When it used to be 32 kgs per suit case it was much easier to pack all the needed stuffs. But with 23 kgs in 1 suitcase, we have to give very careful in hat we pack and how we pack. Here are few tips that will be of some help. Students traveling for the first time, will have lots of stuff to carry. But, staying informed about what to carry and how much to carry will greatly reduce the amount of effort and stress on you and on your parents. I have seen my mom spend lot of time in preparing the masala and spices and trying to figure out which is in most needed to balance the weight.

Travel Suitcase Packing Tips

1. Remove all the tags from new dress/clothes. It will weight almost 200 Grams
2. Remove all the card-board boxes. If you feel something are fragile, try to wrap around your dress materials.
3. You will get almost everything here in U.S. So, try to get stuffs that are not available here. Those stuffs goes into suitcase first ( Indian Spices, your mom’s recipe books, pressure cooker, ..). So, the idea is to create the list of items and assign priority to that. Pack items into suitcase accordingly.
   
4. Tie a colorful ribbon on the suitcase handle. It will be much easy to identify your suitcase when it comes out in the baggage claim area.
5. Try to avoid bringing oily stuffs ( hair oil, pickles, home made oily foods…) I had very bad experience and had to throw away an entire suitcase. At U.S. Customs, they pricked a hole into couple of thick plastic bags with pickles and when the baggage reached home, oil was floating upto 2 inched height in the suitcase. All the new dress, spices, and so many things worth Rs 20,000 to $25,000 had to be thrown away.
6. Usually, you will make a huge list, buy all the stuffs and when you pack it and weight, it will come to 30+ kgs, then the game begins to remove items. Priority list will help you to decide which item to remove.
7. If you have 10 pairs of socks, see where you can stuff the socks or use it to wrap masala items or try to insert the socks into shoes, so it will save space.
8. Don’t try to arrange things in suitcase, whatever you arrange, it will be in messed up order when you get it in U.S.
9. Try to get the weigh scale where you can hang the suitcase using a thick rope. Other weigh techniques will not give you accurate weight. Hand the weight scale to your roof using chain/rope and weight the suitcase. I have tried so many ways, but finally ended up following the above way. Its most effective and pretty simple.
10. If in case you got small suitcase and find it hard to fit the stuffs, use a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out, it will shrink and will give you more space.

I hope, above tips will help to pack the suitcase in more effective way. Next question will be, do I have to lock the suitcase?