Just Bag-it!

As I globe trot around northern California, I would like to share a helpful travel tip.

On a trip to Italy's Cinque Terre, I decided to carry along a large Zip-lock bag. This isn't the regular quart or gallon, but the very large Zip-Lock Big Bag. It is normally marketed as a way to store everyday things like soccer balls and board games. I used them to keep my dirty travel clothes away from my clean clothes, eliminating the need to have one suitcase specially for dirty clothes.

What you do: As you dirty clothes, put them in the Zip-lock Big Bag. You zip up the bag to keep in all the dirty touristy smells. You can put this bag right in the suitcase with the clean clothes without worry.


As you go through the trip, the Big Bag will get more and more full, and the suitcase will have less and less clean clothes. The wonderful thing is that you are carefully separating the clean from the dirty without taking up extra space or making life complicated. When you get home, you can just take the entire Zip-lock to the laundry (it comes with built-in handles).