I hate packing. I love travelling; I love airports. I can happily spend hours planning a holiday, but ask me to pack for it and suddenly I will find ten other things that urgently need my attention.
I also have a terrible habit of packing for situations that exist only in my head. What if we decide to go somewhere nice for dinner? What if it gets colder? What if I need another pair of trousers? What if the children need something and I somehow end up carrying it? You get the idea.
For shorter trips, I used to organise clothes in old saree covers. They worked surprisingly well because I could put complete outfits together and pull out exactly what I needed. For longer holidays, I eventually moved to packing cubes. That helped with organisation, but I still had one problem. I was folding everything. Then I started rolling my clothes. I am not going to tell you that this magically turned a cabin suitcase into check-in luggage. It did something much more useful. It helped me use the space I already had properly.
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I realised folding was creating one giant pile
My old packing routine was very predictable. Fold T-shirts. Fold trousers. Stack everything. Add nightwear. Realise the pile is getting dangerously close to the top of the suitcase. Press everything down. Attempt to close suitcase. Open suitcase again. Rearrange. Repeat.
Rolling changed that because my clothes stopped becoming one large stack. I could place T-shirts next to each other, squeeze nightwear into a corner and use spaces that would otherwise have remained empty. The biggest difference, though, was visibility. When I opened my suitcase, I could actually see my clothes instead of having to remove half the contents to reach the T-shirt buried underneath. For someone who does not always unpack into the hotel wardrobe, this alone was reason enough to continue.
This is how I roll clothes now
I do not follow an elaborate technique. I lay a T-shirt flat, fold the sleeves in and roll it from the bottom upwards. That is it. The roll needs to be reasonably tight, but I am not trying to compress the poor T-shirt into submission. Leggings, pyjamas, shorts and softer trousers get the same treatment. With jeans, I place one leg over the other and roll from the ankle upwards. Socks and undergarments go into the little spaces left around everything else. Once you start packing this way, you become strangely aware of how much usable space exists around the edges of a suitcase.
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No, I don't roll everything
This is probably the most important part. Some clothes simply do not like being rolled. I would never roll a blazer, a structured dress or anything heavily embellished. I am also careful with linen because linen seems capable of developing wrinkles simply by being looked at incorrectly. Those pieces get folded and placed flat. My suitcase usually ends up being a combination of both methods.
I usually roll:
- T shirts
- Tops
- Leggings
- Pyjamas
- Shorts
- Soft trousers
- Socks
- Undergarments
I usually fold:
- Shirts that crease easily
- Linen
- Blazers
- Structured dresses
- Jackets
- Embellished clothes
It is less about following one packing rule and more about looking at the garment in your hand and using some common sense.
Packing cubes made this even easier for me
I am a packing cube convert, especially on longer holidays. Rolling clothes inside cubes means I can separate categories instead of creating one giant collection of clothes. Tops can go together, bottoms can sit separately, and nightwear gets its own space. There is another habit that has made travelling much easier for me. I keep one packing cube for used clothes.
Anything that has been worn goes straight into it. I do not have to remember what is clean; nothing gets mixed, and once I am home, that cube can pretty much head straight towards the laundry. It is such a small thing, but anyone who has returned from a long holiday and stared at an exploded suitcase on the bedroom floor will understand why I appreciate it.
Does rolling actually give you more luggage space?
In my experience, yes. I would not attach a neat percentage to it because your results will depend entirely on what you are carrying. A suitcase full of summer T-shirts is obviously going to behave very differently from one filled with winter jumpers. What I notice is that I use the available space better. Rolled clothes fit beside each other. Smaller pieces can go into corners. I can see what I have packed. And because everything is visible, I am also less likely to accidentally pack four black T-shirts because I forgot about the first three. There is one catch.
More space does not mean you should immediately fill that space. I learnt this the hard way. The first few times I managed to create extra room, I treated it as permission to add more clothes. Which rather defeats the point.
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The way I pack now
I still overpack occasionally. I still throw in that extra outfit because apparently I remain convinced that holidays involve far more wardrobe changes than they actually do.
But my suitcase is far more organised now. I roll everyday clothes, fold the pieces that need more care and use packing cubes on longer trips. Used clothes get their own cube and socks fill the small gaps that inevitably remain. And I have stopped blaming the suitcase every time the zip refuses to close. Sometimes, the suitcase was never the problem. It was the way I was packing it.
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