BootsnAll Travel Community

I generally think of myself as a fairly organized person:

I clip coupons and keep them in an organizer. When they expire, I throw them away.

I file and organize my monthly bills and always pay them well before their due date.

I change the filters on my air conditioner on a schedule.

You get the idea.

Today, however, as I was extracting a few dollars from my wallet to pay for pastries and coffee, I dropped it on to the floor. It promptly exploded into a ticker tape parade of a million pieces of paper -- all of which scattered in front of the bakery counter. Yeah, that was awesome.

What made it more awesome, though, was the fact that 99% of the things that spilled out of my over-filled George Costanza-style wallet were travel related tidbits.

A small sampling:

Plastic hotel room keys
Bus transfers from San Francisco
Chicago Public Transit Tickets
Paris Metro Tickets
Business Cards from my favorite fish and chips joint in Canada
15 different fortunes from cookies
Canadian and Mexican paper money, along with some Euros
Ticket stubs from the Drive Thru Tree in California
Free passes to a club in Vegas
Receipts from various campgrounds in at least eight different states

Etc.

Before anyone calls Oprah for some sort of Hoarder Intervention, I was quite surprised to see all of this come from a rather compact space. Apparently, there is a small black hole in this wallet.

Anyway -- here is where you come in:

What do you do with these things? Certainly I cannot be the only one who keeps things like this.

Question:
What do you do with little travel mementos?

Choices:
I throw them away. Only overly sentimental crazies keep old bus tickets.
I keep these little kinds of things and handily make them into something crafty.
Don't remind me of my own disturbingly disorganized wallet.
I toss them in a box, thinking I might do something with them one day.
I'm calling Oprah, you need some help.

 

Ha! Yes, mine are in a box waiting. Not every ticket, but the cute-looking ones. Plus a few phone cards.

About a year ago though, I got this idea: laminate the stuff (or something) so you have sets of placemats. People who come over kind of have to look at it if you serve them food, but you can also put them away easily.

I haven't done that yet though.

Everything gets taped into my journal, so my odds and ends provide a nice visual respite from my terrible handwriting and I'm not stuck with bazillions more scraps of paper in my life.

I tend to keep things in my Wallet as well so you're not alone!! LoL.

I think I've been quite disciplined of late though, the only thing I have in there is my ticket from the Rodin Museum in Paris because I like the picture on it.

You're a step above me for keeping them all together in your wallet. All those things get stuck random places in my backpack while I travel (I try to keep them in my journal but never bring tape). When I come home they all escape to random places in my house. While retrieving a lost cat toy the other day I found a collection of public transport tickets from no less that 3 different trips. Apparently, they'd formed a colony behind my cupboard.

It's atrocious. My goal, however, would be to keep them all pasted into my journal. Really, I just wanna be like cracker.

There's a travel folder in my filing cabinet that includes a lot of things like that, along with a few brochures, some pocket maps, etc.

I look through them now and again, and it makes me happy.

I've got a few things in a photo album, like old bank notes (Irish punts, DDR marks, etc.) and concert tickets, a bunch of stuff from long ago trips in a box in the basement, and some more recent bits in envelopes in my desk.

I write up a journal for each trip and glue the tickets, etc. into the appropriate pages.

I have been accused of having a "Costanza wallet" on many different occasions.

As for the mini-mementos, I don't save them in a box, but rather a bag...a Radio Shack bag to be specific. It's full of the most random crap that I collected from Europe.

I'm also a matchbook collector. If I go to a really nice restaurant, hotel, bar, or club--or just a place that made a great impression--I take a matchbook. At home I have a proud display of 10 or so, with 20 more sitting in a drawer. Right now I'm featuring matchbooks from various hotels along the Vegas strip (as I'm sure all you really care ).

I throw them away. Some maps and brochures I keep, anything smaller goes in the bin.

I glue or tape things like that into a scrapbook or a journal.

I toss almost everything - I can't stand paper clutter in general though, so I might just be weird like that.

quote:

Right now I'm featuring matchbooks from various hotels along the Vegas strip (as I'm sure all you really care)

Of course we do, and greatly.

The question is, though, do you alert people to the different themes, perhaps via postcard inviting them to a gallery-like opening? Are they time limited?

I eat them.

quote:

Originally posted by AmazingJulesVerne:

quote:

Right now I'm featuring matchbooks from various hotels along the Vegas strip (as I'm sure all you really care)

Of course we do, and greatly.

The question is, though, do you alert people to the different themes, perhaps via postcard inviting them to a gallery-like opening? Are they time limited?

I try to rotate them bi-monthly. When it's time for a new set I send out a special e-Vite to interested clients, friends, and family. It's a big celebration complete with the most expensive Champaign, a large cake in the shape of a matchbook, and a set by the world's leading Matchbox 20 cover band, Matchbox 21. What will next month’s theme be…?