Do You Hoard Travel Amenities?

Do you hoard travel amenities?  I apparently do.

It’s not intentional – in fact, I’ve been making a conscious effort to NOT bring things home with me unless I am sure I will use them (or if they are unused, if it would make a cool blog giveaway).

I donated 15 pairs of airline pajamas to a local shelter earlier this year.  I’ve had a couple giveaways for cool vintage amenity kits that I’ve unearthed.

And yet the buggers keep sneaking into my house.  It might be that I grab toothpaste and lotion every time I am walking out of a room that has them (always useful, right?). And I’m probably not assisted in my efforts by my subscriptions to both Birchbox and Ipsy meaning ten little samples magically appear each month!

I decided to clean out a cabinet/drawer set at the far end of my master bathroom today and in emptied out all of this.

That’s hard core.  It also means I probably have a bit too much storage space!

Some of it was useful.  I keep meaning to pick up travel hairspray but it turns out I have six cans already.

Some of it was excessive.  It’s safe to say I have at least a two year supply of toothpaste in the form of sample sized tubes.  (Except I still prefer my metal tubes of Elgydium from France!)

Some of it was scary.  Remember when the W carried Aveda?  Yep… I had a lot of that.

Some of it was just strange.  Lots of things I’d brought back from Japan that I was not sure exactly what the item was.

Some of it was gross.  Nothing like a bottle of shampoo that exploded and then hardened.  Or dried out lip balm.

Some of it was gone.  Quite a few bottles that once contained water-based products were now just empty.

In the end, I spent a couple of hours sorting things out, tossing old or half-used product, picking out a small selection of things to keep for future use (for me or my guests), and preparing a huge bag to be donated to local shelter projects.

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Written by Jennifer Moody of The Jetsetter’s Homestead. Jennifer is a long-time frequent traveler who logs over 100,000 miles in the sky each year, spending on average over 200 days a year on the road. In addition, Jennifer embraces the opportunity to maximize her vacation time, planning leisure trips that have taken her to over 50 countries and 47 U.S. states! Her blog, The Jetsetter’s Homestead, tackles the joys and challenges of home/work/life balance while traveling the globe for business and leisure.