Tired of madly stuffing your necessities into a plastic bag for air travel? Flying is stressful enough without having to shove your toiletries into a too small plastic bag and decanting your fluids into miniature bottles. Plus we all like to have some things in our purses or pockets, others in the tote and some in the carry-on suitcase but centralizing them in a baggie makes us so inefficient.
So what to do? How do we fool the airport security run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and keep our liquids organized the way we like? How do we smuggle toothpaste onto planes, in verboten FULL-SIZED TUBES? Keep reading for my tips on smuggling toothpaste onto planes and smuggling liquids, too..
The answer is a Decoy Baggie. It’s quite easy to bring aboard any liquid or full tubes of toothpaste when one uses the Decoy Baggie program. The Decoy Baggie contains a few items not crucial to you and distracts attention from your real liquids. How to make one? Take the correct one quart zip lock bag and load it with a few things like a hotel hand lotion, your sunscreen, maybe some samples you’ve received. Your real toiletries you just leave wherever you want them, in makeup pouch, whatever waterproof bag you use in your suitcase or any tote you have along. The full-sized tube of toothpaste or some obviously too large item should be hidden in a packed shoe. Trust me, they will never notice.
When you prepare to send your things through the x-ray machine, ostentatiously pull out your Decoy Baggie and place it prominently in the bin that must go through before your suitcase. It’s always good to dumbly query, “Do you need my baggie out?” This alerts the Transportation Security Officer (TSO) that you are compliant and discourages them from scrutinizing you. The TSO running the scanner is typically transfixed by the baggie and doesn’t even look at the other possible liquids in your purse and suitcase, assuming you are a good little boy or girl because you obediently presented a baggie. Feel free to shove small liquid items in your pockets as they never find those, either. Even if you get wanded, you just move that naughty tube of hand cream to the Decoy Baggie.
I have used this method throughout the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia (where they only screen liquids for departure to the USA!) with complete success. So don’t be afraid to exercise your right to travel freely in your own country. Carry on what you like, fool the TSA with a few throwaways items in your Decoy Baggie and chuckle to yourself as you waltz through airport “security.”