I got 5 dollar three packs of bags at tuesday morning and one split the first time out. the large one was great for a down jacket (really squished it)..but I still think rolling pants,sweaters and tees and putting them in a 2 gallon ziplock works the best.great for keeping it all getting messed up as we only stay two or three nights per stop.Also at the end you can take out clothing and then use the bags for chesse or other food items to take home..keeps the spills off too

I've commented a lot on these. I have ordered SpaceSaver bags on the internet. They are excellent quality and they don't split (out of 30, I only have one that died).

I ONLY use them for a)Dirty Laundry and b)items that should be compressed--socks, polartec, even pillows.

Yes, the weight can be overwhelming. You can make your carry-on weigh as much as a steamer trunk if you're not careful.

If we are going from hotel to hotel to hotel, most of the clothes/items are segregated into regular plastic bags--two-gallon, gallon and quart--with the zip a little open to let out air when the luggage gets zipped closed. Two reasons:

1) Allows me to dig through my stuff to find anything easily
2) Allows, as previous poster stated, easy security luggage search without destroying entire packing setup.

I use a combination of ordinary ziploc bags and mesh packing cubes. A set of three cubes (two smaller ones and one larger one) together fit perfectly in my 22" carry-on bag. I bought my set from the travel store at ricksteves.com because they're a lot cheaper than those from Eagle Creek.

Regarding the smell in the plastic bags. Take a cotton ball, the one used for cosmetic purposes, and put a drop of parfume on it. Put this ball in a plastic bag. Your clothes will have a pleasant smell during the trip.

Question for kswl - (or anyone else who'd know) Would four light-weight cotton t-shirts fit into a small-size PackMate bag? Or should I purchase the medium-size?

Faina and everyone- I do something similar ( about the smell). I usually put fabric softener sheets into my bags. They come in all range of scents, and none is too overpowering.

As far as Space Bags go, I love them. I don't have "PackMate", but I do have some fabric & mesh storage cubes from LLBean that work well, too. There is a definite advantage to the clear plastic, though!

I bought mine at Target, not Wal-Mart, because I don't shop at Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has racked up huge fines for child labor law violations. It pays poverty-level wages and fails to provide affordable health insurance to more than 600,000 employees. And it has a shameful record of paying women less than men—discriminating against moms. Wal-Mart paid full-time male employees $5,000 more than women on average in 2001. Some 1.6 million women are eligible to join a class-action lawsuit charging Wal-Mart with discrimination. As a traveler and world citizen it matters to me that
Wal-Mart sells products made by young people in other countries who work in horrible conditions over long hours for little money doing dangerous jobs, some of them reported in forced labor. Wal-Mart can afford to do better. Wal-Mart—America's largest private employer—raked in $10 billion in profits last year. CEO Lee Scott landed nearly $23 million in total compensation last year alone.

=D> Thats all fine and good... but until Americans are willing to pay more for their products, stores like Wal Mart will thrive. They have a low bottom line for a reason- they use cheap labor and underpaid employees.

So buy your bags where ever you want. Soon the US will go one of 2 ways:

1) nothing but Wal Marts for shopping

2) only "Made in USA" products, which cost more because we have labor laws.

Wow I'm usually not so political. But yeah, Space Bags are great. >-

A good way to organize your packing is to buy canvas and mesh packing "cubes," which have zippers. It's easy to put all socks together, for instance, and just lift the cube out of the suitcase and into the dresser drawer; ditto for underwear, rolled-up knits, and so on.

I agree with Underhill! You can fit whole crowds of clothes into the cubes, and with the zippers closed, can get plenty of cubes into a bag. And they don't cause wrinkling, as I expected they would.

We picked up a couple of the cheap ones at a discount store and they worked pretty well.

We generally pack pretty light but anticipated needing some extra layers for the outdoors portion of the trip to the Carpathians in Oct/Nov. Managed to flatten a fairly thick pullover hooded fleece and it lined the bottom of the bag with not a lot of room taken up.

Very easy to get the air out of with the one way valve sort of "zipper". Good cheap investment.

What am I doing wrong? I purchased a bag of this nature (forgot the brand... but it was purchased at the Container Store) and it regained all of its air.

Sorry but I can't get past the idea that any of these systems just means more weight in your suitcase, and you can't wear a packing cube! I'd rather simply neatly fold and layer everything into my bag. I don't have so much stuff that it's any worry finding my socks, or whatever problem these cubes supposed solve

Hi, Liquidsunshine, I think you could definitely get three and probably four, depending upon the type of shirt. A girly, thin tee from Abercrombie (thinnest material known to man (literally)) would fit four to a small pack-mate. The thicker, Hanes Beefy-T's or tougher ones from Gap or Old Navy---perhaps not. (I have been shopping for teenagers now for a decade, and it shows). Four of my ladies' size 12 tees from Talbots would not fit in a small bag. :'(