15 Wanderful Ways to Track Your Travels

15 Wanderful Ways to Track Your Travels

When we travel, we see plenty of things we can’t buy back home, but we often have to remind ourselves that space at home is limited and valuable! We try to stay minimal and try our best not to hoard or become collectors of meaningless things. I’ve been reading the widely popular, Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and I can’t help but think all these things below would be things that bring us joy and speak to our hearts as travelers (maybe me more than Jacob). ;)

We love tracking our travels! Would it be bad to become a collector of maps and globes?

Photo courtesy of Uncommongoods

15 WANDERFUL WAYS TO TRACK YOUR TRAVELS

1. Magnetic Wall Map

This is the one we used to mark our travels, and here’s a photo of our wall back in our Atlanta home.

3. World Map Wall Decal

I want all these maps. This is another one that’s slightly larger and priced cheaper on amazon, but we like to support our etsy artisans too.

4. Composable Italian Charm Bracelet

I’ve never been a fan of charm bracelets until we saw these italian charm bracelets with flags on our most recent contiki trip to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. The tour manager and one of our fellow travelers had them on, and they really caught our eye. One of them who had been to 44 countries wore two. You basically add flags or other charms to help keep track of all the countries you’ve been. It’s a great conversation starter too!

5. Cork Globe

We saw this on our most recent trip to Cincinnati, and though the price tag is higher than I expected, I thought it made a really beautiful addition to a traveler’s home.

6. Scratch Globe

Similar to the scratch map, you can get a 3-dimentional version of it with a scratch globe!

Cross stitching / embroidery looks like it could be a fun new hobby.

8. DIY Photo Collage Map

As nice as it is to have a bunch of phone and Instagram photos, there’s still something magical about printed photos. It’s even better if you can create a collage map out of them.

9. World Map Tattoo

If you’re a true traveler, then maybe inking it on your body is the best way to go. After outlining the world, you can fill in each country as you visit them. Can you imagine how expensive it would be to get them all done separately?

Photo courtesy of Denise Krebs (creative commons)

10. Travel Journals

We use a combination of moleskines and field notes (waterproof!) all the time but didn’t realize that moleskine had come out with a specific travel journal. Anyone use this one yet? We also love the scratch-off maps, but if you’re not wanting to clutter up your home with more decor, there’s this combo of small interactive scratch maps plus a journal with checklists to help you plan your trips. We actually have the Adventure Journal, but it’s not as fun scratching off tiny numbers vs the whole map.

11. Send Yourself a Postcard

You can write about your favorite memories from the trip or something you learned. In addition to the postcard, you’ll get a local stamp and it’ll be dated for you.

Photo courtesy of KLMircea (creative commons)

12. Coffee Table Book

If you’re anything like us, then you collect photos when you travel. We seriously plan our days around where to be during sunset. A great way to show off all those photos is putting it into a coffee table book. This is a great company that we’ve printed from. They give you tons of options at a reasonable price. BONUS: Right now there is a deal where you can get $5 off a purchase of $20+ with code GIVE5 (expires 11/30/15).

13. Foreign Currency

In case you want something really simple, keep some local currency when you head home. You can do something fun like keeping what $1 equals in each country then displaying them at home with a fun DIY project.

Photo courtesy of Philip Brewer (creative commons)

14. Patches

This is a great way to grab a keepsake and showcase it on your favorite travel backpack or bag. Sometimes if we don’t have time to souvenir shop or don’t find a patch we like in the country, we cheat and get these flag patches. We’ve been collecting them for a few years, but we still haven’t decided which bag to attach them to. It’s so hard to commit!

15. Start a Blog

As much as we love sharing our adventures and stories with you, we hope it encourages you to go explore as well whether it be abroad or in your hometown. We initially started this blog as a personal journal to share our adventures with our friends and family back in Atlanta. Fast forward to today, we’re so happy to have grown our community to include you too! Here are some posts to our most memorable trips:

How many world maps do you think are too many for one house? What are some ways you’ve been keeping track of your travels? Can you think of any other creative ideas for tracking your travels? Let us know in the comments below!

Original article and pictures take localadventurer.com site