As someone who was travelling outside of England for the vast majority of 2025 (243 days to be exact), I think I have some of a leg to stand on when it comes to unpacking after a trip. I know for most people unpacking after a trip typically doesn’t mean unpacking months of their lives, but I have found that thinking over the memories made on a trip whilst unpacking makes me, at least, feel much more ready to move on.
And, on that note, welcome to why I think unpacking and scrapbooking go so well together and, no, it’s not because I just decided they should. Basically, after all of my trips since I was 16 and went to Borneo as a volunteer, I have found coming home to be really really hard because nothing changes. You go on this crazy, life-changing, perspective-altering experience and you come back to a town where nothing has changed and back to people who are still the same as when you left them. No one can fully comprehend the vastness of the experiences you’ve experienced and the depth of the change those experiences have left you with. Instead, you’re left in this weird place where you don’t want to conform back to your life before but feel like you have to because nothing has changed.
So, when I was 16 and dealing with all of these big emotions and difficult realisations for the first time, I found myself constantly reminiscing about Borneo. I spent the difficult moments flicking through my journal or looking at my photos from the time in my life where everything felt like more. And that’s when I decided that maybe I need some kind of closure to move forward. So, that’s where my scrapbooking came from in the beginning. That need for closure.
I started my journey into scrapbooking by carefully selecting photos – ones with deep stories or real memories or ones that just made me smile and then I printed them. I wanted my scrapbook to reflect the experience I had. The one where it was hard but so rewarding that you kind of forgot how hard things were. The one where momentary friends had such a lasting impact on who you are as a person that I could never truly be forgotten. I mean Borneo, for me, was the catalytic trip. It was the one that changed the direction of my life and I wanted the scrapbook to reflect that which was no easy feat. In fact, I became so focused on making it say so much that I forgot that I was just doing this for closure. I became obsessed with making every detail perfect. I was no longer unpacking, I was just obsessively scrapbooking.
So, after that, the next trip I scrapbooked, it was me scrapbooking my teaching English experience in Cambodia. And I unpacked and scrapbooked in tandem. Whilst i was travelling, i was the collector. I collected people’s words, their stories and their hopes and dreams. I collected things: receipts, napkins, admission tickets. I collected photos. And then when I came home and unpacked my clothes and my tangible pieces of the story, I began to unpack my thoughts. How did this trip truly affect me? What did this trip change in me? How will these things carry forward in my life? And then, I scrapbooked with new thoughts and new ideas and new directions in my mind. My scrapbook became the place where my experience met my thought process, where my adventure met my real life and it helped me process my experience in a real way.
Now, I scrapbook every trip I go on. Whether that be a three-day trip to Greece or a six-month trip to Africa. My scrapbooks are my little escape, my little way to hold on to the stories and the people and the things that changed my life in unexplainable ways while moving on and continuing living. I love that i can hold them in my hands and feel them as i relive those moments and keep the lessons they taught me close to my heart as i adventure again and again because at the end of the day, my scrapbooks are real and tangible and authentic and me and it feels perfect that they are always at home waiting for me to unpack another adventure.
So, will you start scrapbooking the next time you unpack? Or do you already have an unpacking ritual? Let me know in the comments!