Our New Favorite Way to Stay Organized on RV Trips

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When your camper flies down the highway at 60 mph, your carefully folded clothes get tossed around in your drawers. After arriving at a new campsite, my husband and I always slowly open cabinets with our hands out to catch the inevitable tumble of supplies out the open doors.

We’ve shared many ways that we stay organized in our RV kitchen and RV bathroom. But we recently found a new way to keep our personal belongings secure that makes packing for a road trip a breeze!

Packing cubes or compression cubes are a go-to for suitcase travelers who want a little extra space in their bags. After living in an RV for the better part of the last ten years, we thought they would be a great solution for limited closet space.

We grabbed compression cubes from Tripped Travel Gear on Amazon to test them on a recent road trip.

Key Takeaways: Packing Cubes Make Closet Organization Easier

While compression cubes are designed for air travelers, we wanted Tripped Travel Gear to keep clothes and toiletries for our family of four organized. We were flying to an RV rental, so we wanted to be able to easily pack everything for the camper and still have it fit in our suitcase.

One single packing cube fit my son’s entire wardrobe! Granted, he’s only two. But it still fit 10 pairs of shorts, 15 shirts, 3 sets of swim shorts and swim shirts, and a reusable swim diaper. There was even still a little room, so I used the compression zipper to make the cube a little smaller for travel.

All of his clothes—and everyone else’s in the family—fit neatly into cubes and since we used colorful packing cubes, we can easily tell whose is whose. Closets and drawers are more organized and packing everything into the RV was a breeze.

What is a compression cube?

Compression cubes or packing cubes are lightweight travel accessories designed to keep your belongings organized and in place during travel. With mesh or breathable fabrics and zippers, air can be pushed out, creating more room for packing.

How I Use Compression Cubes in an RV

I hopped on board the compression cube craze when I flew for an RV road trip in England. I wanted to keep my large suitcase organized for the flight out, but I also knew I needed a way to keep my RV cabinets from overflowing.

Many RVs have shallow cabinets in the bedroom, which means clothes fall out every time we open the cabinet. It drives me crazy! My strategy with the packing cubes was to divide our clothes by person, so I knew which color to grab for whom, and to divide by time of day. For example, tossing all socks, underwear, and pajamas in the same pocket in one compression cube or putting all swimsuits together in a single cube.

I grabbed more than one set of packing cubes for this so that I would have multiple different sizes and colors to choose from.

By far, this one was my favorite set:

What camper doesn’t love the national parks?! Plus the bright colors and patterns make it much easier to stay organized. I use all of the large cubes for packing our clothes and the smallest ones go in our hiking backpack with extra sets of clothes for the kids.

How much clothing will fit in a compression cube?

For our trip, we packed to be traveling for over a month. All of my husband’s clothes fit into two compression cubes, one of which needed to be rolled and compressed almost in half!

And don’t think this is because my husband didn’t pack much. Those cubes really compress better than you think!

That included socks, underwear, shirts, pants—everything except shoes! Most sets of compression cubes come with a shoe bag for transporting dirty shoes. We stuck a few bottles of sunscreen in the shoe bag, knowing we would need the bag for dirty shoes by the end of our trip, but not at the beginning. We stuck four pairs of kid and toddler shoes in that shoe bag when we packed up!

What size compression cubes are best for packing clothes?

I love the largest packing cubes size (14″ x 10″) because it can fit so much inside. This set opens up wide and makes it easy to see everything inside so you can pick an outfit without rummaging through clothes.

Plus it has a dirty clothes compartment for convenience. I used that extra pocket to put my kids’ swimsuits and underwear so they would be easy to find.

The largest size wasn’t too big to fit into an RV cabinet either.

Other sets come with five or more pieces in various shapes and sizes for different uses. The smallest bag is the perfect size for undergarments, swimwear, and pajamas all in one place.

Since packing cubes are such lightweight breathable material, they can adapt to fit into smaller cabinets, like the ones over the bed where we end up storing all of our clothes on road trips.

It is so much easier to pull the entire packing cube out of the cabinet over the bed than it is to rifle through a stack of formerly folded clothes that the roads have tossed around!

Using Packing Cubes for Bathroom Organization

Packing cubes work best for clothing, but there are toiletry bag sets too. My favorite is this one that’s perfect for makeup, soaps, toothbrushes, and more. It has a detachable bag built in for your liquids to go through TSA. Or, if you’re an RVer, it’s perfect for sticking your travel shampoo and conditioner when you use the campground bathroom!

The best part is the hook so I could easily hang this on the back of the bathroom door so everything I needed was at my fingertips. The whole bag folds up and fits in the medicine cabinet too, if we didn’t want it to fall while driving!

Pros and Cons of Packing Cubes

I wanted packing cubes for years before I finally splurged. I always saw ads from YouTube travelers and Instagram influencers pushing me to get my suitcase organized with compression cubes.

But as an RVer, it felt like this was a travel luxury that wasn’t for me.

I am so glad I finally grabbed some of these. As a mom and a full-time traveler, it eliminates that daily annoyance of digging through messy, unfolded piles of clothes. And now that I’ve had them for a while, I use them to keep our daily clothes organized and use the extra cubes to store out-of-season clothing.

Here are the pros and cons of using packing cubes in your RV based on my experience this past year of traveling.

Pros

• The material is lightweight and doesn’t add any weight to my suitcase. I rented RVs in Japan, New Zealand, and Great Britain last year. Not adding any extra weight to my bags was a must!
• Mesh and breathable fabrics mean my clothes don’t have any weird smells even though they are packed up tight. Plus being able to see through the fabric makes it easy to know what clothes are inside.
• Compression cubes are supposed to help your clothes remain wrinkle-free.
• Cubes are made from durable fabric and have multiple sets of zippers. This particular brand feels high-quality and like something that will be reusable for years.
• Packing, transporting, and staying organized in my RV closet and drawers is a million times easier!

Cons

• They are only useful for clothing and toiletries. You could use them for organizing other camping gear, like filling one with small tools or gadgets you want to keep handy. But they are most useful for freeform items like clothing, not organizing kitchen items, where RVers usually need the most organization help.
• Packing cubes aren’t waterproof, so I wouldn’t use these as a laundry bag or beach bag for wet clothes unless you plan to wash the bag too! (You can wash them in the laundry with cold water, but don’t dry them!)
• The biggest con to packing cubes is the price tag. A set can be expensive, but I also know that I will use these for years to come and get my money’s worth out of them! There are smaller sets available that are more affordable.

Our New Favorite Way to Stay Organized on RV Trips—A Summary

Buying packing cubes or compression cubes may be an initial expense. But their function far outweighs the cons. Your clothes will stay organized and mesh bags are great for carrying to the bathhouse or double as a laundry bag if needed.

I know I’ll be using compression cubes for every future trip I take—in the RV and by plane!

Will you pick up a set? Share in the comments what you think!

Keep It Organized:

• 13 Nifty Gadgets You’ll Need for De-Cluttering and Organizing Your Camper
• 27 Ideas for Organizing and Saving Space in an RV Kitchen
• 30+ Adhesive Gadgets to Help You Organize Your RV Without Drilling Holes in the Walls