How to Plan the Perfect Staycation: A Guide to Holidaying at Home
If long-distance travel isn’t quite in your budget, or you don’t want to hassle with planes and trains, you may want to consider a staycation for your next holiday. When planned thoughtfully, a staycation can be just as refreshing as traveling further afield.
What is a Staycation?
A staycation is simply taking time off but staying in your local area. You enjoy the comforts of home while treating it like a true vacation. It’s a great way to save money, reduce travel stress, and still get that much-needed break from daily life.
Pros of a Staycation:
Cost-Effective: No need to book flights, hotels, or pricey excursions.
Convenience: You're close to home, which makes packing and planning easy.
Flexibility: You can create your own schedule, focusing on activities that truly relax you.
Familiarity: No need to adjust to a new place or language, which can be stressful for some.
Cons of a Staycation:
Lack of Escape: Being in your home city, you might bump into familiar faces, which can make it harder to disconnect.
Temptation to Do Chores: It’s easy to fall into the routine of daily life, like running errands or catching up on housework.
The magic of a staycation doesn’t just happen. This is what makes it so different to holidays where you buy a ticket to a foreign land and let the new experience immerse you. With a staycation you need to create that immersive environment yourself. The good thing is that with a little planning it’s not that hard to do.
To put you in good stead, I’m sharing my own thought process on how to engineer a great holiday, the different and intentional pieces of my plan.
The most important part of planning my own staycations is knowing exactly what makes a good holiday for me.
Of course, what is meaningful to you might be different and that’s where you’ll get to use your discretion about what to use or leave from here.
Hopefully you’ll come away with some ideas to get excited about even if you’re just staying in your hometown.
How Not to do a Staycation
My staycation expertise is informed by doing it all wrong the first time around.
I opted to stay home rather than plan a quarterly trip- partly to save money, but mostly because travel was restricted at that time in 2020. I thought I was going to get so much done around the house and finally get to my personal projects. I was completely wrong.
What ended up happening is that I fell into the same routine I had at home, barely made a dent in the home tasks, and the time went by in a flash.
I’m sure I watched a good amount of TV, too.
What was a week felt like a day and a half because it was so routine and normal. I did not consider that a successful staycation because it didn’t provide me with a feeling of restfulness, and it wasn’t memorable in the slightest.
Looking back, it definitely was not a good use of that time off.
The Hallmarks of a Quality Vacation
One of the benchmarks I use to determine whether a vacation was successful is if I feel rejuvenated or rested afterward. Even if I do sightseeing in a new city I make sure to front load those activities into my trip and save the last day or two for relaxing in a luxury hotel. I know my patterns and I know what works for me.
If you are considering planning a holiday or staycation it helps to know what things are most important to you. That way, you can incorporate elements of that into your experience and get the effect that you’re wanting. For example, if you like to go to the spa when you’re away, maybe book a treatment or get beauty supplies and skincare to do your own.
Making note of past vacation highlights can be a useful exercise when you’re piecing together your holiday at home.
The Rules of Purposeful Staycation Planning
I am adamant that it’s not a proper staycation unless it feels different to your everyday life. Staying home from work is not the same as having a staycation.
Rule 1: Create a Hotel Atmosphere
You might be wondering how staying in your home, in your hometown can feel any different. I promise you, with the right ambience it can.
I use the idea of hotel living. Think about what your favorite hotel feels like? It probably has a signature fragrance, specific music playing, and is immaculately tidy.
You can incorporate some of these ideas into your home base for the staycation by doing a few things:
· Finding a signature fragrance (different to the one you already use) in the form of candles, sprays or a diffuser.
· Clearing the spaces you’ll use. At a minimum your own bedroom and bathroom plus living area and kitchen. For me that’s virtually all the spaces in my home 😊 I didn’t worry about the kids’ room since they weren’t there.
· Creating a playlist that sets the tone for the morning or day. Café music or the instrumental type music that you might hear in a hotel lobby could work well to give you the right atmosphere.
· Only doing a tidy up in the home during housekeeping hours like at a hotel which is between 11am and 3pm. Taking the trash out, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom a couple of times should tide you over during the week without it feeling like a prominent part of your time.
Rule 2: Avoid Cooking
I’m actually not opposed to cooking, it’s mostly the associated cleaning that would ruin the vibe for me. My solution when I holiday at home is to eat one meal out everyday and then I eat other easy items like yogurt or bottled protein shakes, even cereal.
You could easily get other ready-made meals and store them as well.
Again, having these items in your fridge takes planning so that you’re not popping into your local grocery store to get these items. Visiting your regular store is ‘against’ my staycation rules, so to speak. It sounds silly but, in all honesty, staying away from your regular places this one week makes all the difference in upholding the holiday illusion.
If you’re budget-conscious with eating out, I’ve found going all out at breakfast is still way cheaper than your average dinner out.
Rule 3: Plan daily activities to do
You don’t need to have a tight schedule, just one that gives you some structure for the day. Mine looked like this:
6am – 10am Grab breakfast at a café near the beach and journal, then take a walk
10am - 2pm Reading/ Sketching/ Watching
2pm – 5pm Writing
This was a loose rhythm. Sometimes I’d nap, sometimes I’d spend more time writing. The main thing was that it got me out of the house. I’m lucky enough to live near a stretch of coastline that has several distinct beach neighborhoods, so I chose to go to a different one every day.
Rule 4: Pack the clothes you’ll wear
Pulling out things to wear from your closet feels a little too, ‘I’m still at home’ for me so I like to gather all my chosen outfits and put them in my suitcase. I live out of the suitcase for the week, even stacking the books and tech I’d normally pack with me for easy access.
It might sound like a hassle, but I swear for me it makes a difference. I keep the case open in an out of the way corner and the night before I bring out the outfit I’ve got planned for the next morning.
Rule 5: Keep a Read or Watch List
Okay, so this is part occurs before your holiday. In the lead up to your vacation, make a list of the things you might want to read or binge watch. Any shows that I had been watching in my normal schedule, I take a break from them so I can start something new while on holiday. I even take the time to watch a different international news channel than I normally do because that is a specific vacation habit of mine.
The list might also include any hobbies you might want to try or activities to do. If this is truly a vacation type situation, wouldn’t you also be planning in this way? Save some fun things for this time off by keeping a list on your phone to look forward to.
Live your city
The elephant in the room is that the type of staycation that you can feasibly do largely depends on the city in which you live and what time of year you’re doing it. I happen to live near beaches so that’s going to be a feature for me but if I lived elsewhere, this is what I might do:
Staycation Themes You Could Try
If you’re not sure how to organize your staycation, here are a few theme ideas based on what kind of experience you’re seeking:
The Big City Staycation: Explore museums, people-watch at trendy cafés, and visit neighborhoods you’ve never been to.
The Nature Staycation: Get outdoors by visiting parks, going for hikes, or sketching scenery.
The Booklover’s Staycation: Dive into your reading list, visit local bookstores, and organize your bookshelves.
The Spa Staycation: Set up a DIY spa with all those products you’ve saved and finally pamper yourself.
The Traveler’s Staycation: Organize travel photos, cook international cuisines, and plan your next real trip.
Staycations may require a bit more planning to feel like a true holiday, but they can be just as rejuvenating and memorable. With the right mindset and preparation, you’ll come out of your staycation feeling refreshed and connected to yourself.