How to pack your clothes so they don’t crease

Packing can be one of the most painful tasks when preparing for your holiday.

It’s not only a case of working out what you need to pack, often one of the biggest challenges is how to pack it.

How many times have you gone travelling only to get to your destination and find your clothes are all crushed and messed up?

We’ve all been there.

If you don’t want to be ironing or pressing you clothes when you travel, you can try these simple tips to pack your clothes so they don’t crease.

1. Roll your jeans and t-shirts

Apart from your hanging clothes such as suits, jackets and shirts that you’ve ironed, you have two packing options – fold or roll. For your t-shirts, jeans and anything else that creases easily, you should try rolling them when packing.  For jeans, fold them lengthwise with the legs stacked on each other and roll your way up from the cuff. When rolling t-shirts, lay them face down, fold the arms back, then fold lengthwise and roll up. Rolling is also a great way to save space in your luggage.

2. Fold your jumpers and business shirts, tops

Any tops that aren’t T-shirts should be folded, that includes sweaters and jumpers. But it’s how you fold them that will stop them from creasing. First, you should buttons all the buttons and lay shirts face down on a flat surface. Next, smooth away the wrinkles, fold in at the shoulders and lay the arms flat along the body. This will create an overlap of material on both sides. Finally, just fold up a third of the shirt from the bottom and overlap a third from the top. Your shirts will look as neatly folded as they were in the shop when you bought them!

3. Cover hanging items in plastic

You might be wondering why when your clothes are dry cleaned they get bagged, covered or wrapped in plastic. Well, that’s because friction is the main cause of wrinkling, and apparently plastic reduces friction. So how can you apply that to packing? Well, it’s simple. Make sure all your hanger items are individually packed in plastic dry-cleaner bags. Your clothes will arrived in the exact state you packed them in.

4. Fold with tissue paper

If you don’t feel like rolling your clothes, try folding them with tissue paper. It turns out folding your pants and shirts with a piece of tissue paper in the middle can actually help stop your clothes from creasing. Apparently, the slippery texture of the tissue paper reduces friction on the fabric. The one downside to this is you can still end up with creases from where the shirts and pants have been folded – unless you have several layers of tissue paper in the middle.

How do you pack when travelling to avoid creasing your clothes?