Hasta La Ideas

Returning home and back to work after a vacation usually feels like a punishment for temporarily ignoring your responsibilities. There is a mound of laundry to do, a heap of emails and regular mail to process, and a small crisis that must immediately be attended to and which could have been completely avoided had you not left town. If you’re lucky, you’re still riding the high of the vacation and can bear the mountain of tasks without too much frustration. If you’re not lucky, your vacation was a bust and you consider never going on one again.

To help ease your way back into non-vacation life, try some or all of these tricks:

• Clean before you go. Have your desk at work and your home as shiny as possible before leaving on your vacation. Even change the sheets on your bed so things will be fresh when you return. Doing this means that you will only have to deal with vacation messes when you get back. Ants won’t have attacked your kitchen because there were dirty dishes on the counter and your office mates might actually use your inbox instead of plopping more work down on top of an existing pile.
• Walk in the door and straight to your laundry room. The first thing you should do when you get home is start a load of laundry of your vacation clothes. Once the washer is going, then you can reset your thermostat to a normal temperature and check to make sure a tree didn’t fall in your backyard (or whatever it is that people do when they first come home from vacation).
• Take an extra day before heading back to work. I like to think of this spare day as the vacation from my vacation. It’s the day to get reacquainted with your routines. We typically return from trips on Saturdays so we have all day Sunday to recuperate.
• Arrive an hour early to work. You’ll want to get a solid footing on your day before you’re bombarded by co-workers asking about your trip and giving you more things to do. Scan your physical inbox and your email to search for any you-must-do-this-first-thing-when-you-get-back items. Quickly sort your mail and throw out or shred all junk mail. Review your calendar for the day and create an action list of the most important things you have to do. When other people arrive, you’ll be able to handle whatever they throw your way.
• Give yourself a free day the following weekend. Playing catch-up with your life can be exhausting, so take a weekend day to sleep in, leisurely drink a cup of coffee, catch up on items around the house, or do nothing at all. If you have kids, this applies to them, too.

What additional tips would you add to this list? Share your suggestions in the comments.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.