'Nesting Luggage' May Be The Best Hack To Increase Your Packing Space

Packing light to avoid the hassle of checking luggage or being forced to pay hefty airline baggage fees is one thing, but trying to make space in your bag for maximum souvenir shopping when you're traveling is a whole other ball game. Sometimes, even with your best packing efforts, your suitcase always seems to be bursting at the seams, leaving zero space for those mid-trip shopping sprees. If you're planning to shop until you drop in hotspots like Tokyo, Milan, or New York, you'd need to do more than just roll your clothes and use the best space-saver bags. Consider upping your packing game and nesting your luggage instead.

You know how you usually stuff your smaller suitcases inside the larger ones to save space at home? That's exactly the idea behind the nesting luggage hack. In a nutshell, it's all about bringing as few belongings as possible (just the bare minimum, really), stashing them inside a small suitcase, and storing that suitcase inside a larger piece of luggage. This way, when you inevitably buy way more than you planned, you'll have plenty of room to bring it all back. No more last-minute panic buying of cheap luggage at your destination, and no hassle of having to lug around multiple suitcases when you're trying to locate your hotel, either. With the nesting hack, you've already increased your packing capacity before you even left home.

It's important to understand that doing the nesting luggage hack means you'll have to sacrifice bringing a ton of clothes on your travels. But that sacrifice could prove to be worth it when you're no longer faced with the dilemma of figuring out how to fit your massive shopping haul in your suitcase. And besides, you can always resort to the 54321 packing rule to create multiple outfits with limited pieces. Who needs to bring 15 pairs of shoes anyway?

A word to the wise: There's a right way to nest suitcases to avoid wrecking them. In a viral video, TikTok user @erica.lee told travelers that the key is to store the smaller luggage upside down. "Don't put the wheel side at the bottom. Switch it so that the wheel is at the top so when you're carrying it around the airport it doesn't damage the wheels inside," she said. "Last time I had the wheels on the bottom and the weight crushed the rubber on the wheels, so I had to get a new suitcase cause I couldn't roll it around."

Oh, and don't forget to double-check if your ticket even allows two pieces of check-in baggage. The nesting hack works best if you're allowed to bring at least two suitcases. Otherwise, you'll just be defeating the purpose and might end up paying a ridiculous fee just to bring the other suitcase back home.

If you don't love the idea of lugging around two full suitcases, but you still want to do a fair bit of shopping on your trip, you may also want to try the duty-free bag trick to make it look like you bought your haul right at the airport. In a TikTok video, @travelingnurse revealed that when flying budget airlines like Spirit and Frontier, which are notoriously strict about baggage, you can sidestep gate agents by asking for a duty-free bag from the stores past security. Then, just shove your extra items in there to avoid paying excess baggage fees. Most of the time, duty-free bags aren't counted as personal items, so you can sneak one on board even if you're already maxed out on personal items.

A user on the sub-Reddit r/Travelhacks backed this up, noting that even bags from airport food purchases also do the trick. "Same thing works for a food bag from any location in the airport, then fill it with your personal items prior to check-in or gate (who knows, those sandwiches could be very heavy)," they wrote. Of course, these are just anecdotes, and we all know how fickle airline rules can be. If you're going to try this hack, be prepared for the possibility of having to leave some stuff behind or bite the bullet and pay for checked baggage.