Pack a week of shirts and leave the iron at home

Ten days in Milan on hand luggage, six shirts, no hotel iron. It works, and the method is boring enough to explain in four minutes.

Roll, do not fold

A fold puts a single hard crease across the fabric and then stacks weight on it. A roll spreads the curve over the whole garment, so nothing gets a sharp line. Button the shirt to the third button, lay it face down, fold the sleeves back along the body, then roll from the hem up. Six shirts rolled take about the space of four folded, which is the part nobody mentions.

The twenty minute rule

Everything you unpack goes on a hanger before you do anything else. Not after the shower, not after dinner. The fabric recovers while it hangs, and twenty minutes is enough for a rolled shirt to drop flat. If a mark is stubborn, hang it in the bathroom and run the shower hot for five minutes. Steam does the same job as an iron without the board and without the risk of scorching.

Washing in a sink

Cold water, a walnut of shampoo if you have nothing else, three minutes of agitation. Rinse until the water runs clear. The important step is the one people skip: lay the shirt flat on a towel, roll the towel with the shirt inside, and press down hard. That pulls out most of the water without wringing, and wringing is what puts a permanent twist in a sleeve.

Hung over a radiator or a shower rail, a technical shirt washed at nine at night is dry by breakfast. Cotton in the same room is still damp at the collar.

What to actually pack

Two shirts and one polo covers ten days if you wash twice. Three shirts covers four days with no washing at all. Packing six for a week is the habit that fills the case, and it comes from owning shirts that can only be worn once.