Personalizing your hotel room
 

Usually I am only in a hotel for a day or two. Lately, though, I am finding myself with 4 or 5 night stays. Some of the hotel rooms are starting to feel kind of sterile, so I am looking at ways, say under $20, to personalize your room once you are there. Keep in mind what you do with whatever you have upon departure, and that you either have to carry it in your luggage or get it somewhere when you arrive.

For longer stays, I've been known to pack a candle of my favorite scent to have lit when I'm in the room. I've also bought flowers to provide some decoration. I suppose you could also bring a personal coffee cup/mug.

Similar to the candle idea, bring an aerosol of some scented room spray that you can spray in the room to remind you of home as well.

A bit more than $20 (maybe $50 together) but I always bring a Chromecast + Travel Router
I don't really care about the ambiance but I like to be able to watch TV normally when I'm done for the night.

Picture in a frame (or digital picture frame)
Small knick knacks (stress ball, figurines, legos, small stuffed animals, paper weight, etc.)
I like the flowers and candle suggestions
Leave your clothes all over the floor
House slippers
Mood lighting
Vinyl decals to stick to your windows

We always bring along two little stuffed animals, one of them very tiny.
If we have room in our luggage, we'll bring along a third one, slightly larger. (They compress nicely.)
I shared a photo of the little guy elsewhere on FT, about how he got left behind in Italy, and housekeeping apparently sent him through industrial washer/dryer. But when they found him, with his little t-shirt quite tattered, the hotel kindly notified us, and we had him FedEx'd home in time for the Alaska cruise ;)

We often position them looking out of hotel or cruise ship windows, now that we try to keep them off their regular "home" positions on the bed, after the little one's "excursion".
When we left them on the bed, sometimes housekeeping would make cute little placements, but now we worry about them getting tossed along with the laundry.

That provides some fun photos for memories, as well as a nice "homey" feel while traveling.
They are *always* in our carry ons; never, ever in checked bags!

And also, yes, having some clothing draped over chairs, that "helps" make it feel "just like home", too.
We are both guilty... :o

GC

Chromecast++
 

And with Ambient mode, you can have it cycle through your travel pictures from previous trips. Or run TInycam Monitor and have it display the live view out your window at home!

Interesting idea. I take a tablet with me, mostly for use on the plane so I don't use it much in the hotel room. Just need to get a simple stand, and use that as a picture frame while it otherwise sits dormant.

Buy an extra set of the same pillow covers as you normally use at home. Use it for a couple of weeks, and then pack it. The familiar feel/smell of the pillow covers will help with quality of sleep.

The newer high-end tablets usually come with ChromeCast included, so check if you can cast from the tablet to the TV.

I love a non personalised hotel room. I actually want to know I am not at home.

I'm a very light, 1 bag packer, and everything I bring has to be fuctional. Cute stuffed animals are out of the question. I always travel with some sort of huge scarf sarape type thing. It's a blanket, towel, robe, pillow, skirt, sun protection, or scarf, as needed. It's also a bed cover- I will use my big scarf or turkish towel on the foot of the bed to dress it up if I feel like it. I like the way it looks and it keeps it handily out for me to grab. I'm not obsessed with personalizing my room, I don't give it much thought at all, but, upon reading this thread, realized that I lay out the scarf about 25% of the time.

I personally have never thought of the need to personalise my hotel room, until an encounter a couple of years ago when I was in Florida - can't remember which city. But it was a Motel 6 and around mid December. Met this jovial lady and she invited me to take a look at her room. I was curious and went along with her. And she had a fully-lit & decorated Christmas tree (plastic of course) in the room! A good-sized one too, perhaps 5 or 6 feet tall. She told me that whenever she had to travel in December, she will bring along the tree in her car boot and assemble it in the hotel room.

A poster here a few years ago traveled with a shower head. He'd take out a wrench, unscrew the hotel shower head and "personalize" the shower with his own. (Not a good idea, IMHO)

For me, I spin the TV around and plug in a roku stick. Sometimes this means unplugging the hotel cable box. I travel with Samsung, Phillips and Pioneer remotes so I have a button to select "HDMI 1" as the input source and sometimes the TV volume doesn't work from the hotel remote with alternate input sources selected.

And I bring my pillow from home.

I often travel with a small stuffed animal that reminds me of a connection my wife and I have. Every time I come back to the room and see it, I smile.

I also have a quality, powered bluetooth speaker I sometimes travel with. Being able to play background music makes the room feel more "me". The speaker provides way better sound quality than my laptop speakers and it's not isolating or cumbersome like wearing headphones.

I've never felt a need to personalize a hotel room. I'm just there for a night or three. It's just a hotel room. Personalizing just sounds like more stuff to remember to pack, take up space in my bag, and then possibly forget.