I’m the kind of person who doesn’t sleep a lot. Generally, I get about 3 hours sleep a night and then one night a week I will just completely crash out for 12 hours. That’s just how I operate, have done for years. The point of this is – I spend a lot of time at home awake at night, and my favourite thing to do at the moment is cast stuff from YouTube on to my TV. I love YouTube dearly, by the way. The videos I watch are generally travel related. I love watching the Knorpp & South videos or anything that Hey Nadine puts up, and also general packing/trip planning videos. It’s the “packing hack” videos that have inspired my post today. Some of the stuff I’ve come across … I genuinely do not understand why people would do these things. It really makes me laugh. So, without further ado, I give you – the top 5 worst packing hacks that I found on YouTube when I should be sleeping!!

 

1. Putting your lotions and liquids into straws and sealing the ends, to make sure you don’t go over the liquid limits.

This one 100% seems like way too much effort to me, and also seems completely ridiculous. The concept is that after you’ve put your liquids into the straw, you seal it with a straightener or something along those lines. From there its heaps easier to pack and you’re obviously not going to go over the liquid limits that airplanes have. I have so many questions about this! I did say liquid in the title, but all the videos I watched – they were doing it with powders too, like powdered foundation or baby powder. So that leads to my first thought – if you are going through airports with weird little straws containing unmarked liquids and especially powders, they’re going to think you’re smuggling drugs! How did anyone ever think this was a good idea! And if they stop you to search you, they’re going to cut the straws open to test what’s inside which will waste all your product! And if you get them to your hotel, you’re going to have to hunt for scissors to open them, and go to the effort of resealing them when you go to different towns! There is so much wasted time with this idea. Getting searched is going to waste your time in airports. Getting the product into the straw in the first place is going to waste your time. Opening them is going to waste your time. Buy travel bottles. Just do it.

2. Packing heavier things in the bottom of your suitcase and lighter things on the top, to protect your things.

You’ve just gotta watch the way they take your bag and throw it on to the conveyor at check in to know this tip is a bad idea. Baggage handlers don’t care which side is technically the top of your suitcase, and neither do the conveyor belts. They will throw that thing around and what you might think is the bottom can quickly become the top or the side. If your things really need to be protected, try wrapping them in clothing or taking them in your carry on. If that still doesn’t protect them enough, why are you bringing them?

3. Packing things into your shoes to save space.

Now I may blow your mind with this one, but putting things inside your shoes makes them fatter. So then they take up more space. This whole idea just seems a little redundant. I could understand maybe putting something into your shoe to protect it, like a perfume bottle or something of the like, but people need to stop saying that this ‘hack’ will save you space because it most likely won’t.

4. Using lemon for deodorant so that you don’t need to pack aerosol cans.

You can safely pack an aerosol can, as long as it has a lid or a lock mechanism of some type on the top, so I don’t really understand how packing a lemon is supposed to be easier. Can you even take lemons into other countries? I didn’t think you could. And, if you’re like me and you use lemon in pretty much every alcoholic drink that you have, what if you’re getting ready and pre-drinking and you accidentally put your armpit lemon in your drink? I know that’s probably unlikely to mix up but it was my first thought. I guess the point of this is to stop you from packing and using aerosol, but you can get some cute and little roll-on deodorants. I would much rather use that then try to smuggle fruit into another country or have to hunt down a supermarket as soon as I land somewhere.

5. Rolling your money into an empty Chapstick container to keep it safe.

My first thought with this one – who even ends up with an empty Chapstick container? Don’t we all lose them long before they’re finished? Which leads me to 2 points. The first – buying one and emptying it out is a waste of money and product. And the second – Chapstick’s are so easy to lose, how is that going to keep your money safe? And the cleaning of the container part seems time consuming, but necessary or otherwise your money will end up oily or sticky from the Chapstick residue inside the container. This one may just be the most pointless to me on the list. Plus when you pull out tightly rolled up money, people may think you’ve been doing lines with it …

 

So there we have it. I’m still shaking my head at some of the concepts. People have too much time on their hands. If any of you have had success with any of these though, I’d love to hear about it. Comment or send me a DM!

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this 😊 I’ve been working on a lot of behind the scenes stuff for this blog lately so there will be a lot more content coming. If you liked this and want to see more, please subscribe and also head over to my Instagram page @sometimeslaurenwrites

 

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