First world problem, raise your right hand. Flying business so much you don’t know what to do with those amenity kits once they’ve been used?
Though some of the following suggestions may seem fairly obvious, amenity kits can serve all sorts of useful purposes from functioning as a tablet case to buying yourself an extra lunch with the money you've made. The whole purpose is to continually make them useful on the road, even after all of that Molton Brown lotion has been used up.
Donating them is also a practical use, but, short of a natural disaster, here are a couple of ways to reuse an amenity kit.
- Dirty socks/undies pouch
- Make up bag
- Medicine or first-aid kit
- Overnight emergency kit (aka the sex kit)
- Pencil case
- Polaroid snapshot case
- Receipt bag (for expenses)
- Sell them
- Tablet/electronics case
Sell them
It looks like amenity kits sell from anywhere from $10 to $20 on eBay, so that can certainly add up if there is a stack of them sitting in the room.
Be sure to cover those shipping costs, though.
Sell them for real dollars on eBay.(Placeit)
Tablet case
Repurposing an amenity bag in to an electronics case can be a no-brainer (or not), but some toiletry bags actually fit tablets. It’s the perfect tablet case!
Medicine or first-aid kit
Pretty self-explanatory, but a first-aid or a medicine kit pretty much should be mandatory in anybody’s book on the road. No need to go buy one, just fill up a bag with first-aid supplies already available at home.
Overnight emergency kit (aka the sex kit)
I’m not talking about being stuck overnight at an airport. No, I’m talking about when you are out on a date, and things have the potential to get a little hot and heavy. This keeps it discreet.
Fresh change of underwear, condom, toothbrush, toothpaste, face wash, lipstick to touch up in the morning, compact brush, things like that. The walk of shame should not be a humiliating process.
Dirty socks or undies pouch
Tuck the smelliest and loosest items away in the suitcase.
Make up bag
Ladies, we all know this one.
Polaroid snapshot case
Polaroid case. (Angie Muldowney / Flickr)
Because this site obviously caters to the millennial set—raise both hands if you’re a big kid (30+) and own an Instax—this isn’t a suggestion that should be far too out of line.
Some professional photographers we know have admitted a Polaroid-type camera is sometimes their favorite camera to bring traveling, because it creates a connection with strangers around them (on top of making great gifts).
Those snapshots do eventually collect. Plus, they also can be an ingenious way to store film and other camera accessories.
Pencil case
Enough said.
Bag o' receipts
Flying for work? Though phones technically have the ability scan things like receipts (Scannable for iOS is one of my favorites, haven’t bothered to find one for Android), there are many times when a receipt gets hastily smashed into a coat pocket, a credit card holder or finds the deep black apocalypse of my purse.
I end up completely drowning in tiny pieces of paper.
Enter the unused amenity bag, great for stashing those tiny pieces of paper once you’ve actually sat down to clean out those pockets and bags. All purposefully stored away so that you can later die at one hundred million expense line items at a time, all sorted by trip.
Receipt origami. (Matt Baume / Flickr)
