Vacuum Bags, Where Have You Been All My Life?!

One of the challenges we often face living in a small flat is making the most of the space we have.  We had originally planned to be out of this flat years ago but there was no knowing what was going to happen with the housing market.  We’ve outgrown this place, but we are stuck for the moment so some sacrifices have had to be made, and I’ve had to try to put a little more imagination into storage and the use of the space here.

A few weeks ago I was at Xenos and saw these bags that are like giant ziploc bags.  You put loads of stuff in them and suck the air out with the vacuum and it’s supposed to be great for saving space.  I decided I’d think about it and maybe go back for them a little later, when I was making the winter / summer clothes switch.

You see, I have enough storage in our bedroom for our summer clothes, or our winter clothes, but not both.  Twice a year I basically gut our cupboards and reorganize them for the coming season. It gets annoying but that’s just how it is.  The problem has always been what to do with the things we aren’t using.  In the past I’ve even resorted to putting the clothes in marked garbage bags in our storage room in the basement but that was never really ideal and I have a sneaky suspicion that 1-2 bags may have gotten thrown out by mistake.

So I decided to go back and pick a few of those vacuum bags up and see if they lived up to all the hype.

THEY SO DID!  It was shocking, like… TRULY shocking!  I took photos.

The above photo is the largest sized bag with a 180×200 duvet, a 220×240 duvet and four feather pillows.  Look at what that sucker turned them into…

BAM!!  Duvet pillow pancake!!

Of course I was loving this and now want to squish everything in the house.  I mean, I’m pretty sure my husband would even fit into the extra large bag.

I bought a package of two slightly smaller bags as well.

This is one of them holding my two sets of winter fleece sheets.  I love these sheets, it’s like sleeping in a cloud!  The only problem is that they take up an obscene amount of space.  Space I do not have.

Vacuum bag to the rescue!  After squishing this down I was able to fit this bag of sheets, plus three spare blankets into a drawer that I used to be lucky if I could stuff one set of the fleece sheets into.  Niiiice.

This bag was stuffed to the gills. It had all the winter sweaters we were putting away for the winter, thick winter socks, winter jackets, a spare blanket, and all our hats, gloves and scarves.

That one didn’t go quite as flat but man oh man it was as hard as a rock and weighed a ton!  It lives under our sofa now, together with the duvet bag, and you’d never even know it was there.

I’m seriously on the lookout for other things I can space-save these bags.

One thing I do know is that I’m definitely using them to help with packing when I return from my next trip to Canada. WHY did I not think of that before?!

So if you are like me and don’t have as much space as you’d like, and if you live in the Netherlands my guess is you probably are, you must get your ass to Xenos (or Blokker, Kijkshop or any of the other regulars) and pick yourself up some of these bags.

OH! I just realized, they’d be great for packing our camping stuff too. See, the ideas never stop!

I also just realized that it’s possible I’m entirely too excited about a plastic bag, but whatevs.