Tip for the World Traveler

If you’re like me, when you are visiting somewhere new you don’t want end up buying a souvenir for every person you have ever met. Somehow, my wife always ends up doing this. However, most of these souvenirs end up as knickknacks around the house and eventually we realize they don’t go with the décor.

We have tried to solve this problem by limiting our souvenirs to one item. This is almost impossible to sum up your travels into one item, especially seeing that it could be any kind of item: pottery, painting, toothbrush holder, t-shirts. It’s hard to keep with a theme and most people find the spoons, bells, and shot glasses a little passé. If you’re still down with those items, you have already solved this problem, but for the rest of us, I think Ikea has the solution.

In a recent wandering with my family, we noticed a huge map of the World. I have heard of this before, when you put pins into every place you have traveled (of course you would need to travel to the top two corners first!) However, I always felt this was boring. Ikea had their map against a magnetic board and inserted different items at each location: magnets, notes, currency, ticket stubs, etc. I thought this was perfect. By using the magnet board your limiting yourself to small items, but can still be unique towards each individual trip.

I’m hoping to convert us to this magnetic memory board rather than our hoarding of the memories. If I’m lucky, I’ll even convert us just to magnets from each country!