Now…That's How You Pack a Boot!
Travelling by car is easy most of the time. Carry some passengers and luggage along with you,
and space suddenly is something that you have to go searching for. A lot of the modern vehicles offer plenty of
ingenious storage space. But what can
you do to enhance the luggage carrying capacity of your vehicle when, all of a
sudden, that cavernous boot is looking very full, and tight for space?
How much storage space you’ll need is something worth
thinking about when purchasing a new car.
Sure… if it’s just you and your other half getting away for the weekend
in a Honda S2000 or BMW Z4, then you’re not going to need the world’s biggest
boot. However, if you are looking to
take your family and enough gear for the long weekend away with you, then these
little roadsters won’t cut the mustard.
Be sure to have, on hand, a vehicle that will provide plenty
of boot space, and/or enough horses under the bonnet to tow a small trailer to
your destination. This is an easy way of
getting all the bodies and their essential baggage to where you need to go. Car specifications will often provide
information on the volume of a cars boot space.
A sedan with at least 500 litres of boot space is starting to become
useful for the small family weekend away.
This, naturally, almost doubles when a station wagon or 4WD is the
alternative.
Obviously, fitting your car with a towbar will give you the
option of taking a small trailer away on holiday. Space grows magnificently; however the fuel
costs for the trip will increase as the trailer adds to the drag on the car’s aerodynamics,
not to mention rolling resistance.
As mentioned above, many of the new vehicles on the market
offer storage space. Depending on the
car, you’ll find it under the boot floor, under the back seats, under the front
seats inside a central console, in a glove box, up in the roof space and a
number of other places, too. The storage
spaces zoned around the passengers are great places for putting eats, drinks,
gloves and hats, games, sun-block, emergency kits and the like.
Here is a useful tip for when the luggage piled up beside
the car looks like a small mountain. When
it’s as big as this, we often wonder how the heck we will get all the stuff
into the car. When I’m really pushed for
space, things like boxes and large square containers are the first to go. It’s much easier to fit the same amount of
stuff into soft bags. These bags with
all the bits and pieces you are taking inside fit snugly up to each other, lessening
the amount of unused air space in your fully loaded boot.
If there is no way round it and you do need to take a large
box, esky or suitcase, pack these at the base of the boot space, leaving the
softer things like blankets, sleeping bags and jackets etc. to sit on top and
around the hard containers to squish down and compact nicely, allowing you to
take more things, if you need to. Try
it – you’ll be surprised.
Level 2, 9 Help Street