Travel Tip: Vacuum Bag Packing [VIDEO]

My little family is going on our first ever vacation and my husband and I are so excited that we've been planning and gathering things for the past few months. Yes, we're those people- the ones who lay everything out forever in advance and have a checklist and a plan for whatever is thrown our way.

One of my concerns was making sure to have enough clothes for our toddler who has a tendency to get dirty a couple times a day.  Let's face it...doing laundry is dreadful thing unless you're one of those bizarre human beings who finds it to be soothing. In that case, whenever you're laundry-less and need to escape to your happy place, feel free to come to my place to wash my mounds of laundry. I only have one kid and I feel like I can't keep up. I don't even know how people with multiple kids do it.

I'm definitely not a mom who panics at the thought of my kid wearing clothes with mud or food on it for a little bit, but my toddler's body is amazing at flushing things out and we still haven't found a diaper able to stand up to him. So, yeah. Now you understand why I need to bring lots of extra clothes.

While we plan to spend most of our vacation in our bathing suits, hanging out on the dock or in the water, I didn't want to not pack enough clothes for our son and have to do laundry on my vacation- especially when the only way to wash clothes where we're going is to use a hand crank machine.  No, thanks!

I also didn't want to pack the car so full that it'd take 500 trips in the boat to get everything across the lake to our cabin (there's no road to the cabin- the only way to get there is by boat) or have the car so disorganized that my obsessive compulsive self would have a meltdown- not a fun way to start a vacation. So, I had to figure out how to fit all of our clothes and our son's clothes into one big suitcase that we could put in the car top carrier.

The answer? Vacuum bags. I never even thought of this idea until I was browsing Amazon one day and saw an ad for vacuum bags. I did a little research and after weighing the pros and cons, I bought a box to try and I'm so glad that I did.

When my package arrived, I happened to be on the phone with my sister and was so excited about my new vacuum seal bags that she threatened to record me and send it in to QVC. I immediately gave one of the bags a try, using the hand pump that came with it and giggled when it worked. The bags that I bought can be used with a vacuum or a non-electric hand pump (which was included in the purchase). It was important to me to get a set that came with a hand pump because where we're going, there's no electricity, which means no vacuum to seal the stuff back up for the trip home. Just for fun, we packed and sealed the bags using both a vacuum and the hand pump and both worked really well. Understandably, the hand pump took a little longer than the vacuum, but it worked and that's all that matters to me.

I am going to be taking a couple spare bags just in case any of the bags we're packing things in get pierced or ruined. Can you imagine having loads of clothing that doesn't fit into the one suitcase we're taking? Ugh!

Another little tip for if you plan to pack using these bags is to be sure to use your fingers to seal the zipper portion of the bag- don't rely solely on whatever bag sealer comes with your purchase. After running the sealer over the zippers on my bag, I realized it wasn't completely closed. By using your fingers, you'll be sure to get a good seal. Oh, and when the clothes (or blankets, as demonstrated in the video below) come out of the bag, they're a little wrinkled but I'll take some wrinkles over having to do laundry on vacation. This mama is SO ready for a laundry break!

Find the right vacuum bag for you by doing a Google search and reading the reviews! Oh, and I should mention that if you're considering packing like this and will be traveling via airplane, you might want to be extra careful about not going over the weight limit. Because you're able to fit so much more into a suitcase, it could be very easy to bypass the airline's weight limit and be charged an overage.