Whatever you close a chip bag with, it is only holding whatever shape you handed it. Hand it a bad shape and nothing saves you. This is the cheapest improvement available in your kitchen and it takes about six seconds.
Press the air out first
Before you fold anything, lay the bag down and run your hand up it from the bottom toward the opening. You are not trying to crush the chips. You are trying to get the slack out of the bag so there is less air sitting inside it for the rest of the week.
People skip this. It is the single biggest thing on this page.
Flatten the opening before you fold it
A torn bag opening is almost never flat. It has a twist in it from how you opened it, usually a diagonal, and that twist becomes a channel the moment you fold over the top of it.
Pinch the opening along its width and run your fingers across it once so the front and back faces are actually touching each other. If the two faces are not in contact before you fold, folding does not put them in contact. It just folds the gap.
One fold, deep, with a hard crease
Fold about an inch and a half over. Then press the crease properly, with a thumbnail or the edge of your hand, the whole way across.
A chip bag is a laminate and it holds a crease well, which is the one thing about this packaging that is working in your favour. A soft fold springs back. A hard crease stays put and does a surprising amount of the sealing on its own. If you are going to do only one thing differently, do this one.
Two or three shallow folds feel more thorough and are worse. Each extra layer makes the stack thicker and stiffer, and a thicker stack is harder for anything to hold flat. More material in the clamp means less pressure on the part that matters.
Then, and only then, close it
Whatever you are using goes on the crease you just made, centred, with the closure sitting on the fold rather than above it or below it.
With a single point clip, put the jaw dead centre. The gaps will open up on either side regardless, but centred means the two gaps are small rather than one of them being large.
With a SLIDESEAL you slide it on from either end along the crease. The slit is doing the same thing your thumbnail just did, continuously, for the next four days.
The rolled version, for a bag you are not finishing
If the bag is going to sit for more than a day or two, roll it instead. Press the air out, flatten the opening, then roll the top down tightly, three or four turns, until the roll is sitting on the chips. Close it on the roll.
A roll is thicker than a fold, so check that whatever you are using actually closes on it rather than gaping. A roll removes far more air than a fold does, which is why it is worth the fuss on a bag you are rationing.
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