I may be breaking all the blogging rules by giving you the secret in the first sentence but it’s a simple one. The subtle art to the perfect staycation is: Time.
Time to catch up, time to sleep, time to eat well, to move physically and time for niggling tasks you’ve been too ‘busy’ or too uninspired to achieve.
If like me, you feel there is never enough time to be still in your home to enjoy your surroundings, maybe a staycation is exactly what you need.
Getting to the chase, because you’re likely lacking in time to even read this, what exactly is a staycation? To take a vacation whist staying in your own home or somewhere in your own city.
But a memorable staycation? How can we achieve that when we are ingrained in our routine of to and from work? It’s harder than you think.
Time is the secret, but the art of a good staycation comes from being loose. Making loose plans to structure each day – or better – perhaps without structure at all.
For me it all depends on the destination. If you’re renting an AirBnb, the natural response should be to adopt the rest:eat:explore ratio (in that order of priority). If staying put, like we did over the Christmas/New Year break, it looked a little more like this rest:eat:rest ratio. To which I highly recommend, particularly to bring in a New Year.
For the sake of being completely honest, something I suppose we don’t get all that much of these days, I did do some tasks in the ‘rest time’ that I’d been meaning to do for a while. One was my wardrobe and holy mother of all things Marie Kondo was I holding onto a lot of unnecessary things. I wax lyrical on this in my post about Project 333 here.
Time spent reflecting on our staycation sparked joy (get it?), and I wondered whether it was the sun, sea or salt that rendered the two weeks so serene.
It seemed to me there were three simple elements that sparked joy on our past staycations, they were:
First element – Rest. Place the highest importance on good quality sleep.
Second element – Stock the fridge. Just because it’s a break from routine, doesn’t mean you need to break the bank. Having a well stocked refrigerator gives your day structure, without the need to forage for each meal.
Third element – Set a goal. Whether it be visiting somewhere new, fixing that thing you’ve been saying you’ll fix for years or finish an assignment. While you don’t need to tick off goals each day, it’s nice to have just one you can safely say you’ve finally had time to achieve.
At this point, I’m sure you can agree the advantages of a stay-cation are endless, but – again – after reflection, these were the ones that stood out:
- If you miss the ferry/bus/train, there’s another one. There’s no-one keeping an eye out if you’re late.
- Staying home all day to binge watch *insert latest netflix mini-series* surviving on weetbix, dips and crackers, nobody cares.
- Showers are optional if you’ve been swimming.
- Shoes are optional. Period.
- Not to mention, literally none of these things will happen to you: Jet lag, lost luggage, uncomfortable hotel bed &/or pillows, packing, unpacking, an overdrawn credit card, language barrier, dodgy WiFi, dodgy food, excess plastic consumption and excess carbon emissions!
You’re literally free of all those burdens and you’re welcome.
Now get out there and start submitting your leave with the boss, I hear there’s a long weekend coming up 🙂
Until next time xo