In a world of deadlines and traffic jams, summer vacations can be the lone oasis of calm.
The bad news is that escape can’t last forever; before you know it you’re back at your desk or back in your basement facing a staggering heap of dirty laundry.
But re-entry into your real world doesn’t have to shock you back into the stress mode, or diminish your enjoyment while you’re trying to relax.
“The trick is to have your psyche be one step ahead of you on the trip,” says Victoria Moran, author of “Shelter for the Spirit: How to Make Your Home a Haven in a Hectic World” (HarperCollins, $20). “If you don’t prepare yourself emotionally for re-entry, you can move from a real high to a real low real fast and the jolt takes away all the magic of the time away.”
Moran has this advice for creating “a compassionate route of re-entry”:
– Clean your house before you leave. Make the beds. Pick up the towels from the bathroom floor. But don’t overdo it and make the cleaning one more stressful task.
– Also before you depart, set aside a clean and ironed outfit ready to slip into for your first day back at the office.
– Make sure that signs of your creativity and essence–pillows you’ve hand-stitched, photos of relatives–are positioned so you will see them as return.
– Collect souvenirs–seashells, postcards, T-shirts–and get pictures from the getaway developed quickly to help you prolong and savor the experience.
– Arrange to have your pets there to greet you upon your return. Their excitement is contagious.
– Pick up take-out food or order pizza for your first meal back so no one has to do kitchen duty immediately.
– Pay cash on vacation. You won’t have to dread facing the bills.
– Check your work voicemail messages before you return to the office to ease the anxiety about what awaits you.
– Always return home at least a day before you’re scheduled back at work so you have some buffer time before the onslaught resumes.
