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This simple habit helps me remember every trip I’ve taken

How I turn every trip into a storybook of memories

By
mixbook
Emily Caldwell / The Manual

I first started making travel memory books after returning from a beautiful honeymoon to the island of St. Lucia in 2023. After an amazing trip with hundreds of photos to showcase, I found myself puzzled about the best way to display these photos to keep the memories alive. A regular photo album certainly could probably suffice in this scenario, but it cannot add commentary and background about the little details of the trip that I want to remember.

For those of us who are not artistic, making a travel memory book online is more like making a scrapbook (only on the computer). The travel memory book serves as a solution to my biggest fear: Forgetting the memories that make me feel most alive. Here’s how this habit has helped me remember every trip I’ve taken.

How it started

Mixbooks travel
Emily Caldwell / The Manual

As a Type-A planner, planning the details of every trip is one of my favorite parts of the process. Making my day-by-day itinerary on an Excel sheet has always been a key part of how I’ve planned some of the best travels of my life. Yet, after a trip is over, deleting all of these integral details feels wrong. How would I remember the little, unexpected, or funny things — like my husband being scammed into buying a bracelet on the beach in Barbados or how I spent 48 unplanned hours in Iceland? Making these travel books serves as a solution to this problem.

Why I make travel memory books

Mixbooks travel
Emily Caldwell / The Manual

Once my first book arrived in the mail, I fell in love with the way the book brought every detail of the trip to life. Two years and plenty of travels have gone by since I made this first travel book, yet I can still look back through each page and have the trip come to life in my head again. Rather than just a compilation of photos, I add important details about each component of the trip (day-by-day itinerary, where & what I ate, favorite tours, etc) that I never want to forget.

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Beyond personal photos in the book, I add images of the hotels I stayed at, favorite meals, sunsets, and other key details. When considering what photos to add, I add anything that would spark a memory when the memories of the trip are no longer as fresh.

How to make a travel memory book

Mixbooks travel
Emily Caldwell / The Manual

As much as I love to travel, I’m also the first one to admit it is exhausting — especially if you’re traveling between time zones. When I return from a trip, I give myself a week or so to recover and get back to baseline before jumping into making a travel book (which helps avoid mistakes). At the same time, I like to start the process of making the book while the memories are as fresh as possible.

The process of making a travel memory book, especially for longer trips, can be time-consuming. For this reason, I usually complete it over a few days (though you could probably complete it in a few hours if you wish to do it all at once). Here’s how I do it:

Step 1: Organize photos

The first step to making travel memory books is to organize the photos from your trip. First, I begin by using Dropbox to create a folder with the trip name and date (for example, Hawaii, May 2025). Keeping them in a Dropbox not only keeps them safe in the cloud forever, but also makes it so much easier to organize when crafting the book.

Step 2: Select a design/theme

Mixbook
Emily Caldwell / The Manual

Making a Mixbook online requires no artistic skills and is something any computer-savvy person can learn to do. You can use pre-set themes designed for a certain type of vacation, like cruises. You can also craft a book from scratch and personalize photo layouts, captions, and other design elements for a unique book every time. Each mixbook I’ve created has a different theme and set-up.

Step 3: Drop in photos, create, and order

The rest of the process is simple and easy, and gets easier as you learn the platform over time. Using the online tools, customize and drop photos in however you see fit (could be by activity, by day, etc). Once you’ve finalized the preview of your book, it takes about a week to come in the mail. Whether you look back at these books every year, show your kids, or browse them later in life as a senior, the memory of each trip will always come to life when you look through your book.

Emily Caldwell
Emily Caldwell
Contributor
Emily is a Features Writer at The Manual, where she specializes in food, beverage, and travel content. She focuses on weaving… Read Full Bio
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