Your Travel Memorabilia, Organized/Disorganized? How Do You Do It? (rental, hotel)

[tijlover]

I've been procrastinating for too long on organizing my travel memorabilia, dating from the early 70's, some 40 years worth, and I'm now on my 3rd week getting it all together, sorting it out. What a puzzle-solving job!!!

I curse the fact that, my post-1972 photo's, they didn't print dates on the photo's, some of my air travel stubs only had month/day and no year, and some of my passport stamps are illegible or missing.

My photo's are all now neatly organized, in nice vanilla envelopes, my car rental reciepts organized, hotel reciepts still disorganized, and yet I have recollection of a few trips I have no reciepts for, have photo's, but can't attach any dates to them whatsoever. Very frustrating, as I'd love to organize a complete chronology from my first day of traveling.

I see now I've been "lying" all along about certain dates, when I've told people I've been here or there. And there's some reciepts for car rental and air tickets I draw a complete blank! Where did I go in that rental car and why? Not even any photo's! Grrr.... I have an air ticket reciept for Minneapolis to Lousivlle KY in the mid 70's. Have no recollection whatsoever of even going there or talkiing to anyone about it! Pretty spooky!

I'm 61 now, and thank God above, I didn't procrastinate on this project any longer! Another couple weeks I'll have it all together!

[jtur88]

I have none. I don't have a single photo that was taken in any of the 130 countries I've been in. I have a couple of things that were given to me as gifts while traveling.

Someone once gave us one of those disposable cameras, as we were leaving for South America. When we got home, we discovered it in the bottom of our luggage---we had forgotten that we had it, and never unwrapped it.

[toosie]

Ahhhh...a subject close to my heart. I'm a memorabilia collector, too - from trips and just the daily grind. It sounds like yours is more organized and possibly more complete than mine (wow - rental receipts from the 70s!) I too am drawn toward chronology and a more linear approach. Here are some suggestions for how to get started...

Ok so, you have a chronology but with missing pieces. Within that time frame you have various specific trips that you remember and can document, but you also have some that you forget when they happened, or you have documentation but don't remember the trip. Since you have so much to work with, my first suggestion is to create a list of the trips that you're sure about in order. Then create a list of the missing pieces.

Second suggestion is to work on what you're drawn to first. Don't feel like, just because you want the end result to be chronological, that you have to start creating your memory books from the very beginning and work in order from there on out.

Third suggestion is to make a separate book for each trip. Some books might be thin pamphlets that have 5 pages and others thick tomes with 40 pages or more - who knows. You can experiment with style and type of book. This also helps with your chronology problem - work on what you love first and, as you complete your projects, just slip them onto the shelf in the correct order - your time line will build and, in the meantime, you'll have completed projects to look back to for inspiration or to share with others. Plus, you can be more selective that way about what you share and what remains private.

There are a number of ways you could consider keeping your memorabilia together. You might choose to stick with one method or mix it up and choose several. Some different ways include: scrapbooks, travel journals, and memory boxes. Scrapbooks and travel journals can be as elaborate or simple as you like and can include as much or as little journaling/writing as you wish. Some people include their own artwork - like sketches and watercolors - to help document their travels.

My final suggestion (besides to have fun with your projects) is to seek out inspiration. Youtube has how-to videos for all sorts of memory keeping (plus videos of completed projects). Pinterest is a great site to search for examples of completed projects. Just search terms like: scrap book, travel journal, smash book, junque journal, junk journal. I could spend all day looking through other people's projects - it's really engrossing and inspiring.

This is one of my favorite travel journals (there's a brief intro and then it gets to the journal itself): hidilley's Channel - YouTube

[jlawrence01]

We have taken pictures of the memorabilia, made posters out of it, and they hang all over the house.

With the technology today, the posters look like the real item is mounted on the wall.

[tijlover]

Problems I'm running into:

I always trusted my passport stamps to refresh my memory some day. Well, I find that some customs agents stamped over some of them, blotting out others, and why!! There were several empty pages left in those passports! And I've been to Mexico 2X and no Mexican stamps! I'm missing the dates of one of those trips to Mexico City, I believe it was the late 80's. No other reciepts!

Car rental reciepts: I've gone over 50 of them, and with a number of them I don't trust the data. They didn't correctly record the odometer readings going in and out, or they screwed up on the dates. Example: back in the 90's I supposedly rented a car at 8am, here in Las Vegas, returned it the same day at 9pm and logged 496 miles! Another example: I rented a car for 4 days in another city and only logged 101 miles. That can't be!!!

My Chinese and Greek reciepts are all in a foreign language I can't decipher!

What's really surprising, with the car rental reciepts, if it states the type of car I rented, aha! For some reason I remember that car as clear as a bell and then the memories can fall into place!

What's really spooky is I collected brochures from any number of the hotels I stayed in, and even reciepts, and, with some, I draw a complete blank, total!! Can't even remember the room or lobby or nothing!

I'm trying to piece together 2 long trips to Europe in the mid-70's, and thank God I saved the Eurailpass stubs, but much of it is still very fuzzy to me. I went to Berlin on my first trip???? Really???!!!

[intelfan11315]

I have a bag filled with different currencies, i'm not too good at memorabilia or anything like that, but i do take pictures and I am starting a flag collection. I suppose I should be better about little things to buy, I'll try to keep it in mind next time I go somewhere. Another thing I like, that I havent done enough of are magnets of different cities.

[Bluesmama]

Photographs are an obsession with me, and I don't waste time getting them developed and organized into photo albums (along with things that will fit ~ postcards, menus, etc.). I use photo albums that have room to write descriptions in, and arrange them in chronological order. I treat these as projects of precious memories. But I am at the point where I've run out of space in the book shelves for them.

I cannot imagine not having photographs at all.

[chielgirl]

I used to keep stuff.
I've lived all over the world and just quit keeping up.
I'm too busy traveling to worry about organizing too much; I do keep maps and memorabilia from Europe at the moment because I'm probably going to visit the same place again and can take maps and info with me.

[BlueWillowPlate]

Originally Posted by chielgirl

I do keep maps and memorabilia from Europe at the moment because I'm probably going to visit the same place again and can take maps and info with me.

Yes.

What's fun and often helpful is if you (or maybe the person you're borrowing from) have marked the maps from previous trips.

I collect vintage postcards (in a messy box) and little blue and white ceramics (on a kitchen shelf).

I also take photos. Digital now, but I have a collection of albums, too.

I understand that in our zeal to immortalize every single moment, we can sometimes completely miss that moment. I know that the moment still happened without photographic evidence.
So sometimes I just put the camera away.

But I am glad I have an album from my first solo trip to Europe in 1978.

[eureka1]

I just throw the maps and whatever else I decide to keep into a file and file by years. Frankly, most of the stuff I keep I'll probably come to my senses and toss eventually.