Travelling with jewellery without losing any of it

Jewellery goes missing on trips in a very predictable way. It is almost never stolen and almost never lost in transit. It is taken off in a hotel bathroom before a shower, put on a shelf, and left there — by someone checking out three hours later with a flight to catch.

So most of this is about habits rather than luggage. But packing matters too, mostly for tangles.

Decide what goes at all

The first decision is the most useful one. Take fewer pieces than you think, and take the ones you would not be devastated to lose.

• Two pairs of earrings — one plain, one for evenings. Earrings change an outfit more than anything else and weigh nothing.
• One chain that works with everything. 45 cm, fine gauge, no pendant.
• Two or three rings you can stack or split.
• One bracelet or cuff.
• That is a complete travel set and it fits in a pouch smaller than a pair of socks.

Steel travels better than anything else, for a reason that has nothing to do with durability: you can wear it in a hotel shower, a pool and the sea without a decision, which means it never comes off, which means it never gets left behind. Salt water does nothing to it.

Packing so nothing tangles

1. 1Chains: thread each one through a drinking straw and fasten the clasp. It sounds like a hack from a magazine and it is genuinely the best method there is — a chain that cannot fold cannot knot.
2. 2Alternative for chains: fasten the clasp, lay the chain flat on a strip of cling film, fold it over and press. Works nearly as well and packs flatter.
3. 3Earrings: push studs through a square of card or a button so the pairs stay together. Loose earring backs in a pouch are how single earrings happen.
4. 4Rings: a small pill organiser, one ring per compartment. Cheap, rigid, and it stops them scratching each other.
5. 5Everything separated. Different metals rubbing together in one pouch for eight hours in a suitcase is how scratches appear on pieces that were never worn.

Airports

• Steel and silver rarely set off a walk-through metal detector at normal jewellery weight. A heavy chain sometimes does.
• Keep everything in one small pouch in your hand luggage. If security wants to see it, one pouch is a ten-second conversation and five scattered items is a five-minute one.
• Do not put jewellery in the tray loose. Trays are where things get left, and the tray is moving away from you while you are still walking through the arch.
• Wearing your pieces through security is fine and is what most people do. Just remember what you are wearing so you can check afterwards.

Umrah and Hajj

A specific case worth its own note, because so many trips from here are pilgrimage. Take the absolute minimum — the crowds around the Haram are dense, tawaf involves a lot of contact, and a dangling earring or a loose bracelet is genuinely at risk of being caught and pulled.

Men in ihram do not wear stitched clothing and generally leave jewellery aside entirely; on the practical side, a ring under ihram is one more thing to keep track of in a state where you have very few pockets. For women, studs rather than drops, a short chain rather than a long one, and nothing you would be upset to lose. Hotel safes near the Haram are small and often occupied — plan to carry rather than to store.

The hotel-room habit

One rule prevents nearly every travel loss: jewellery goes in one place in the room, and that place is never the bathroom.

1. 1Pick the spot on the first night — the pouch, on the bedside table. Not a shelf, not a windowsill, not a glass.
2. 2Everything goes back in the pouch every single time, even for twenty minutes.
3. 3Before checking out, check the bathroom shelf, the bedside drawer and under the pillow. In that order. That is where all of it is.
4. 4Photograph what you brought before you leave home. It makes the check at the end a comparison rather than an effort of memory.
5. 5Put the pouch in the bag before you start packing anything else, not after.

Nobody has ever lost a ring because their luggage was inadequate. They lost it because they put it somewhere sensible at 11pm and were in a taxi by 6am.