Traveling is incomplete without buying souvenirs. But often, buy souvenirs when traveling makes us impulsive. This can be caused by mood swings, or seeing items that are unique and rarely found. Often souvenirs that are already purchased are only an additional burden for your luggage and useless when you get home. For those planning to buy souvenirs especially when traveling abroad, here are five tips to avoiding a souvenir-buying fail.
1. Better to Buy Food
Almost all people have felt the obligation to bring home a gift for friends, family, or co-workers. So many souvenirs, though, are decorative or ornamental and they will effectively just end up as dust-catchers. As gifts, only buy edible items, head to a supermarket and browse for unfamiliar local candy, chocolate, or other snacks. Local food provides a new experience for your relatives who may have never tasted it. It is certainly more useful, than buying souvenirs that will only be used as a display.
2. Buy Because You Need, Not Want
Keep a list of practical, everyday items you know you need. If you buy something from this list while you are on vacation, it’s a double-whammy of a souvenir win,the item is guaranteed to be useful, and will evoke memories of that destination every time you use it. They will not be something that you’re going to stick on a shelf, but an active part of your life.
3. Avoid Buying Souvenirs at the Airport
Just like the candy and treats dangerously close to the register at the grocery store, airside retail can be a temptation. After all, anxiety about traveling, whether from delays or an unruly child, makes you vulnerable. The airport just becomes a place where you panic and buy stuff you don’t really want to. But before buying, check those Duty Free prices, first. Usually prices that grocery store at the airport has to offer are more expensive.
4. Handmade
Many so-called souvenirs are now cheaply made in factories far from your destination. Opt to have something made by a local artisan, which both guarantees a sense of place and supports the economy in that destination. The rule is very simple, if you can watch it being made, you can buy it.
5. Using Pinterest
Avoid buyer's remorse by taking some snaps of your home and uploading them to Pinterest or another photo hosting service. Add other inspiring design ideas to help round out the mood board. Whenever you’re tempted to snap up a throw cute pillow from a unique boutique on vacation, pause and fire up those images. Does the souvenir match the overall color scheme? How does it fit with your design aesthetic? Ask yourself these questions, and you will avoid buying yet another useless thing.