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6 Tips for Wrinkle-Free Packing
1. Lighten Your Load
Jamming your suitcases
as full as a subway at rush hour will leave your clothes as exhausted
as a crushed commuter. Clothes become wrinkled almost as soon as
you shove that last leaden item into your bag.
The easiest things
to jettison? Hairdryers and clothes irons.
Almost every hotel room
(and hostel) in the world has these
items to lend.
2. One Word: Plastic
If you remember only one
word in your packing efforts, this is the one. And here's why:
friction causes wrinkling,
plastic reduces friction. It's that easy. The best way to utilize
this basic plastic physics is with dry-cleaner bags.
All hanger
items should be packed in individual bags (one outfit per dry-cleaner
bag). Clothes arrive in a perfectly preserved state.
Really! Another
great plastic tip: zip-top baggies. Use these for
dirty shoes,
shampoo bottles, or anything else you want to isolate from your
good clothes.
3. Rolling, Rolling, Rolling
You have two options for items that
you're not hanging: folding or rolling. Rolling is a great space-saving
and wrinkle-reducing choice for jeans and T-shirts. Here's how
you do it: take a pair of jeans and fold them lengthwise so that
the legs are stacked on top of each other. Now, starting from
the cuff, roll your way up. For T-shirts,
place face down, fold
arms back (you should now have a long rectangle), fold lengthwise,
and
roll up.
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4.
Fold It
For sweaters
and other non-T tops, the square fold is the way
to go. Here's
a quick primer:
button all buttons and lay shirts face down on
a
bed or flat
surface. Smooth away wrinkles. Fold material in at the shoulders
and lay arms flat along the body
so that you create a roughly
two-inch
overlap of material on both sides. Now fold up a third of the material
from the bottom and overlap a third from the top. You should now have a
tidy package worthy of any chain retailer.
5. Delicate Situation
What to do with your undies and lingerie? Buy inexpensive
mesh laundry bags; they're made of nylon and are lightweight. Stow your delicates
in here. An added bonus: if your bag is inspected, "
no one need touch your
underwear since an inspector will be able to see into the bag. Socks, by
the way, should be rolled up and placed inside shoes or used to fill gaps
in your bag (see below).
6. Pack It Away
Now take all your tidily arrayed garments and put them outside
your bag. Your goal is to use
them to create a clothing jigsaw puzzle where
no empty spaces remain and items won't shift. Lay your bag flat and put folded
clothes in piles down the center. Put your toiletries kit at what will be
the bottom of your bag when it's standing (this should now be the heaviest
item in your bag; in this position it won't crush other items). Rolled clothes
fit into the spaces around the stacked clothes. Single shoes should be tucked
into remaining openings (remember, shoes aren't friends; they don't need
to travel right up next to each other). Socks fill in remaining holes. Voila!
You are
now a wrinkle-free savvy traveler!
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