You know those fancy “space bags” you hook up to your vacuum cleaner and they do things like make all your spare pillows and blankets shrink down to the size of a pancake? Those are kind of cool, but they tend to be expensive, and I’ll tell you a little secret. Ready? Come closer:
For most items, you can achieve the same effect with a heavy-duty zip bag and just lying down on the bag while you seal it (or letting your kids sit on it for you).
Granted, a big Ziploc isn’t going to last forever, but neither will a space bag, probably. Anyway, this is all preamble to pointing out that right now Amazon has this 5-pack of 3-gallon Ziplocs available for just $5.24—its lowest price ever—or even less when you buy via Subscribe & Save. These aren’t big enough for bedding (well, maybe a single set of sheets, depending) but they’re plenty big enough for tons of other things, and in addition to helping you get to that magical extra-savings point of having 5 S&S orders in a month, they’re great for getting things around the house organized. Oh hey, they have this 4-pack of 10-gallon Ziplocs for $4.49, too (also its lowest price, and lower still when you buy via Subscribe & Save). This size is actually big enough for sweaters and blankets.
Also, flopping down on top of a bag to squeeze the air out is kind of fun.
These probably do work out cheaper but you can usually get the big box of assorted space bags at Costco for really cheap. I think last time I got them for like $15 and it included a couple of the super giant, 6 of the big ones that fit in our large suitcase (will fit a full suit jacket without having to fold anything), 4-6 middle size, and a few “travel” ones. We use them all for travel and don’t worry about using a vacuum. You can do the sit and roll on all of them easily. We have had the original set for many, many years and actually the travel versions are the only ones who seem to be damaged at all (they have started coming apart in the magic area that lets air out so they leak). I wish they made a combo set with more small bags to use like space cubes.
Thanks for posting this – I am traveling next year and love putting everything in bags esp. outfits for the little one so I don’t have to think about it!