This product made moving a ton of stuff into tiny dorm room possible

I know right now many parents are huddled in the fetal position, clutching a beach towel to capture their tears because a Kleenex stopped being effective in sopping up the remnants of their hysterical crying jags 48 hours ago. All of this emotional frenzy is due to the fact that a child has left for college.

I’m writing this two days before my husband and I move our daughter to California for school so, as of right now, I’m overly mired in to-do lists to have time for any emotion other than a euphoric glee for the Ziploc Space Bags.

Right now, the Ziploc Space Bag is about the only thing in my life that is making sense. My daughter seems to think that she can bring every article of clothing she owns to California. When I try to use cold, hard logic to explain that a dorm room shared with two other girls is going to be extremely space challenged, she just tunes me out.

When I also point out that she is going in be in Southern California where the climate is “endless summer” therefore negating the need for her voluminous fleeced jacket collection she gets a crazed look in her eyes. Ditto for when I, ever so gently, suggested she probably would need to pare down her collection of T-shirts.

Quick sidebar on that: When did we start giving kids T-shirts for every single thing they did? At last count, my daughter had more than 75 T-shirts for everything from dance recitals to specific school spirit days. There would be a whole lot more, but I secretly donate some of her T-shirts to Goodwill every couple of months.

All of this refusal to adjust to the spatial challenges of dorm life has made me resort to my go-to parenting style: sighing and problem solving. This is why the Ziploc Space Bag has become my knight in shining armor. It has rescued me.

Using a Space Bag is almost a religious experience because it makes you believe in miracles. I took a XL twin down comforter, a mattress pad and a goose down mattress topper that when folded towered 3 feet high and shrunk those bad boys by what seems like 98 percent.

It’s the act of shrinking that’s the powerful moment. Once you shove everything in the bag, hook up your vacuum to the Ziploc nozzle and then experience the visual thrill of everything becoming smaller and smaller it’s, indeed, a moment of shock, awe and wonder.

I’ve fallen so in love with the bags that I think I’m frightening people because I’m now witnessing to strangers about the power of the Ziploc. When I was at Lowe’s over the weekend to buy a new hose, I found myself being pulled by a mysterious force over to the storage bags.

I, of course, bought some more and as I was checking out I started proselytizing to everyone waiting in line about the glory and the goodness of the Space Bag. Two people changed lines, and it was to an even longer one, so I’m almost certain I scared them. Then, when no one would make eye contact with me, I knew that I might have been overly zealous.

I have zero time to worry about freaking out Lowe’s customer. Because now my daughter thinks she needs to bring not one, but two, ski jackets. Never mind that one of the jackets has a hole in it. I finally decided I’m going to need more than the power of Space Bags. It’s also going to take prayers.

This story was originally published August 23, 2018 at 3:27 PM with the headline "This product made moving a ton of stuff into tiny dorm room possible."