On Wednesday night, while going to pack up for my Thursday flight home, I made an upsetting discovery: an entire bag of my stuff was missing! The New Balance shopping bag that I had been using as a catch-all for a lot of miscellany had been in the living room of my hotel suite, but now it was nowhere to be found. Inside that bag was my Garmin, my fuel belt, some other running apparel, a few pairs of shoes… and a jewelry pouch with a ton of stuff (since I had been traveling for two weeks).
I’m honestly confused about whether this was stolen, since the jewelry was at the bottom of the bag (and contained in a cheap Target makeup pouch) and my Garmin was buried instead my sweaty and gross Nathan fuel belt… with a ton of gym clothes and other non-valuable miscellany on top. Why would someone take this bag out of all the other, more expensive-looking stuff? (Sitting right next to this New Balance bag was a case of wine I had won at Savor the Symphony, which seems like it should have been more appealing.) The hotel is still investigating, and I filed a police report, but I have little confidence that I’ll get any of it back. Instead, I’m just hoping for some kind of goodwill gesture from the hotel, and perhaps from my credit card company (which offers purchase protection on stolen items within 90 days of purchase).
Today, I started trying to replace some of the jewelry that I lost. There were a few items that I had just recently purchased, which made it easy to go to Laila Rowe and Forever 21 to find duplicates. Well, at least fairly easy – the Laila Rowe near me was sold out of the gorgeous bib necklace I had just bought two week ago, but I managed to find it at another Laila Rowe further uptown.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of items I didn’t get recently but have found over the years and had for a while; those are going to be more difficult to replace, but I’m trying to look on the bright side and be grateful I didn’t have any expensive jewelry with me. While all the cheap pieces ($20 or less) add up to a pretty hefty sum, the loss would have been much greater if I had packed something like the pearl necklace that my Dad gave me for Christmas a few years ago! After an incident a few years ago where I left an expensive necklace behind in a hotel room after checkout, losing it forever, I now make it a point not to travel with really nice jewelry.
In addition to replacing the bib necklace I lost, I also picked up several other baubles at Laila Rowe… and when I brought them home, it occurred to me that I really need to come up with a better way to organize my jewelry. I am not at all a jewelry person, and usually wear just one or two simple pieces over and over – so those sit out bare on my dresser, while I have the rest of my jewelry contained in a drawer-style jewelry box. But now that I’m starting to buy lots of fun statement necklaces, bracelets, and rings, it doesn’t seem to make sense to just put everything in a pile in that jewelry box. It all gets so tangled, and it’s hard to find anything!
Googling around, I found a few cool tips on how to organize jewelry – check out this neat gallery of creative ways to organize/display your jewelry, and here’s a video from Fabsugar that also had some good ideas. I especially liked the frame idea to hold lots of necklaces while making a pretty decoration, and I also think the three-tiered dish would work well for me to hold pieces that I use most frequently. Although I’m trying to match my jewelry to my outfit a bit more, there are still a few classic pieces (pearls, simple pendant necklace) that I keep wearing all the time!
How do you organize your jewelry?
Oh no. Sorry your stuff got stolen 🙁
I am enjoying this fashion thing since I am definitely in need of a makeover. I love What Not to Wear (when I have time for TV-not often) and always know what I should do but may not necessarily implement it. Such is life….
I actually haven’t seen What Not to Wear (though I’ve of course heard of it)… perhaps I should start watching!
If your stuff was in a shopping bag, the maid probably thought it was trash and threw it away. This happened to me before at work. The cleaning woman thought a bag I had in my office was garbage and threw it out. Luckily there was nothing really in it. Now I make sure that if I leave something in a shopping bag at work, I put it under my desk or away somewhere so she knows it is not garbage.
Also, whenever, I travel I notice that maids will through out any bags laying around so I always make sure to clean up and stow my stuff in the closet before I leave my hotel room for the day. That way nothing inadvertently gets thrown out.
I always decline housekeeping service, and the rest of the room was untouched. (Right down to a half-finished glass of wine that sat on the table for the entire stay… just because I decline housekeeping apparently doesn’t mean I can pick up for myself! Ha.) But the bag was also one of those reusable cloth types, and the security director told me that they train their staff not to get rid of anything that isn’t in the trash can or piled near it (and this was in a dif room). Otherwise, I’d agree – I was thinking that might be an explanation too 🙁