She arrived at the airport and stuffed a bra with clothes. Here’s why

“Maybe I should just wear all my clothes at once,” you ponder, as you weigh up the inconvenience of layering four sweaters on a crowded airplane over the cost of shelling out extra for your overweight bag.

That’s where packing expert Chelsea Dickenson steps in.

“You can absolutely pack smaller than you think, I promise you, you can,” Dickenson tells CNN Travel. “And I’m going to go out there and say that it will make your holiday better.”

Dickenson, a 33-year-old traveler from the UK, founded the website Cheap Holiday Expert to provide tips and tricks for budget-friendly vacations.

As a frequent flyer, Dickenson prides herself on traveling light. And if she ends up short on space, she’s good at coming up with unexpected solutions.

Take, for example, Dickenson’s viral fishing vest packing hack, in which she travels with a multi-pocketed, zip-up vest designed for fishing equipment.

On a recent EasyJet flight to London to Lisbon, Dickenson wore the vest and stuffed the pockets full of miscellaneous items, from a bikini to a laptop.

“With the fishing vest – it’s a jacket. What do you do with your jackets? You put them in a tray. Do you take everything out of your pockets? No, you don’t. Not in a normal jacket – so why would you do it in a fishing vest? It’s completely the same,” says Dickenson, who points out that airport security staff aren’t worried about baggage allowance, they’re just making sure you’re not transporting illegal items or carrying too many liquids.

At the gate, Dickenson and her fishing vest also “sailed through.” On board the plane, she took off the jacket and placed it in one of the overhead bins, before picking it up and putting it on at the other end.

The fishing vest is just one of several packing hacks Dickenson’s shared with her thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram.

On another flight from London to Vienna with Wizz Air, Dickenson replaced the memory foam in her travel neck pillow with seven pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, a pair of leggings and two t-shirts. She put the travel pillow into a security tray “without a hitch” and was waved through at the gate, “no questions asked.”

Maybe the best part, says Dickenson, is the pillow was still super comfortable when she rested her head on it during the flight.

Dickenson’s also tried stuffing a bra with clothes, and then wearing it over her clothes and under her coat.

Dickenson took off bra to go through security to avoid any embarrassment, stuffing it in her bag before putting it on again at the gate.

While Dickenson decided the bra idea was “ridiculous and the pay off isn’t big enough,” she’s a big fan of her fishing vest and travel pillow hacks.

“The neck pillow was a big win, because not only have I done it – I have had loads of messages from people who have done it as well,” says Dickenson, who says she’s even been at an airport and overheard fellow travelers talking about how they were giving it a go.

“Ultimately, it’s all about having a bit of fun with it,” says Dickenson of her packing hacks. “It is kind of my goal to highlight how ridiculous it is that we have to pay so much money if we want to take any baggage away with us – that is how cheap airlines operate these days.”