Packing Light

In this week's interviews, Jonathan talks about traveling all over the world with just one suitcase here. Several airlines have announced that they will be charging extra money for not only a second bag but your first bag too. Here's an amazing way to put all your clothes in just one carry on bag so you can save some money. This video also has tons of useful vocabulary about clothes that doesn't usually appear in textbooks.

Hi, I'm Jon Holloway. I'm with packing light dot com. Thanks for coming to our website. We're here to give you an abbreviated packing demonstration of our method so you can take this and use it at home and pack in our famous packing light method.

We start with two pairs of shoes in the carry-on size suitcase, for those who are bold enough to go in a carry-on. We're going to wear one more on board the airplane for a total of three shoes. For cover our shoes so it keep the clean clothes clean. And we put the flats of the shoes up against the side of the suitcase. Now we have a cavern to fill. What we are going to put in that is our hanging organizer by Bagellini. It carries the underwear, the socks, the scarfs for different looks with those black outfits, maybe perhaps some of your toiletries. All of that going into the front of the organizer and the dirty, soiled clothes will go in the back to keep them rotated and organized, and separate and segregated from the clean clothes. What is great about this organizer (is that) it lays flat in the middle of your bag. When you get to your destination, you pull it out and use it as sort of your roaming dresser, without having to unpack everything. The flats of the shoes, the organizer in the bag.

We start with the pants first. The general order of things and the requirements of this method is to pack in the order, for guys, of pants and then shirts. For our women travelers, we're going to start with pants, shorts, skirts, dresses, and tops. Alternate the direction every time you put a garment in. Zipper and button everything to its fullest so it holds its shape. The first pair of pants goes with the waistband up against the side of the suitcase and the pant-legs hanging out. All the shapes of baggage these days if it's an upright suitcase, if it's a backpack, or if it's a duffel bag are rectangular in shape. It makes sense with the long and narrow that you use the long and narrow pants hanging out on one end. Alternate the direction with the waistband of the next pair of pants up against the side like this. They are the infamous black and khaki pants so they go with everything. The first pair of pants was a zip-off convertible pant, so already we're starting to create more outfits by having versatile garments such as this reversible skirt. This skirt will give you two outfits in one by having two sides. With the skirts and dresses we have to abandon the alternating packing method. They are a little wider and there's a little more fabric so we have to use the width of the bag from here on out with the dresses, the skirts, and the tops. With the skirt, you put the middle of the skirt in the middle of the bag. Same with the dress that I'm about to lay across. It's a very simple method that doesn't really require a lot of forethought in advance of where are you going to put things. We simply stack and at the end we're going to fold over and bundle these garments into a bundle.

Alright, now we start with out tops. The first top we're going to lay out towards the front with the collar up against the length of the suitcase, the sleeves where the pant-legs are going. Go back to that alternating method so the collar of the next shirt goes up against the other length of the bag, the sleeves still going in the pant-leg direction. Finally, the sweater, that you want to have access to, laying in the other direction.

Now we start to alternate as we go back in the bag. We take the second from the top and fold it up over the top one. The top sweater will come back up over that shirt and as you do the tail of the garments, with the blouses and shirts, bring in the sleeves. Alright, now we're working our way back in and we are creating a rolled effect. We're not rolling every garment. That doesn't work for woven items, so this method will give you a rolled effect and a cushion effect by helping each garment helping cushion each on before it. Then go in with the dresses and bring in the top of the dress, then the tail of the dress and you can start to see that we are using the configuration of this 22 inch bag. Certainly, this method works in a larger suitcase, but it works terrifically in a 22 inch as well. We bring up the skirt, now we just have the pant-legs to go and you just bundled 12 outfits with 7 garments. If it mixes and matches, if you have some reversible things, if you have some convertible pants and so on, we have created a lot of outfits in a very small space. We could keep going and pack multiple bundles if you wish. It really comes down to your particular trip and the destination in which you are traveling to. If it's different cultures or different weather conditions, you can pack in multiple bundles and pack efficiently with little to no waste of space.

We really appreciate you coming to Packing Light dot com. Hopefully we can help you in years to come and happy travels.