I recently decided that since I’m now a stay-at-home mom, I should have closets that reflect my new station in life. I thought those space saver vacuum bags looked like a fairly affordable way to achieve this. The following is my personal experience.
Step 1: Choose the correct size for the items you wish to store.
Not knowing the difference in size between “Medium” and “jumbo” I opted for the variety pack. I say this to make myself sound like an intelligent shopper, in reality that is just what they happened to have at Sam’s club.
Hmm, OK. Well, the sizes appear to be “bikini undies”, “sheets”, “you might fit a twin size comforter in here” and “your entire mattress, perhaps a child”. I’m trying to store a queen size comforter ,so I’ll try “large.”
Step 2: Fold item and insert into bag
Sounds simple enough. Folded. Uh, yeah, it won’t go in at that angle. Refold. So, maybe if I use my hands to pull the comforter, my teeth to pull the bag and my boobs to push the whole thing together, I can do this.
Step 3: Zip closed.
It’s like a double Ziploc bag with one of those plastic zippy handle things. Cool. I’ll just slide this little piece of…hmm, doesn’t really want to move…..try again with a little umpf and WEEE the thing came right off. Install zipper thing again, zip closed with caution, awesome. Closed. Wait, no it’s not, it only closed one line of zipper. What the heck is this useless piece of plastic for???
Step 4: Vacuum huge item into a fraction of it’s size so it lays nice and flat.
I don’t know about the rest of the vacuums out there, but my hose doesn’t attach over the bag port, so I precariously hold it over the special valve and turn it on. Woo hoo! It’s compressing…..sort of…..maybe I should push. Yeah, that works, really lean into it. Hold the hose there until it quits compressing and reallyquickclosethevalvelid like you did when you would blow up a beach ball. Even though you don’t have to.
Uh, Houston, we appear to have a problem. The picture on the bag shows a flat pancake looking final product. This kind of looks like a gigantic vacuum pack of jerky- all lumpy and uneven with empty bag all around. Oh well, lets go with it, because there is no way in HELL I’m going through steps 2-4 again with a flatter fold.
Step 5: Store conveniently.
Well, crap, as it turns out, this little bag is kind of heavy. After stuffing several bags of sheets and comforters into one Rubbermaid tote, I need to haul this heavy thing up to the top shelf in my closet. Way to go, genius. Perhaps you should have paid attention in physics and you’d have planned for this. Wait-I didn’t take physics. I blame the public school.
1,2,3 and THROW tote up. Ow. Wasn’t a throw so much as goofy, flailing, hail Mary chuck. But it’s there. Whew! This organization stuff isn’t for the weak.