Creative Easy Ways to Remember Your Travels

The saying ‘Home Sweet Home’ was invented in 1854 by a Norwegian sea captain who loved to get back to his own bed. Not really. I made that up. But the fact is we are all that Norwegian sea captain. We all love to travel. And we love to return home to the sight of our own pillow. All we need is a bridge between those two loves, and that’s where creative ways to remember your travels come in…

Canvas prints 

Every trip is full of memories. Usually, you’ll come back with a handful of superb photos that stand out. And of these, you might truly treasure one or two images snapped just at the right moment – why not turn them into canvas prints (see hello canvas for inspiration). The thing with canvas prints is that you can easily bring the decor to life throughout your home with a mixture of well-placed large and small prints. Hallways can be made one thousand percent more interesting. Dining rooms can be revived from their cold painted walls and the echoing clink of knives and forks. Even guest bathrooms and bedrooms can be transformed. 

Travel map posters with push pins

You may be familiar with the “scratch off” style travel map posters that have become popular in recent years (it seems like everybody has one hanging in their hallway). The only problem with this style of map is that when you have traveled to a sufficient number of countries, or certainly if you have traveled to a large country or a many countries in one area, the scratch off silver parts start to become balanced out by the usually gold parts of the map that are revealed beneath. In the end, and if you have seen much of Europe, some of Africa, and perhaps America and Australia to boot, your map loses the overbalanced sense of lots of space left to scratch off, and you just have a 50/50 looking gold and silver map. Pointless. 

Instead, go for a push pin map. Not only does this look way more exciting, you can single out the individual towns and cities. Invest in some quality pins and a quality map to avoid your wall looking like a wall in a school corridor.

Write a travel journal

You may not be much of a storyteller. That’s fine. Your handwriting might look like you’re practicing to write with your toes. That’s OK, too. Your spelling and grammar could even be so poor that readers might think you are not writing in your first language. It’s all OK. The important thing is that journaling is specific to you. You could stick down a ticket or receipt with a few words of explanation. You could draw some architecture you liked. You could use your travel journal as a very basic bullet pointed day to day itinerary if you want. What you will end up with is a book that you may not think has any worth now, but in twenty years will be of tremendous value to you.