The Best Way To Pack Liquids In Checked Luggage For Leak-Free Travel

We all know the horror of getting to your hotel room after a long flight, breathing a sigh of relief, putting your checked luggage to one side, unzipping it, and blam — shampoo everywhere. No matter how hard you tighten a cap, no matter if you use tape to keep a lid down, or whatever other workaround you've got, air pressure and temperature differences will do their thing and can cause a container to leak. Thankfully, the solution to your liquid woes is easier than you realize. Better yet, it might already be employed by some savvy travelers: Put your bottles in a bag. 

It's really that simple. Rather than toss your bottles willy-nilly into your checked luggage onto a heap of clothes, put them inside a bag to create another layer of protection between the liquid and your possessions. This way, if any bottles erupt, the eruption will be contained. And when we say "bag," we don't mean a fabric tote bag or a plastic shopping bag. We mean a zippable bag, like the kind you might use for makeup, or a disposable Ziploc bag. Basically, any type of sealable bag. You can also use these for essential carry-on items like medicine or snacks. And, if a bag is transparent and the bottles inside are 3.4 ounces or smaller, you can even transfer it to your carry-on to make the TSA happy (unless they change the rules, of course).

Challenges arise when it comes to bigger bottles in checked bags, however. If you've got big bottles, you have no choice but to scale up the sealable bag size to keep everything contained. Beyond this general tip, there are additional hacks you can use to make sure your belongings stay dry and your bottles don't explode. 

There are a couple of extra tips that we can pass your way to make you less worried that you're going to open your checked luggage to a flood of goo. For starters, squeezing air out of your bottles will help, because the remaining air will expand, anyway, when pressure drops during the flight. This is what causes liquid to seep out of the bottles to begin with. On this note, keeping liquid at 80% or below maximum capacity to help create a vacuum inside your bottle and prevent leaks will also help. 

Beyond that, you can also physically block the liquids from escaping through the cap by wrapping the mouths of the containers in plastic wrap before putting the caps back on. And, if you want to be super safe, you can always go through the lengths of individually bagging each toiletry item. Finally, there's always the brute method of putting your bags of liquid bottles into other, bigger bags. 

Then again, travelers should beware that, no matter what safety precautions they take, there's always a possibility that something will leak. Checked bags get tossed around quite a bit before they make it to baggage claim. This is why travelers should never place anything fragile in a checked bag, and, instead, keep it on their person (or don't bring it at all). Alternatively, you could ditch riskier, bigger bottles for smaller, travel-sized bottles no matter how long your trip might be. That way, you can bring the easily-contained liquids in your checked luggage, or even your carry-on, to tide you over until you buy a bigger bottle upon your arrival —  another way to dive into your destination and enjoy your trip from the get-go.