How to Plan a Relaxing Vacation That Actually Allows You to Recharge

As a working mother, you have very little time to relax. Between work, raising kids, and trying to make sure your house doesn’t look like a total wreck at all times, there simply isn’t much time to do anything other than sleep. But you have vacation days for a reason – so make sure you use them!

Planning a Relaxing Vacation

With kids in the picture, you’ve probably been conditioned to think of vacations as stressful events that are best avoided. However, it is possible to have a relaxing vacation – if you know what you’re doing. Here are five tips to help you make the most out of this time:

• Take a 10-Day Trip

Experts believe a 10-day vacation is the magic number if you’re looking to maximize your travel experience. This ensures travel consumes a smaller percentage of your total vacation time and gives you the opportunity to relax and sightsee – rather than just choosing one.

• Plan With Kids in Mind

Don’t plan a vacation and then try to make it kid-friendly. For a stress-free experience, take kids into account from the beginning. Planning with them in mind will help everyone enjoy the experience. One of the best travel options for young families is to take a cruise.

“You unpack once,” explains Ticket to Learn, a travel blog dedicated to educational travel. “Since you travel while you sleep, you wake up refreshed in a new port rather than scrambling through security at airports, waiting for your flight and then repeating the drill when you land. Airports have been built away from the cities, while cities were built around the port. In most ports, one can walk off the ship right into the city, saving time and money.”

• Don’t Overbook Your Itinerary

It’s fun to plan. Planning gives you some control over your travel experience and significantly reduces stress once you depart. However, there’s something to be said for leaving open blocks of time in your itinerary. Avoid overbooking and you’ll feel like you have the option to pick and choose what you want to do on a daily basis.

• Do What You Want

Speaking of picking and choosing, do what you want! Just because your neighbor told you to go visit a certain museum, doesn’t mean you have to. Spend your vacation how you want to spend it. This might mean reading books in a coffee shop, bungee jumping off a cliff, or riding roller coasters at a theme park. Whatever makes you happy, that’s what you should do. Stop trying to live up to someone else’s expectations of what your vacation should be.

• Give Yourself a Buffer Day

One of the smartest things you can do for your sanity and physical health is to plan in a buffer day between when you return from vacation and when you go back to work. This will make the entire vacation experience significantly less stressful.

“While you can squeeze every last drop of vacation time by coming back late Sunday night, this can make Monday morning feel even more frantic than usual,” author Laura Vanderkam admits. “If you hate that frantic feeling, then come back Saturday or early Sunday so you can check on anything urgent that happened in your absence, get groceries, and get the laundry going.”

Enjoy a Relaxing Vacation

Vacations are designed to be relaxing and fun. Even though you have kids and a full-time job, you have the right to enjoy a stress-free travel experience. The key is to take a strategic approach and remove as many possible stressors as you can.