How to stop your shampoo from exploding in your luggage

You know what it’s like. You arrive at your destination, check into your hotel and open up your suitcase, only to find that your nicely-packed clothing is covered in a thick white goo, also known as shampoo. Instead of cursing out loud, throwing your suitcase out the window and deciding to never shampoo your hair ever again (because it’s clearly not worth it), avoid the dreaded shampoo explosion from happening at all by following these easy steps.

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Step 1: Decide what’s coming

First of all, before you decide to put everything in your bathroom cupboard into your luggage, do a bit of a cull and decide exactly what needs to come with you and what doesn’t. You might have to be a bit ruthless, but go through each and every one of the items you want to pack and decide if it really needs to come with you. Do you really need to pack eye-wrinkle cream for your Alaskan cruise? Yes, of course you do. But three different types? Probably not.

Step 2: Let the air out of your bottles

This might come as a bit of a surprise but it’s not actually the liquid that reacts to the air pressure in the luggage compartments, it’s the gasses floating around those bottles and containers. So instead of leaving air in your bottles, try and squeeze out as much of it as possible, this will leave less of a chance for your shampoo to explode in your luggage. 

Step 3: Cover the tops with plastic

Once you’ve squeezed the air out of your bottles, remove the lids and then place a sheet of cling wrap over the top, just to make sure extra air doesn’t make its way out, and also to stop the liquid from spreading if it does try to escape.

Step 4: Wrap them in a plastic bag

Just to be on the safe side, pop all your containers and bottles into a plastic bag. That way if the above steps still don’t work, at least the liquids and creams won’t spread all over your clothing and other items in your luggage. Crisis averted!

Do you have any other tips for stopping your shampoo from exploding in your luggage? Let us know in the comments section below.