Travel Tips 8: Fully Utilising Your Hotel Room Amenities

If you've stayed in a hotel before, you'll know that while having an iron, a hair dryer or even a weighing machine in the room is awesome, you don't really utilise them about 90% of the time (especially not the weighing machine after you had just eaten a large meal!).

I thought to myself, why spend so much money if I can't make full use of my room's amenities?

So here's sharing 10 ways to ensure that you use all the amenities in your hotel room to the fullest capacity! =)

1) Shower Cap + Shoes = Clean Luggage

Great for packing odd-shaped shoes like the hubby's Crocs!

Fast and easy to pack your dirty shoes in your luggage and even reuses the shower cap so that you save the environment! =)


3) Iron + Fabric Paint = DIY T-shirt

Back of a shirt that my bff and I painted for another bff when we were all younger, single and carefree. Each T-shirt had our unique personalities. I still keep mine! =)

If you have bored kids in the hotel room and don't know what to do, why not buy some fabric paint and decorate an old T-shirt any way that they like? After that, all you need to do is turn the shirt inside out and iron on it (with the iron in your room of course!) and you've got yourself a masterpiece! =)


3) Iron + Bread = Toast

Bread and aluminium

Wrap the bread in the aluminium foil as shown before applying a hot iron directly on it

I learnt this trick from this blog. A friend said she has made toast this way many times in her college hostel. I thought it was genius!

4) Ironing Board + Your Stuff = Additional Table

Brought so many stuff that you can't find a place to put it? You can consider putting light-weight items on the ironing board! It's especially nifty when you've got kids (we all know how much stuff they have!). Just make sure that they don't knock it down!


5) Weighing Machine + Luggage = Luggage Weighing Scale

Trying to see if my luggage is overweight..
(It wasn't!)

Might work better for smaller luggages rather than my huge one

This idea came to me by chance when my hand-held luggage weighing scale couldn't weigh my heavy luggage after we filled it with all our shopping loot in Bangkok. The weighing machine is not terribly accurate though. Plus another 3-5kg and it's about right.


6) Disposable Razor + Clothes = Frizz Remover

Using a disposable razor to remove the frizz on my girl's dress

I can tell you from experience that this really works! It's definitely better than trying to pluck the frizz out yourself using your fingertips.


7) Mini Sewing Kit + Pouch = Emergency Bag

My pouch that I bring everyday to work

Add other essentials like plasters, nail clipper, pills such as Panadol and charcoal, and a mini Swiss army knife and you've got yourself a handy emergency kit to bring with you everywhere! Don't ever underestimate the importance of an emergency kit. You don't know how many times my kit has saved someone who needed it desperately =)


8) Toothbrush + Lipstick = Perfect Red Lips

Disposable toothbrush and my lipstick

Using the toothbrush to prep the lips for the lipstick

Prepping your lips before applying your lipstick ensures that you get longer lasting lip colour. I had no idea till I googled for alternative uses of toothbrush =)


9) Toothpaste + Dull Jewellery = Shiny Jewellery

Disposable toothpaste that comes with the disposable toothbrush

My dull silver jewellery that required polishing

All you need to do is rub the toothpaste onto the metal and viola! It's polished like new!

The photo can't really capture it but you can already see a difference in the shininess of the chain

Here're 10 other uses of toothpaste, if you don't have jewellery to polish (remember that toothpaste cannot be used on pearls!).


10) Shampoo + Dirty Clothes = Clean Laundry

Shampoo is available in almost all hotel bathrooms

Google for alternative uses for shampoo and you will find a whole list of them! One of my favourites has to be for hand-washing dirty laundry or getting rid of stains on your clothes. When you're overseas and don't have any laundry detergent with you, this is one handy tip! =)

And there you have it! Technically, you can also follow most of these tips in your own home but why pay when all of it comes free in a hotel room? So now you know what to do when you're staying in a hotel next =)


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This post is part of my series on Travel Tips for the Wanderlust Parent.

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