Every now and then you see a product and you think, “Hmm, that might work.” Often it doesn’t, but sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised. A few weeks ago, before our Sonoma trip, we came across eBags on Amazon and thought we’d give them a try just based on the simple concept of organizing your suitcase.
All travelers know the problem: you arrive at a location and you need to change shirts or shoes or otherwise need just a single item out of your suitcase that happens to be packed at the bottom, beneath everything else. The option is to either unpack everything and then carefully repack it, or (as more typically happens) wind up with a suitcase that is in shambles with everything getting progressively wrinkled as the trip progresses, especially if you’re on a multi-stop tour.
The idea of eBags is pretty simple: small, lightweight cube-shaped zippered bags of nylon and mesh that you use to organize your suitcase so that you can extract the cubes instead of individual pieces. Before we left for Sonoma we bought a couple of sets of these, each with 3 different sizes and each in different colors so it would be easy to distinguish our cubes apart. The short version of our review is simply that I don’t think we’ll travel without these nifty little cubes anymore, except perhaps if it’s for a single overnight trip.
The cubes definitely made it easy to unpack single items at a time without leaving your packing in a mess. I (Chuck) packed all my jeans and shorts in the big cube, my t-shirts in the medium bag, and my underwear in the small bag. That only left my shoes, a few loose socks (which I used to tuck into corners here and there), and my toiletries. Lori packed similarly. Upon arrival, we just laid our cubes out and pulled the clothes we needed from each without messing up the others or whatever was left in our suitcase. It was as easy and useful as we had hoped.
If you’re looking for a birthday or Christmas gift for the traveler in your life, we’re certain they’ll love these eBags.
