Staycation is a fancy term for spending your vacation at home and hopefully from the comforts of your couch. The secret to enjoying time off, on your couch, is to forget about your daily routines and truly make it a vacay. Don’t do the laundry or other household projects. Simply relax. The truth is most of us are workaholic-neat-freaks, and not allowing yourself to tend to your duties on your staycation takes discipline. That’s why it’s key to attempt to “mentally check out” during your staycation. How do you do that?
“Think about what your intention is for the time off, write it down, then put it up on the fridge,” advised Meredith Haberfeld, a New York-based life and career coach in an interview with Health. On the other hand, if you just wing your staycation, you’re setting up your free time at home up for failure. Ken Robbins, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison also told Health. “Most people do a poor job [of relaxing at home] because they don’t plan and then they answer the phone, they do an errand, people stop over, and before they know it, the week is over and they’ve done what they usually do.”
Read Related: Staycation Nation: 8 Ways to Escape without Going Anywhere
As Real Simple tells it, the first step toward achieving the best vacation (staycation!) from home is to put the world on hold. Turn the ringers off on your phones and create an out-of-office message on your email with a return date. Then power down the computer and bid it farewell; cover it, hide it, put it away. Next, if you are going to be spending time at home, you´ll need a clean house to enjoy yourself in. The day before your staycation begins get your house cleaned from top to bottom, hire someone else to do it for you if you can. If you have children, you’ll need to get them out of the house a bit for some rest and relaxation. Organize a babysitting trade-off with friends or neighbors and try and have your kids at another designated house during parts of your staycation. If not, ask the grandparents to help out.
Now that your house is clean, you’ve turned off all outside communication, and you’re children are out of the house, it’s time to get comfortable. After you allowed yourself to sleep late that first morning, throw on a plush cotton robe, the kind those fancy hotels offer, and start your day sitting with a mug of your morning java and simply meditate. Then curl up with a book and spend a few hours lost in a great novel. Then, if you feel sleepy before lunch time, take a nap. Staycations are for catching up on sleep.
When you feel hungry order in lunch or just eat whatever strikes your fancy at whatever time of the day…there are no rules. Some people find cooking relaxes them, some like to order in from a dozen different restaurants. A staycation on your couch also gives you license to become the ultimate couch potato. Curate your own film festival and see back-to-back films that have been on your list for years to see. Or take the time to finally binge watch that television series everyone at work is obsessed over so you can finally see what all the commotion is about. And while you are just sitting there relaxing and watching the boob tube, why not give yourself an at-home facial? When your kids come home, and you are still on the couch in your bath robe, make sure to spend some time with them catching up, playing a game and laughing. Life is short; so be sure to find some alone time to rest, be with your loved ones, and relax at home doing nothing for a change. You earned it.
