Going back to Singapore in about six days and midway through packing hell. Things I have learnt about packing after 3 years of moving and travelling with big/medium/small suitcases for long/short trips:
1. Cling wrap is mankind's greatest invention. It is sterile and airtight and stretchy and if you wrap it tightly around anything it compresses it like.. well vacuum packs, but I haven't got a vacuum sealing machine on hand. I bought a 45p roll from Tesco and have been using it to wrap up my shoes and bulky clothes. It just makes so much sense when you're packing crap loads of random stuff together..
2. Packing clothes into individual canvas totes, for organization purposes and also so that you can pack all that shit up more tightly without cling-wrapping everything. That would take a lot of time and also how would you be able to find specific things like a mid length black pencil skirt when everything looks black and cling-wrapped shiny?? So far packed work clothes into one bag, summer casual stuff in another, and winter stuff in another one. And one for books and scarves. It's much easier to unpack when everything's already in bags and not a massive pile. When floor space is scarce it's tough living out of a suitcase.
3. Put heavy stuff at the bottom of the suitcase so that the bag doesn't topple over easily. I don't know if other people have this problem but I always do.. all these imbalanced suitcases falling over squashing toes and in the worst case, babies.
Maybe these things are totally obvious but this is my game plan right now.. Mostly worried about unpacking because when I get back it's straight to the hairdresser's and setting up my phone plan, and then getting into battle mode for my first day of business. And of course as many meals in between as possible.
