Though some people are content to allow memories to serve as the sole reminder of trips, many more are seduced by the lure of tangible souvenirs to help bring a little feeling of escape back home to everyday life. Too often though, when those souvenirs come home, they languish in drawers or closets, or clutter up shelves with no discernible purpose. Careful forethought however can help you bring home travel reminders that will amp up your decor rather than give you more reasons to Cure!
I travel a lot for work and pleasure, and long ago decided that I needed to focus my souvenir purchases to help create meaningful collections. I started my globetrotting career at age 24 and so my first travel collection was young and quirky- I loved displaying individual pictures, and so on each trip, sought out the most absurdly tacky tourist-oriented picture frame I could find to house my favorite photo from the trip. These frames form a bizarrely enjoyable collection that I confess still makes me laugh; though I no longer add to this collection, it does still make an appearance when I'm living overseas.
The picture frames taught me that if one souvenir is fun, multiples can form a interesting collection. Multiples also help give an item context it might otherwise lack, and can make it easier to work souvenirs into your home decor. Though hauling them on board my flight as carryon was a hassle, the eight Turkish lamps I brought home from Istanbul add a glorious pop of color to my living room windows- a dramatic impact that one or two lamps could never match.
I also have a tendency to collect art when I'm traveling, generally because unframed pictures from street artists are inexpensive and easy to transport. I love collecting art from the places I visit because there is usually a great story involved, and because every time I see the pieces, I recapture a bit of the adventure that led to its purchase. Every piece in the picture above has a wonderful memory attached, making even the least expensive a priceless work of art in my mind.
Textiles are another great focus for a travel collection again because they are generally easy to transport and can be relatively inexpensive. Living in the Middle East gave me the opportunity to build a great collection of carpets, and taught me that even the biggest textile can generally be folded by an expert to fit inside a suitcase! The kimono I brought home from Japan is the big orange focal point of my living room, and I absolutely love it.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what you collect when you are traveling- what matters is that the collection is meaningful to you, and that you have the space and inclination to display it. If you've got a drawer or a box full of travel memorabilia, dig it out and take a look at it with a new eye to see if there is a way to work it into your existing home decor.
Do you already have a travel collection on display in your home? If so, tell us all about it in the comments below.
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We try to buy things with the express idea of where it will be displayed when we get home. Don't get me wrong - if there isn't space right now we'll most likely still buy it because it won't be there the next time we visit.
We also buy a lot of art, though we haven't figured out yet how we can buy larger pieces that are just too big to fit into our luggage (shipping from a foreign country makes me wary because well, how could you make sure they did it? How much effort can you make to call X country and chase after your money?).
In the last few years I've bought something to wear, usually a scarf or earrings. Every time I wear the scarf I bought in Sardinia I remember happy times :)
It's not so unique, but I collect shot glasses and cloth patches. Both are very small and SUPER easy to bring back with you, extremely cheap, and easy to find in the plethora of tacky tourist shops you'll inevitably run across.
For the patches I try to get state and national flags, and I've sewn them all onto a large pillow that sits on my bed! And as for the shot glasses, I try to get skylines or major buildings, so that when I look at them I can see all the locations I visited on that trip. It's ended up being an easy and really interesting collection!
It's OK with me to buy nothing. I have enough stuff already. Being able to purchase most items on the internet cuts the impulse for me. If I do buy something, it's got to be local and useful. Before I had the internet, I bought a lot of yarn while I was in Iceland. I knit it into sweaters and gave them away as gifts.
I'd rather buy nothing and save the money to fund the next trip!
One of my husband's aunts travels a lot and when I went to her house she had a collection of the nativity scene from some of the places to travelled too. Each nativity scene was different and I thought that was really a unique thing to collect while traveling.
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I've been lucky enough to have seen a fair bit of the earth in my lifetime, I've travelled extensively through Europe, etc. and am at the point in my life where I don't need to buy anything now vs. when I started travelling in my 20's I came home with all the typical doodads for tourists. Today, I always pick up a fridge magent of the city I'm in for the bar fridge in the basement, but that's about it, and lots of times I come home with nothing. The experience is what matters.
My boyfriend and I love the fridge magnets, too. Cheap, small, colorful and fun.
I buy a Christmas ornament or something I can turn into an ornament. When I decorate the tree, handling each ornament brings back memories of the trip.
@travelhugger - I clearly remember each Christmas the colorful and vastly different nativity scenes my grandmother had collect from her travels. Each one was so unique and different and brought some welcome color to an otherwise sea of green and red decorations.
great timely article as I just came home from a trip to Norway/Sweden/Denmark. I was very tempted to bring home oodles of stuff but settled on a tea towel with a muffin recipe in swedish and a poster from our visit to the Louisiana museum in Denmark. The rest of the suitcase was stuffed with gifts for the kiddies.