December 22, 2025 | Written by Marek Dlugos | Subscribe to my newsletter

This piece is possibly for younger generations reading. I assume many of us who grew older have already figured this out on our own.

I was fortunate to travel the world. Younger me bought into a minimalist philosophy. Maybe it stemmed from the fact that my dad would collect most things. He’d often joke that my future home will look like a museum. Nothing, but empty walls. The popular opinion I kept hearing back then was: “collect memories, not things.” In my head, souvenirs were just eventual clutter. Dust collectors. There were so many of them when I was growing up, and I remember how annoyed I was as a teenager when I was tasked with dusting all those “interesting objects” in our apartment.

But as I grow older and years pass, I have to admit that trips start to blur together. I’m no longer able to recall what I did in many destinations. I even felt stupid once when I met a Russian friend I had traveled with in Malaysia for a couple of days. She was able to tell stories from our trip that I no longer remembered. It’s like I know for a fact that I was there. I just don’t feel it anymore. It feels as if some other version of me visited that place fifteen years ago.

I met a guy while traveling across South America in 2024. His name is Stephen. He’s from Scotland. Stephen kept inviting me to visit him in Scotland until I couldn’t refuse anymore. I had never been there, but I had heard it was beautiful. It turned out to be exactly that. The point of this story, though, lies in Stephen’s home. He had taken a small souvenir from probably every country he had ever visited — and he’s been to many, including mine: Slovakia. It was genuinely cool when he showed me something from there. That moment made me think: Why didn’t I take one thing? Not to own more stuff, but to have an anchor for recall.

Photos are another great way of keeping memories. On top of that, I like photography. But in today’s world of camera rolls filled with thousands of photos, I barely look at any of them. That’s why this year I decided to buy a tiny photo printer. It’s not a solution, more of an experiment. I want to see where it takes me.

My reasoning is simple:

• I will only print high-quality photos.
• I will put them into physical photo albums that I will revisit more often.
• I will decorate my future home with them, so they’re always in front of me.

Somewhere in my head, I also have this cinematic fantasy scene: great-grandchildren discovering a box in an attic, finding old photo albums of their predecessors. I want the photos in those albums to be the ones I chose and printed.

Like with most things in life, I think the answer is balance. Not keeping and collecting every little thing. Not taking thousands of photos that no one will ever look at.

Keep small things that are close to your heart and that you actually use. Take a reasonable number of photos that you’ll want to revisit often (I still have a lot of work to do here!).

I’ll leave you with three simple questions:

What do you use to remember? What have you already forgotten? What are YOU going to do about it?