I have to be honest about something that is a great source of personal shame: I am really, really bad at taking time off of work.
Despite working at a company with unlimited PTO, the last time I took a weeklong vacation was about a year ago, making me a walking cliche of the American who never goes on holiday. You could argue that the reason is cultural, that the Protestant work ethic has me in a chokehold. But I think the root cause is much simpler: For something allegedly relaxing and fun, vacations require a lot of planning and even more money. The price of flights is up, hotel rooms aren’t cheap, you need to factor in the cost of meals, and even that corny souvenir shot glass isn’t going to pay for itself.
Hannah Sampson, who writes about travel for the Washington Post, says one answer is to take a staycation. “It’s taking the time to do things you normally wouldn’t do in your regular life and put on hold all of the burdensome things that you would do in your daily life,” she told Vox. “You’re enabling yourself to discover something that you might have taken for granted.”
Plus, she explains, a staycation can be “really fun and rewarding while also being budget-friendly and hopefully allowing you to put money aside for the bigger trip that you want to take sometime.”
So how do you make the most of a staycation? And how do you keep your typical day-to-day life from creeping in? We discuss that and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.
Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Sampson, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
It sounds like the key to a successful staycation is all about mindset. How do you achieve that mindset shift?
The way to really get into the staycation zone is planning and preparing and getting yourself hyped for what you’re going to do. This is something that I love about going on vacation and it applies to staying home too.
Read reviews for places that you might want to go. If you’ve picked a restaurant, look at the menu and start to drool over what you’re going to eat. Think about your favorite bookstores or paths or discover a new corner of your neighborhood that you want to explore in advance. The anticipation of that experience will give you that vacation high.
It’s so hard though, because you’re around the house. How do you make your home feel a little more special?
I think we all got too much practice on this during the pandemic, but there are a lot of things you can do to change the vibes of your house. I have a candle that’s national park-scented, so it’s piney. In my house, we do a lot of things like use audio to set the mood. I have small kids, so we’ll play audio of a ride at Disney World or just ambient sound from a park that we like.
During the pandemic, my husband and I meant to spend our anniversary at the beach where we got married, but I was pregnant. We couldn’t travel. So we found a webcam that showed the sunset on that beach and we got takeout. It was really sad, but we watched the sunset.
It’s sad, but it’s also quite sweet. It’s like, “We’ll bring the beach to us.”
Exactly. And it was a beautiful sunset.
For me, one of the challenges of a staycation — and for all vacations, if I’m honest — is not letting real life creep in. And that’s beyond taking time to do administrative tasks around the house. That Slack goes off. I get that email. A news alert goes out and I’m just like, “Well, what if I just take a little gander?” How do you keep from letting that happen?
Unplugging is so hard. You could have a couple of small kids and teach them to tell you to get off your phone, which mine have learned to do. My husband actually has a Brick device which locks your phone for you. The discipline is real there.
It takes work to force yourself out of that constant need of scrolling through TikTok or just seeing what’s up at work. You don’t need to be on there. If there’s an emergency, they know how to reach you at work. So trust that process. Be super in the moment with whatever you’re doing because you need that mental break, even if you haven’t gone somewhere.
You need to make the most of the time that you have, especially if you’re taking vacation time and spending it at home. Vacation time is a precious resource that you should be using to the best of your ability.