With many airlines getting very careful about how much you take away with you on holiday then packing you're suitcase becomes a tricky business. I recently traveled on Ryan air that has a difficult 5kg limit on the carry on luggage which caused me to put all the other bits of my laptop in my coat pocket.

The laptop then weighed exactly 5kg but my coat weighed around 8kg extra strange that they should be trying to penalize the business user who is more likely to fly than the one off passenger. Anyway the upshot is you need to carefully consider how to pack both you're main case and laptop or carry on bag.

For you're main bag the following tactics should be used. Take the biggest clothes that are likely to get wrinkled or don't travel well and put them in first and stack them as flatly as possible. After completing this then tackle the next batch by now adding t-shirts shorts and other clothes that are not so prone to creases and put them on top of the pile.

Then take a plastic bag and fill it with socks and under garments that don't matter if they are crushed this becomes the core of your luggage roll. Starting with the top of the pile of clothes wrap each item around the underwear core and make each wrap as tight as possible. If done correctly you should end up with a big hunk of clothes in the center that helps to reduce the creases that you get from folding.

At this point you need to fill the gaps around the outside and you do this by putting in the hard items such as books and mobile phone chargers and shoes as the are fixed items that require to slot in rather than have a requirement to be folded neatly.

When you arrive at your destination unpack everything and hang up the clothes prone to having creases in the bathroom as when you have a shower the steam from the shower helps un crease clothes and thus save on ironing or using the hotels laundry service.

Remember when traveling to do the following make sure you have all you're travel documents easily accessible as you know you will have to hand them over at least twice going through an airport. Think about making sure that you're travelers cheques are separate from your passport and keep the contact numbers for anything like holiday insurance travelers cheques etc in two places as if you have ever needed to call in lost travelers cheques knowing all the right numbers saves a great deal of hassle.

Thinking now about your hand luggage keep up to date with the rules for that country as the recent travel policy on liquids is the one that catches most people out. Remember consider that if the liquid you need to take can it be bought in the departure lounge once you have cleared passport control. If it can then buy it there and save yourself the waste of buying something twice.

Also consider that in this day and age that baggage handling is not brilliant and it can take a while if you're bag does not make it to the plane to catch up with you. This means on your hand luggage take enough clothes to last the first day just in case you end up looking at the baggage carousel and thinking I have not seen my bag yet.

There is nothing worse than losing you're bag but being prepared can help through the first day until it turns up. All the best on traveling and try to make sure you look good at journeys end by packing properly.