Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya. If you are going on vacation, chances are good you will see a gift shop somewhere in your getaway. But, take a minute before you grab that travel trinket from Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama. Watch this video for a better way to remember your holiday destination. Next time you go to Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go and purchase a great souvenir!
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdsouvenir.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet Book and on-line program, and it’s summertime, and that means vacations. Hopefully I’ve caught you before you’ve gone on your vacation, because I want to talk about souvenirs. I’ve seen so many donation piles over the years that are full of cheap T-shirts and trinkets and little animals holding liquor bottles and giant hats and things people are not using. So let’s think about what we’re buying on vacation to show our friends and family that we’re thinking of them or to bring home to make a part of our lives. You know “souvenir” is a French word meaning “to remember,” so I want you to ask yourself, “Is this item still going to bring me pleasure years later and help me remember this trip?”
Here are some guidelines for you about souvenirs. They should be either consumable, practical, or meaningful. So here are some examples. Consumable items could be like this little couple of soaps that my friend brought me from Italy. She was in a region where they make a lot of limoncello liqueur, and these little lemon soaps smell like limoncello and I kind of want to eat them, but they are consumable, at least as soap, and it lets me know that she was thinking of me on the trip. If you’re going to Hawaii, you could buy macadamia nuts for people, or if you’re in another area where they have coffee plantations, you know, get a pound of coffee for people. Consumable gifts are fantastic.
Practical means that you’re going to actually use this and enjoy it in your home. I was going on a trip to Costa Rica, and my salad server fork had just broken and I knew I needed some new ones. So an artisan had carved these and they were beautiful, and now every time I serve salad I remember my Costa Rica trip, and these are special to me versus just something I picked up at a discount store.
Another example of a practical item would be pottery. So I hand carried this home from a trip to Italy where they grow a lot of olives and lemons in the Cinque Terre area. And this is my fruit bowl. I have it out on my counter every single day, and I remember that trip and I remember carrying it home and it’s very special to me.
So think about jewelry as well as a practical item. That’s something you’re going to wear and enjoy and always put on and say, “Oh, I remember when I bought this.” So meaningful is another category, as I mentioned. So jewelry can be meaningful as well. But something that’s just purely decorative can be meaningful, like a piece of art. These are some shells that I collected from a river bottom of a ranch that I’ve been visiting since I was a little girl. I just picked up a bunch of shells there recently and thought, “You know, it’d be really lovely to have these in my bathroom,” and I got this vase from Goodwill and just filled up the vase with the shells that I collected, and now every time I see that I think of this beautiful place that I visited so many times.
So think about whether your items are consumable, practical, or meaningful as you’re out there having a great time and deciding what needs to cross the threshold of your home.
If you would like some help with your organizing of your home projects, we do this every single day. We’ve been around almost 10 years now at clutterdiet.com. We provide virtual consulting at an affordable price for anyone. So check us out at https://www.clutterdiet.com/learnmore.
See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
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