Unpacking Made-Easy, Secrets of The Travel Laundry Bags!

I always unpack right after I get home from a trip. Regardless of how tired I am, my urge to get things in order is unavoidable. I could not rest until everything is stowed properly in its place. At times when my luggage was lost in transit, I felt a sense of relief that I didn't need to unpack right-away.

As much as I want to unpack immediately, after a long trip, its dreadful. So I came up with a system that made my life a lot easier. Over the years I learned that, when packing to return home, being strategic is just as important as being organized. The key is to start the preparation early! And I use travel laundry bags to help me. 

Essentially, travel laundry bags are useful to sort things into different piles. It separates clean clothes from the dirty ones. It can also be used to store dirty shoes or to wrap somewhat fragile items in the luggage. I got my laundry bags from the hotels. However, be careful before taking one from the hotel closet. Some hotels may charge it to the final bill as a purchased item. 

If you don't have a travel laundry bag, you can absolutely use a pillow case instead!

Packing cubes can serve the same purpose as well. Check out all the different ways to use packing cubes in my previous post "Do I Really Need Packing Cubes?"

Follow theses steps to unpack in a breeze!

During the trip

1) Organize wardrobe into two sections: clean and dirty. Separate them with travel laundry bags or packing cubes. This way, clothes don't get mixed up, and clean clothes stay clean longer!

2) Separate the dirty clothes into three sections: whites, dark, and dry-clean. Throughout the trip, continue to throw dirty clothes into their designated piles. If I separate the laundry as I go, I don't need to sort through piles of dirty and stinky clothes when I get home!

At then end of the trip

1) Using travel laundry bags or packing cubes, group things together in relations to where they belong in the house.

For examples:

• Stuff that goes into the closet, such as clean clothes
• Stuff that goes to the laundry, such as dirty clothes
• stuff that goes to the bathroom, such as toiletries 
• Stuff that goes to the kitchen, such as coffee or cookies bought from the trip
• Stuff that goes onto the desk, such as camera and charger
• Stuff that goes upstairs/downstairs

This is somewhat how my luggage looks like at the end of the trip.

If I sort through the content now, it's one less thing I need to do when I get home. Also, it saves trips going around the house deciding where each stuff goes. 

When arriving home

Simply open the luggage and bring each bags of stuff to its place. Then I can stow away my luggage and sort though the content of each bags later, maybe when I am jet lagged...