Lost tickets, passports, suitcase?

Problem
Where did I put it?

Answer
Photograph items put in the attic. or hidden in suitcases.

You need a file called Where is it? Write in it location of everything from Xmas gifts and Birthday presents, hospital appointments, exam locations, spare keys, wedding invitation reply cards, black plastic bag bin liners, hoover bags, potato peelers, corkscrews.

Suitcase keys and locks should stay on the suitcase.

Email yourself copies of everything: your passport, your tickets, the hotel where you will be staying. Your travel insurance. Your skis. Your goggles.

Stories
What have I lost?:
LOST PASSPORTS (4)
1 A passport left behind on my way to a ferry from the UK to France. I was too busy distracted packing the picnic for the journey to think about the vital passport.
2 The passport lost in the drawer, hidden in a free silver passport cover which was a free gift from a magazine.
3 My passport left behind at security in the USA. I got on the plane and realised I had no passport.
4 My passport stolen in a travel bag.
LIPSTICKS & MEDICINE
4 My lipsticks at security in Heathrow. The medicine in the same see-through bag.
A SWIMMING HAT
5 I was wrongly accused of theft by a French woman in Greece who saw me wearing the same hat as the one she had lost. She grabbed it from me and shirked that it was hers. After her friend pointed out that the hat was lost several days ago, and I had only arrive fifteen minutes ago on a bus, it was clear that I was not the case of her loss. I just happened to have bought the same popular swim hat, but not lost mine. I keep my swim hat in my gym kit bag or the pocket of my wrap around towel dress.
6 SPECTACLES
I can't drive without my spectacles so I must not lose them. If I go into the bathroom and remove them to wash my face or take a shower, I place them on the lid of the toilet. They are visible along against the white surface, easy to check or ask somebody else to look. Next time I go to the bathroom, or anybody else uses the toilet, my glasses will be found.

LOST INFORMATION Forward a copy of your destination address and your insurance company to your travelling companions and the family left at home. That way they can find you, and you can find items by phoning home and asking them to check the location.

Author
Angela Lansbury author of How to Get Out of the Mess You're In.  (Altogether twenty books.) See books on Lulu.com ; Amazon.com

More Posts
See my other posts on

Lost Cars at Airports
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/losing-your-car-at-airport-what-to-do.html

Lost Buttons
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/buttons-for-travelling.html

Lost Passports, A Lost Cruise Ship
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/trackers-to-help-find-your-passport-and.html

Getting lost in a temple in Cambodia
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/how-to-get-lost-and-found-in-cambodian.html

Lost Keys
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/problem-how-do-you-find-your-lost-keys.html

Lost Pens
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/how-to-find-lost-pens.html
Please share posts.

Keeping Travel Records and Brochures in Family History Books and Boxes

Problem
I visited Turkey, years ago, in a circle to Greece, Turkey and Israel, when I was a student. I am pretty sure I went back again. When?

Answer
I should have a list of all my travels at the back of my Family History book on the page which records travels.

Story
I wrote down the years in the margin and filled in the details each year after I got the family history book.

I added the previous years every time I found a photo with a date on the back. Old passports had visa stamps with entry and exit dates. I had other documents: airline tickets, theatre tickets, letters from travel agents, ferry tickets. I found cultural and travel events brochures such as This Week in Malta which told me the date of my trip to that country. Similarly, I have lots of magazines with notices or advertisements for events in the capital city of a country I visited.

A cuttings about the homes of famous people, writers, artists from islands in Greece or Indonesia told me which year I visited the country. All sorts of items, receipts for dresses, or jewellery, ethnic clothes, bookshops, travel guides for the year I visited the country, or camera repair shops, or anything else saved from a trip which showed the year I'd visited the country.

I am constantly amazed at the number of old items with dates which turn up in my cluttered files. I write a poem or phone number on the back of a bus ticket. Years later I look in an old shoe box, decide whether I need my hand-written note, wonder whether to throw it away, then realise that what's on the back is equally interesting because it gives me the date of an event.

At first we all went on holidays together. Now we have different career paths ad opportunities and do a lot of solo trips. So I've started adding the initials of different family members, with a key, to show who went on each trip.


I used to come back from holidays with brochures in my luggage. But luggage got overweight, so I packed the clothes and items I knew were up to the limit on my outward journey, with the heavy brochures in a tote bag or carrier bag.

When I got home I often had two or more bags with brochures, plus maps, tickets and other items in jacket pockets. So did other members of the family.

I gathered everything together in one shoe box. That looked tidier and with a lid items did not spill everywhere. A labelled box was easier to locate than four plastic bags. I often found we had duplicates. The cover of a duplicate brochure could be pasted onto the box lid. A tip I learned from a friend in Washington DC who had moved house many times was to label every box on all sides.

Tips
Shoe Boxes
Keep a Shoe box labelled with the country you visited and the year and dates of the visit.
Photos
Label all photos with place, country, date, person visiting or person photographed.
Languages
Keep pronunciation guides from the airline magazine. If the magazine must be left on the plane or is too bulky, photograph the vital page. Print it and keep it in the country box.
Labels
For a pretty label, you could cut the printed word out of the cover of a brochure. You could also instead of throwing away old items, use them for a mosaic collage to cover your shoe box or travel diary. Either random overlapping pieces glued on, or cut neatly into jig saw pieces. For the jig-saw, take a jig-saw the size of the box cover, or larger if you want larger pieces, or copy a jig-saw design from the internet, print, lay over stiff card and cut pieces from stiff card as templates.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have other blogs on blogger.com on grammar and spelling and public speaking and comic poetry. Please follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. Like my pages and share them.
I am the author of a book called How To Get Out Of The Mess You're In which you can look at and buy on Lulu.com Other books I have written are on Lulu.com and Amazon.com, new and second hand.

Keeping A Lifelong Travel Log

If you have a Baby Book for souvenirs of your baby, you can create a page for your child's or grandchild's travels.

If you want to write your own life story, you can make a log of your own travels.

What if you are trying to create a travel log for yourself or a relative. Where do you start? How do you fill in the blanks?

On the back of this black and white photo my late father had written San Marino.

1 CURENT YEAR Start your log with this year and work backwards.
2 All your computer photos and digital photos are likely to have the year.
3 Label all your holiday photos with the year.
4 Wedding photos are likely to be matched with places and people and dates.
5 Note yourself, your parents, friends, children on the caption of all photos. You will remember your parents and grandparents on your wedding photos. After your parents have died, your grandchildren might not be able to tell who is who. Even yourself and your brothers and sisters as children can be hard to recognise. I can't tell my husband's baby photos from his brother's. Nor my mother-in-law when she was in her twenties from her younger sister.
5 b Add the dates.
5 c Add the places.
6 BIRTHDAYS Note birthdays celebrated home and abroad.
7 LOCATIONS
The location of your home country might not seem worthy of note. However, if your children emigrate overseas, nearby or far away, and marry somebody who lives overseas, the photos of their respective parents and inlaws' homelands will then be different and interesting and remarkable.
8 PASSPORTS
Old passports will show the dates of travel. After my late uncle died, I found his old passports. They confirmed the exact dates he took ships from the UK to the USA and back. Also when/whether he was on a troop ship and when/whether he was working as a musician.

9 If you have the year a photo was taken, and the birthdate of the person in the photo, you can then add the age of the person in the photo. So I know that a photo my father took of Venice, with myself in the foreground, shows me age 12. Some people would need a photo labelled with the exact month. But I know that my mother was age 46. I was born in Spring. My mother was born mid-summer. The holiday photos were probably taken in the school holidays in July-August, after both birthdays.
10 Black and white photos can be coloured with a programme you can find on the internet. You can add skin tones and eye colour from a palette of options. Then trees can be green, skies blue, public buildings and landmarks such as castles and churches and cathedrals can be coloured as they are nowadays or as they were years ago.