entire bag. Raid the sewing drawer before your next trip and match a button to every pair you are bringing. The Krazy Coupon Lady gets credit for this tiny, perfect solution.
5. Roll Your Necklaces Into a Travel Jewelry Case
Necklaces don’t tangle in a suitcase because they’re cursed. They tangle because nothing is holding them still. Stefanie at Girl. Inspired. sews a roll-up case that fixes that properly: seven pockets divided by six lines of stitching, with a small fabric loop above each pocket so the chain hooks over the loop and the pendant drops in underneath, and then the whole thing rolls up and ties shut with ribbon. The loop is the part I would not skip, because a pocket on its own still lets a long chain wander out and find a friend. Hook, drop, roll and tie, and your necklaces come out of the bag in the shape they went in.
6. Use Binder Clip to Protect Your Razor
A razor loose in a toiletry bag is a small ambush waiting for a reaching hand, and the fix costs about a dime. A standard binder clip slides over the razor head, covering the blades completely, and stays put through the roughest baggage handling. This second gem from The Krazy Coupon Lady also protects the blades themselves, which stay sharper when they are not grinding against tweezers and toothpaste caps. The medium size fits most razors; test the fit before you fly. It is the rare hack that protects you from the object and the object from everything else. Office supply drawer to dopp kit: promoted.
7. Sew a Travel Cord Organizer in About an Hour
Cords are the one thing in a bag that actively work against you, knotting themselves quietly while you sleep. Megan at The Homes I Have Made sews a flat organizer to end it: quarter-inch elastic laid in rows and stitched down about every inch, so each cable slides into its own column, and the whole panel rolls up and ties shut. It’s straight seams and about an hour, no serious sewing skills required, which matters to me because I am solidly beginner to intermediate. The trick I am stealing from that post isn’t even the organizer. It’s the washi tape: a different pattern around each person’s plugs, and the whose charger is this argument is over before it starts.
8. Shower Cap Storage For Shoes
Cosmopolitan gets credit for rescuing the hotel shower cap from obscurity: stretched over the soles of your shoes, it keeps street grime off every clean thing they touch in your suitcase. The elastic edge grips a pair of flats or sneakers snugly, the plastic weighs nothing, and you likely have three unused caps from previous hotel stays already. It beats plastic grocery bags on every metric: fitted, reusable, and it does not rustle like contraband at 6am. Keep one cap per pair in your luggage permanently so the system survives repacking. Clean clothes and packed shoes have never coexisted this peacefully. Free solutions that outperform purchased ones are the best genre of travel hack.
9. Pack For Two Kids In One Bag
Family travel math is brutal: more people, more bags, fewer hands. This system from Beauty Through Imperfection consolidates two kids into one suitcase using per-day outfit bundles, and it changes airport logistics entirely. Each child’s daily outfit – shirt, bottoms, socks, underwear – rolls into one gallon bag labeled by day, so mornings become grab-and-dress instead of excavate-and-negotiate. The kids can find their own clothes, which is the sleeper benefit no one advertises. Squeeze the air out and the bundles compress remarkably flat. One suitcase for two children means one more free adult hand, and every parent knows what that hand is worth. Vacation mornings without the wardrobe standoff: that is the real destination.
10. Pack Heaviest Item At The Bottom
Where the weight sits decides whether your suitcase behaves. Chrissy at Organise My House says it plainly: think about which way the bag will be held, then put the heavier items at the bottom and the lighter ones on top. In a roller that means shoes and the toiletry bag down by the wheels, with everything crushable above them where nothing presses a crease into it. She has spent over 21 years as a professional home stylist and organizer, and this is one tip out of 101 on that page, so pace yourself. Of everything on this list, this is the rule I would keep, because it costs nothing and it is the difference between a bag that stands up at the gate and one that keeps folding into the backs of your knees.
11. Smart Packing Tips for a Trip
Here is where a good system saves your sanity. Instead of throwing everything in and sitting on the suitcase, this walks you through packing for a trip the smart way, from making a list to rolling clothes so they take up less room. I always pack one outfit in my carry on now after a lost-bag fiasco, and it has saved me twice. Lay everything out first, then edit it down by a third, and you will still have plenty. Get the full tutorial at Organize Your Stuff Now.
12. Place Necklaces Between Two Pieces of Sticky Wrap
I Heart Naptime solves the necklace problem a different way: sandwich them flat between two pieces of cling wrap, press around each chain, and they travel like pressed flowers, visibly separated and completely immobile. Unlike pouches, the wrap is transparent, so you can find the right necklace without opening anything. It packs truly flat, sliding into any gap in a full suitcase. This is the method for the maximalist who travels with six chains and wants zero surprises on arrival, and it works for bracelets and delicate anklets too. The wrap tears off fresh each trip for pennies. Unpack, peel, wear – no detangling appointment required.
13. Tips for Traveling With a Newborn
Traveling with a tiny one is a whole different game, and a little prep goes a long way. This one covers the real essentials for getting on the road or in the air with a newborn without hauling the entire nursery. My best tip is to pack a full change of clothes for the baby and for you in an easy-reach spot, because you will need both. Keep the diaper bag stocked and by the door so you are never scrambling. Get the full tutorial at Frugal Mom Eh.
14. Pack The Perfect Carry On
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15. How to Organize a Packing Session
If packing always feels chaotic, this is the fix. Setting up an actual packing session, with your list, your piles, and your suitcase all in one spot, turns a stressful scramble into a quick, calm routine. I like to lay out outfits by day so I am not repacking the same shirt three times. Do it a day early so you have time to add anything you forgot. Get the full tutorial at I Save A2Z.
16. Pack Your Make-Up Bag
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17. Use Pill Case Compartments To Store Jewelry
The humble weekly pill organizer moonlights as the best tiny jewelry box travel has ever seen. Each snap-shut compartment holds a pair of earrings, a couple of rings, or a coiled thin bracelet, separated and secure and visible through the lid. Cosmopolitan championed this one, and its genius is the label bonus: Monday through Sunday compartments can literally plan your accessories by day if you enjoy that level of preparedness. The case is rigid enough to protect delicate pieces and small enough to vanish into any corner of a carry on. Dollar stores sell them for a dollar, obviously. Small, cheap, transformative – the entire spirit of a great packing trick in one plastic rectangle.
18. Wrap Belt Inside The Collar Of Your Shirt
A belt is the most awkward object in any suitcase: too stiff to fold, too long to lay flat, and heavy enough to wrinkle whatever it coils on. The fix is elegant – curl it inside the collar of a packed dress shirt, where it props the collar crisp while occupying space that was going unused anyway. Two problems cancel each other out, which is packing at its most poetic. The shirt arrives with a sharp collar, the belt arrives unkinked, and neither cost you an inch of room. It works in a garment bag, a suitcase, or a duffel. The Travel Hack takes the credit here, and the name has rarely been better earned.
19. Pack The Perfect Beach Bag
Org Junkie approaches the beach bag like a professional operation, and honestly, it is one. The system assigns zones: a wet zone (sealed bag for damp suits), a sand-shedding mesh section for toys, a protected pocket for phones and books, and snacks quarantined away from sunscreen. Everything comes out clean, dry, and findable with one hand while the other holds a wiggling child or a cold drink. A mesh bag is the secret hero, letting sand fall through instead of coming home to your carpet. Pack it the night before and beach mornings lose all their friction. Summer runs on this kind of quiet competence, one organized tote at a time.
20. Pack Carry-On Like A Pro
The carry-on-only life is a skill, and this guide is its curriculum. Wholefully lays out the complete system – a capsule wardrobe where everything matches everything, rolling instead of folding, and the liquids strategy that clears security without a bag autopsy. Flying with only a carry on means never watching a baggage carousel with dread, never paying a checked bag fee, and walking out of the airport twenty minutes ahead of everyone else. The wardrobe math is the real unlock: seven tops and three bottoms that all coordinate make twenty-one outfits. Of all the packing hacks in this list, this one changes how you travel rather than just how you pack. Try it once and checked luggage starts feeling like a rookie tax.
21. Slip Delicate Glass Items Into Socks
ChiWei at One Dog Woof wraps a wine bottle in a sock as a gift rather than as packing, but the mechanism is identical and one detail is worth stealing. She slides one sock inside the other before the bottle goes in, so the glass gets two layers instead of one. A doubled sock is exactly what you want around a souvenir bottle or a jar of something local, sitting in the middle of the suitcase with soft clothes on every side. I can get almost anything out of almost anything, and I’d still rather not spend a hotel evening getting olive oil out of everything I packed. Why buy padding for one bottle when there is a drawer of it at home?
22. Use Packing Cubes
Hippie In Heels makes the definitive case for packing cubes, the zippered organizers that turn suitcase chaos into a filing system. One cube per category – tops, bottoms, underthings, or one per family member in a shared bag – and suddenly unpacking means transferring cubes to drawers, done in ninety seconds. Compression versions squeeze air out and buy you visible extra space, which returns its cost on the first overpacked trip home. The underrated feature is re-packing mid-trip: cubes keep the system alive on day six when discipline usually dies. Dirty clothes get their own cube, sealed away from the clean majority. Once you travel cubed, loose packing feels like keeping your files in a leaf pile.
23. Keep Liquid Products From Spilling by Using Plastic Wrap
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24. Pack the Fabrics That Don’t Wrinkle
Most packing hacks start once the suitcase is open. This one starts at the closet. So Sew Easy makes the case for choosing the fabric before you choose the outfit, and names six that travel well: cashmere, merino wool, neoprene, polyester, knits and denim. The tip buried in the middle of that list is the best one, which is to wrap whatever creases easily inside a knit sweater and let the knit take the abuse. Polyester earns its spot on a long trip too, since you can wash it at night and wear it the next day. If I had to pick one, I’d take merino, because it handles a freezing plane and a warm afternoon without a second outfit.
25. Organized Travel Packing With Kids
Traveling with children is a logistics exercise wearing a vacation costume, and this system respects that truth. The approach covers labeled bags per child, a dedicated activity kit within arm’s reach, and the sacred backup outfit stored where you can grab it one-handed in a moving vehicle. Involving kids in packing their own labeled bags buys surprising cooperation, since ownership is a powerful drug at age six. The activity kit earns its keep by hour two of any flight or drive. Snacks get distributed redundantly across bags, because a single point of snack failure is not a risk sensible parents take. The full checklist lives at The Crazy Craft Lady, and it reads like it was written in the trenches, because it was.
26. Try A Clam Shell Suitcase
The World Pursuit makes a persuasive argument that your suitcase itself is a packing decision. A clamshell design opens into two fully walled halves, so the bag packs like a portable dresser: clean clothes one side, everything else the other, nothing avalanching when you open it on a hotel luggage rack. The structure protects contents better than floppy duffels, and the enforced symmetry quietly disciplines overpackers. Pair each half with cubes and you have reached the final form of suitcase order. If your current bag is a single cavern you excavate daily, the upgrade changes every trip after it. Gear matters less than technique, except when the gear is the technique.
27. Maximize Your Carry On Luggage Space
This one is the graduate seminar in spatial efficiency: every dead zone in a carry on, identified and conscripted. Shoes get stuffed with socks and chargers, the space inside a packed hat holds rolled underthings, and the flat plane under compression straps takes the overflow. Snail Pace Transformations approaches the bag like a puzzle where the prize is not paying baggage fees, which is excellent motivation. Rolling beats folding for density, and wearing your bulkiest layer on the plane remains the oldest trick that still works. The audit mindset is the real lesson – once you see empty shoe interiors as wasted real estate, you cannot unsee it. Frequent flyers are built one reclaimed cubic inch at a time.
28. Place Dryer Sheets In Your Luggage
A suitcase shut in a closet since the last trip smells like a suitcase, and by day two everything folded inside it smells like one too. Jackie at I Heart Arts n Crafts puts the fix in one line: add dryer sheets in between your clothes in your luggage to keep them fresh. Slide one into each layer going out and one into the dirty clothes bag coming home, which is the leg that really needs it. Her list also turns a pot holder into a heat-safe case for a curling iron, which is smarter than anything I have ever done with a pot holder. It won’t rescue a wet swimsuit sealed in a bag for two days, because nothing will, but for a stale suitcase one sheet per layer is the whole fix.
29. Packing an Organized Suitcase
A Proverbs 31 Wife lays out a soup-to-nuts method for packing a suitcase where everything has a place and stays in it. The system works in layers: structured heavy base, rolled mid-layer by category, delicate top layer, and small goods filed into the perimeter gaps like grout. What separates it from generic advice is the unpacking test – the bag is packed so the first things needed on arrival are the last things layered in, pajamas and toiletries right on top. That single reordering means arrival nights skip the full-bag excavation entirely. It is a homemaker’s discipline applied to travel, and it holds up trip after trip. Method beats effort; this is the method.
30. Store Q tips in an Old Pill Bottle
Loose cotton swabs migrate through a toiletry bag like tumbleweeds, picking up whatever they touch and arriving unusable. An empty prescription bottle solves it completely: waterproof, crush-proof, exactly swab-sized, and already in your recycling pile. Society19 gets the nod for this one, and the upgrade path is generous – the same bottle format stores bobby pins, hair ties, cotton rounds, or a travel sewing kit with equal grace. Peel the old label or run it through the dishwasher first. It is free, it takes ten seconds, and it turns the messiest corner of your dopp kit into the tidiest. Small bottle, disproportionate satisfaction.
31. String Necklaces Through Straws
Yes, item 5 already gave you a travel jewelry case for tangled necklaces, and here is a second fix: the straw trick is the single most re-discovered packing hack on the internet, because it works every single time. This version from Points and Pixie Dust adds the traveler’s refinements – reusable silicone straws for sturdiness, one straw per chain with the clasp secured outside, and the whole bundle banded together so your jewelry arrives as organized as it left. Longer chains can double through the straw for a snugger hold. If you skipped the earlier entry, consider this your second chance; if you did not, consider it a strong closing argument. Some hacks earn their encore.
32. Ziploc Bag Packing
This Grandma Is Fun swears by the ziploc method, and generations of organized travelers back her up. Gallon bags become transparent drawers: one per outfit, per day, or per category, squeezed flat to expel air so they stack like files in the suitcase. The transparency is the superpower – no rummaging, no mystery bundles, just visible contents at a glance. Wet swimsuits, leaky sunscreen, and muddy shoes each get quarantined in their own bag before they can victimize the wardrobe. On a family trip, handing each kid their labeled day-bag ends the morning suitcase riot instantly. Cheap, waterproof, reusable for several trips, and utterly without pretension: the ziploc earns its legend status.
33. Keep Items in Shoes
The inside of a packed shoe is prime real estate sitting empty, and this closing tip puts it to work. Socks, sunglasses in a soft case, chargers, belts coiled tight – anything small and semi-flexible rides safely in the cavity of a sneaker or boot, protected by the shoe’s own structure. The World Pursuit returns to point out the bonus physics: stuffed shoes hold their shape in transit, so your footwear arrives uncrushed while your accessories arrive organized. Wrap anything scented or delicate in a bag first, for reasons that require no elaboration. Every packed shoe is roughly a fist of free storage, and most bags hold two or three pairs. Waste nothing; arrive smug.
34. Pack Smart
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