The Simple Button Hack For Easily Packing Your Jewelry

Packing for a trip can be really stressful, no matter what ends up in your suitcase. Will anything break? Do I have the right clothing for the weather? Perhaps I should pack just one more book. One of the biggest stressors in making sure things arrive at your destination and home again in one piece involves jewelry. Tiny pieces of body decoration can range from the super inexpensive plastic kind to priceless heirlooms. While you probably shouldn't travel with the latter, perhaps you have a wedding or a major event, and you just can't bear to leave it behind. 

No matter what jewelry you pack, there is always a chance that it can get lost in your luggage or left behind at the hotel. However, a few hacks can make that less likely, especially when dealing with tiny items like earrings and their backings. The hack involves nothing more expensive than the simple button.

This incredibly simple hack for traveling with earrings is genius. Here's how it works. To keep a pair of earrings together, put each one through a hole in the same button and set the backing behind it. This hack works for stud-style earrings and long, dangling ones (which you can clip around the button). Then, place these pairs of earrings on a button in a Ziploc bag or a jewelry case. Jewelry cases are great on their own, but having the root through one to find the mate to the earring you want to wear can be annoying, and this fixes that right up. Plus, if you forget and your hotel has a sewing kit, you might just be able to find one. It's a wonderful hack because it's so cheap, and you can easily find buttons in pretty much any size and width between the holes. 

Other options include using a slim foam pad to put them through or even placing ones without backs into a piece of cork. If you have small earrings, do the button trick, then put each pair inside a pill case to keep them from flying around your suitcase. 

Now that your earrings are secure, another hack is worth trying. If you're worried about having your necklaces tangled in your bag, slide each through a straw and secure the clasp. You can cut the straw for smaller ones or even do the same with bracelets. Then you can put them inside a jewelry roll, in a small tackle box if you're bringing a lot, roll them in a travel towel, or even put them through a carabiner clip. 

If you decide to go with the button route (and straws), you can put them in a Ziploc, as we mentioned, but that baggie should be hidden if possible, just in case. You can set the whole thing inside a sock to disguise it, but make sure you keep track of which sock it's in so it doesn't go through the laundry. Having a specific color sock set for jewelry is a good idea. 

Finally, don't forget that if you plan on taking jewelry on your trip, it should be packed in your carry-on bag, which will screen you privately if you want to keep what you have under wraps.