“Never pack, do laundry, or drag your bag through the airport again” -- that’s the slogan from the up-and-coming travel services company DUFL. Confused? So were we. DUFL has set out to revolutionize the luggage industry by introducing no bag travel.
Here’s the premise: send your gear and clothes you commonly take on trips to DUFL’s warehouse to be stored and fully insured. Then, when you’re ready to travel, pull up the DUFL app to access your ‘virtual closet.’ Select the items you’d like to take on your trip, and boom -- a pre-packed suitcase is shipped to arrive at your hotel’s lobby before you do.
DUFL claims (probably rightly so) that their packing and shipping service saves customers three to five hours per trip. The stress and energy spent packing, unpacking, doing laundry, and hauling your things through airport terminals really add up, so DUFL is something to genuinely consider.
DUFL knows a thing or two about the travel industry, but if there’s one thing it has mastered, it’s packing. To date, DUFL has packed and shipped about 20,000 orders, so we sat down with them to pick their brains on the matter.
The first thing to keep in mind is that DUFL focuses on white-glove service. They’re adamantly opposed to rolling your clothes, and between each article of clothing, they place a piece of tissue paper to ensure it arrives in good shape. When it comes to folding? The least amount of folds the better. DUFL recommends spreading your shirts and pants out to cover as much surface area as possible, which cuts down on the number of wrinkles.
When it comes to weight, DUFL aligns with most other backpack experts in that the heavier items need to stay towards the bottom. And in general, they recommend layering your belongings according to weight. Heaviest at the bottom, mid-weight in the middle, and the socks and underwear on top.
Something else DUFL experts recommended is separating the clean items from the dirty items. Consider bringing packing cubes which you can use to stash dirty items. This way your clean clothes will feel and smell fresh for the duration of your trip (pro tip: bring some drier sheets and keep them in your bag). In the same sense of keeping things separated, make sure your liquids and toiletries all have their own compartments, or at least are stashed in their own wash bags.
Even though packing has become more of a science than an art over at DUFL, they admitted that they still like packing their own bags when going on vacation. While it can seem like a cut-and-dry formula, there’s a certain romance and excitement in packing for a trip that never really loses its value. Try out DUFL’s service, or just try implementing these packing strategies on your own, and let us know what you think. Safe travels!
Written by: Dillon Dubois