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Travel, whether it’s for vacation, holidays or business, is a double-edged experience. It can be exciting to see new places, comforting to be with family, or exciting to pursue professional goals, but traveling can be stressful tooAnd doubly during the holidays. Aside from the frantic nature of actually getting to your destination, there’s also the anxiety that ccomes with being in an unfamiliar room.
Hotel rooms they can be cute, but also a little impersonal, with every moment spent in them reminding you that you’re in an unfamiliar place. And your sister-in-law’s spare room it could be cozy, but it’s not your room. Nothing is how you like it, and it’s easy to feel constrained by being in someone else’s space. This contributes to the stress of travel because you can never quite relax and settle down, floating into a rootless existence.
The trick is finding ways to make your musty hotel room or spare room in your cousin’s house feel more like your own space. Luckily, it’s actually not that hard to do.
Unpack
Step one: actually unpack. I was one of those grumpy travelers who left everything in his tightly packed suitcase—I never even opened a drawer in my hotel rooms. But I recently made the decision to really unpack, and that makes a huge difference. Keeping clothes stowed in a suitcase not only makes them wrinkled and sad, but it also constantly reminds you that you’re, ahem, live out of a suitcase. Putting clothes in drawers and closets and psyching away your suitcase makes the room feel more like home.
Bring more of your stuff
A hotel room or guest room experience normally includes all the basics you need, from bedding to shampoo. And that’s cool! Except it won’t be what you normally use, and this will serve as a constant reminder that you’re not in your own space, but borrowing someone else’s.
Putting aside the concerns that hotels may not clean the bedding with the same, um, enthusiasm what you would do at home, bringing your own sheets and pillows will instantly make the bed feel more like yours, and therefore easier to relax and fall asleep. Bringing your own toiletries will keep your hygiene and other routines the same, ensuring you don’t end up with dry skin or stiff hair or just smelling like a completely different person. And carrying a few mementos, like photos or little tchotchkes you keep on your desk, act as visual anchors that signal a space is your private domain, even when it’s not.
Keep up your routine
One of the benefits of traveling is the opportunity to get out of the rut and live a different kind of life for a while. But there are routines worth breaking and routines worth keeping. Travel anxiety is often driven by a sense of losing control over your life. When you’re in an unfamiliar space, stick to your regular sleep cycle, meal times, and exercise habits a long way towards maintaining your physical and mental health– and making you feel more at home.
Bring your content
Many people have little rituals surrounding the content they consume, for example couples often watch specific shows at specific times. If you have specific shows that you like to watch after dinner or before bed, or while doing yoga in your living room, take that content with you to your hotel or a relative’s spare room. You can bring a tablet, laptop or just your phone with a streaming app installed, and many hotels allow you to temporarily access Netflix or other platforms on their room TVs (just remember to log out!). If not, bring your own Roku or Chromecast device and plug it into your TV’s HDMI port like a bossand experience the comforting joy of watching The office for the 500th time.
Use your nose
Finally, one of the more subtle ways that hotels and other people’s homes feel alien to us is their smell. Every house has a smell, though we tend to go “blind in the nose” to the scent of ours. Walking into a hotel, it can be difficult to feel at home because it doesn’t smell like our home. And a spare room will always smell like someone else’s house, of course. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be unconsciously creepy. If there are specific aspects of how your home smells, like the air fresheners you use or the scented candles you always light, bring some with you. You may want to ask your host’s permission first if you plan on smelling a spare room, but making a space smell familiar will go a long way in making you feel comfortable in it.
