Flylite Foldaway Luggage:Apparently 70 per cent of your luggage's weight allowance can be taken up by hard-sided cases. We're talking carry-on bags here. Which have become a bit of carry-on themselves, of course. Lighter. Smaller dimensions. Strict one bag cabin allowance. You'd think the airlines were trying to catch us out.
UK-based Flylite is stepping up to the desk with a tough, but ultra-light offering. Its medium-size Wheeled Cabin Holdall comes in at less than 1.4kgs (about 3lb), yet can pack up to 34 litres and fits comfortably within the size requirements of all the major carriers. Basically, Flylite has replaced all the hard, heavy bits of your bag with slimmer, flexible alternatives. So not only is it lighter, it can fold-up to the size of a laptop bag. Perfect for stashing away when space is a premium. And wouldn’t it have been useful for all those Celtic Tiger shopping trips to NYC where you went with nought but a credit card and a huge empty suitcase and staggered back hauling big time?
The Flylite still wheels smoothly, with handles on all sides for maximum slingability. And it’s no softy either: it comes with a two-year guarantee. Of course, you may have to pack everything into your washbag by then.
- Cost£35 (€40), flylite.uk.com.
Travalo Atomiser: I'm going to have to go all metrosexual here, but who doesn't like to see a couple of those little sampler bottles of your smells of choice being tossed into your bag at the duty free checkout? They're so portably useful. And small.
Travolo’s delivered a DIY version and it works. It’s a pocket-sized (handbag or trouser) atomiser that you can fill yourself in seconds from any bigger spray bottle, with no funnel, no spraying yourself in the eye and no spilling your fav fragrance thanks to its “Genie-S” valve.
Simply pull the cap off your own perfume or aftershave bottle, pump the Travalo a couple of times on the tube and it’s done. You’ve just uploaded 50 sprays in a pinkie-tall 8cm degradable, aluminium tube. Luckily this comes in range of colours, from manly black to girlie pink. Or any other stereotype you like the smell of. And you can even see on the side how much you’re carrying, so you won’t get caught scent-short. It comes with a lifetime guarantee.
- Cost€11, firebox.com.
SteriShoe UV Sanitizer:Germicidal UV light has been part of the sterilising toolkit in hospitals, water treatment plants and other vital infrastructure such as hairdressers for years, but here's the first unit designed for shoes. In particular, it's for preventing athlete's foot and other unpleasantnesses for runners, cyclists, hikers or others who work their footwear hard. (And for diabetes sufferers, for example.)
Each human foot has more than 250,000 sweat glands and sweats up to 0.25 litres a day. Any gym changing room will confirm that. So the sanitiser kills everything that might like to flourish in that welcoming warm, moist environment like funguses, bacteria and other micro-organisms. We hope you’re not reading this over breakfast.
Each SteriShoe comes as a pair. Useful. And they’ve got some smart technology built-in to prevent the UVC light accidentally playing on skin. It only powers up in the dark of your shoe or boot and has a compression sensor to trigger activation.
Remember too, the SteriShoe’s UVs don’t just zap the nasties, of course, they also do for odours, if at a price.
- Cost$129.95 (€93), sterishoe.com.