15 Mind Blowing PACKING HACKS ✈️ 🧳

Hi, guys. Welcome back to my channel and to a packing hacks video. Today, I am packing for some time away. We're actually going to Cornwall next week. And then later on in the summer, we're going away to Spain. And I thought I would share because it can be such an overwhelming task when you're packing for an entire family. I hope you really like it. If you do, give it a big thumbs up. And if you're new around here, I would absolutely love it to subscribe. I share so many hacks. But let's get into it. The first step is to make a list. You guys know I love a list and it can just be really helpful to jot down all your ideas. And you can also get some great inspiration on things like Pinterest. I actually have a little checklist in an old planner of mine, and I'll definitely put a list in the description down below so that you guys can also see that if you want to use it. I also really like using packing cubes. You can get a pack of four on Amazon pretty reasonably and other places as well. I really like them for small clothes, like for children, so like baby toddler clothes. Also really like them for swimwear, for caftans and things like that. I also find that when you get to your destination, it's super quick to unpack because you can kind of take the packing cube out of the suitcase and put it into a drawer and it's like all together. And another tip would be to roll your clothes instead of folding them to avoid creases. I actually went down a rabbit hole the other day on TikTok, I think it was, on how to like military roll clothes. And it was so clever. So I thought I would actually show you how to do like a military roll on a t-shirt. So you kind of fold your t-shirt, like you fold the arms in. You fold up a little bit at the bottom, like about an inch, and you'll see why in a minute. And then you fold it in half or in thirds, depending on how big the top is. So you roll it as tightly as you can. And then you basically pull that bit over and look, and then you've got yourself like a little parcel, which is a little t-shirt. So if you were packing your clothes in a carry-on and you wanted to make it like super compact, you could definitely try like military rolling of your clothes. I also wanted to show you, this was amazing for our son when he went on like a school trip. I was really worried about him finding everything that he would need in his bag. So we packed each day's clothing in a little wallet like this. Again, we got them pretty recently on Amazon. And then we put like underwear, socks, the whole outfit in there. And we went one step further and actually labeled them like day one, day two, day three, because it was Caleb, like he's only nine years old. And then we also said at the end of the day to put them back in here. So if they were like wet or dirty, it was like a way of holding them and it works really well. And a tip I've shared before is to use shower caps on your shoes if you don't want like the dirt from the bottom of your shoes to get on your clothes in your suitcase. Obviously you can try and pack them like facing the side, but especially if you're away and they get dirty. Often if you're staying in a hotel or something, they'll have these in the bathroom and you can just kind of take them and put them on your shoes like this. So it works so incredibly well. And actually I just love shower caps. Like whenever we stay in a hotel, I do tend to take them or you can pick them up in pharmacies as well because they are so good for so many things. I remember when we had a buggy, I used to put it on like dirty buggy wheels. If you're on a picnic and you have a clean one of these, you can put it over a picnic plate to avoid like flies and things like that. Just works for so many things. But yeah, love that hack. When it comes to packing a sun hat, there's a few different things I do. Often I'll actually wear it on the flights just to make sure it stays nice. If you don't want to do that, you can actually pack it in your suitcase, but you have to make sure you pack lots of clothes like in and around the hat. But I actually recently found a sun hat that I like from Amazon. It looks like this on, it's like super cute. It's got this big bow in the back, but then when you want to pack it, you can actually roll it up really tightly. And then obviously it doesn't kind of get misshapen or anything and it works incredibly well. So I think I shared this in my Amazon summer hacks video. It comes with a little elastic like this, and then it's like really tightly packed and you can put it into your suitcase like this. And something that we've actually learned the hard way is to pack heavy items at the bottom of the suitcase. So just look at where the wheels are and pack your heaviest items along the bottom of the suitcase because then when you're putting it into the airport, it makes it so much easier. It's less likely to fall over. So yeah, that really helps with balance. When it comes to shoes, I would say be ruthless. Obviously it depends where you're going, but if we're going on a warmer holiday, we'll pack three pairs of shoes each. Normally we'll wear trainers on the way there. And then for me, I'll pack one gold or neutral high heel and then one gold or neutral sandal, just because I find that then goes with every day outfit and night outfit as well. And you can see I've got quite a few. And then for the kids, it's the same. They wear trainers on the way there. We've got sliders for around the swimming pool and then nicer sandals for the evening. And when it comes to packing makeup for yourself, I would say just pack the essentials. Less is definitely more. So many times we've gone on holiday and I've thought, oh, I'm going to try out one of my new products, see what it's like. But actually it's better to save that valuable space in your suitcase and stick to what you know. And then also when it comes to toiletries, I know you can get really cute little minis of everything, but they can work out really expensive. So what we do is get a pack of, what are these called? Little ones you can decant everything into and then you can reuse them over time and it just works out a lot cheaper. And something else that you might not know is if you're traveling with a baby car seat, you can actually check that as luggage. So if you have a cover on that car seat, you can fill up the car seat with other things like baby wipes, nappies, some clothes, blankets, you can shove it all in there and it won't affect your weight allowance. And also on quite a few flights, you get a sports limit for luggage. So if you were traveling with a surfboard or with skis, you can also shove extra items into these sports things. I think even scooters count as sports. So if you wanted to bring fold up scooters with you, you can also do that. Something else that I love and recently found on Amazon, which is actually a great hack for your handbag or to pack when you're going away as well, is this little pill organizer. So you open it up and there's lots of different compartments where you can decant pills into and it really saves space. I've put five different boxes of pills within this. I actually cut off the smallest label on each box. And you can also write the expiry date on the back of it and then put the pills inside and then you have them to hand on your holiday. I actually have two still empty. I might put like Band-Aids, plasters in this one. But yeah, it just makes it super compact. You can get bigger ones if you're a really big family or have a lot of medicine. But yeah, how handy is this? And I don't know what it is about holidays. Maybe it's the plane or just the tiredness, but someone always seems to get sick on a holiday. So it's also worth bringing a thermometer so you can actually check their temperature when you're away. I've shown these mesh laundry bags before in videos, but they're so pretty and we always pack them with us. We've got a pack of two on Amazon. They pack really, really small. And then we have one for lights and one for darks. So when we're away, everyone knows to put their dirty laundry into these. And when we get home and we have a ton of washing to do, it just makes it so much easier. And you can also pack some tumble dryer sheets or put them into these bags if you want to make it smell a bit nicer. If you're away for a long time, you can also put these in your suitcases or in your shoes as well, just to make everything smell nice and fresh. The tip for packing jewelry, especially necklaces, is to thread them through a straw and then do them up. And that way they won't be able to get tangled up. And then when you're on your holiday, you can actually use these straws by the pool. A strawberry daiquiri just doesn't taste the same through a paper straw and it works really well. I've heard some people say these straws can be quite dangerous, the steel ones, but you can get silicone ones if not. They're a bit more bendy. And a hack that Matt claims to have invented is to take a multi-plug like this and just one adapter. So it saves you taking lots of different adapters. You can just put it on there and then you can plug all of your things in. And it also works really well with a USB plug like this. So we've got four places where we can charge things. It's really compact. And then again, you just need one adapter and that's it. So those are all the tips that I wanted to share with you. I really need to go and actually pack now, but let me know in the comments below which one was your favorite. I really feel like Kiki knows as soon as she sees the suitcases. Poor little thing. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you in my next one. Bye.