This week’s photo challenge, Repurpose, is inspiring me to share an object I’ve repurposed, and continue to use every day in my travels throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Traveling doesn’t afford the luxury of taking any object in your possession for granted. Each and every piece that you carry with you is evaluated on the basis of size and weight. And if either of those measurements outweighs its worth in any capacity, that object has got to go.
Until I began traveling full-time, I loved “stuff.” While I wasn’t anywhere near the hoarder level of holding on to stuff, indeed, I couldn’t throw away a postcard or a receipt if my life depended on it. My idea of a fun weekend activity was going to a home-decor store and picking up a throw-pillow, or two. Or maybe a doorstop. Or a fruit bowl.
Nowadays, that life couldn’t be more foreign to me. I don’t even own a pillow, let alone a closet. I work as an educational travel coordinator, and I live from hotel room to hotel room, and when I’m lucky, my parent’s spare bedroom. If I want it, I have to lug it. But therein lies the rub: I can’t give up my passion for fashion. So, despite the fact that I live on the road, I continue to have a lot of clothes, shoes and accessories.
My accessories were a mangled mess, tangled and mixed up to the point that I was only wearing three or four pairs of my own earrings. Yet, I continued to lug around the whole collection. What a waste of energy, and potential fashion opportunity.
The solution came not a moment too soon from my pioneering, Pinterest-loving, high school friend Giovanna. Over brunch one Saturday she said, “Peggy! Haven’t you seen my travel board? Pill organizers!”
And the rest, my friends, is history. My ears are no longer neglected when I’m traveling.