Vacation Prep
I recently went away for the weekend and when I came back I saw this post about having to clean your house before you go on vacation. I thought I was the only person who felt the need to clean my house before I leave for any length of time. Some of the housecleaning that I do includes:
- Changing the sheets on the bed
- Doing ALL the laundry
- Vacuuming
- Cleaning the kitchen (including putting away all dishes)
- Clearing off my desk
- Balancing my checkbook
- Taking out all the garbage
- Straightening up the living room
Leaving for vacation necessitates a good two to four hours of housecleaning the night before, often forcing me to stay up late so that things are ‘just so’ before I leave. I know it causes me stress to put these requirements on myself, but it really makes me less stressed out knowing that I can come home to a clean home and not have to worry about cleaning when I’m already tired from the vacation (if you’re not tired when you get home from vacation, then it wasn’t really a vacation in my opinion).
To make matters worse, I have a second requirement that I must do before leaving on vacation: clean the car (washed, vacuumed, and gassed up). Dave says that I should clean the car when I get home as it will just get dirty on vacation. I say that I don’t want to drive as much as you drive on a vacation in a dirty car.
What things must you do before you leave on vacation?
| Tags: cleaning, Random, vacation 9 comments »
March 31st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I like to clean before a vacation too. There’s something refreshing about coming home to a clean house, even if there’s a little dust that collected while we were away.
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March 31st, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I never seem to be caught up on laundry so no to that but I do clean the kitchen, put away all the dishes, clean the bathroom and generally tidy up. And I always back up my computer before I go away somewhere.
[Hmm...thinking to self that I should probably do this... --trish]
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April 1st, 2008 at 7:27 am
my road-trip vacations tend toward month-long sojourns, so i have to really get prepared. here are few things i do:
my house has to be immaculate before i go away. i strip the bed and wash the blankets/sheets and leave a coverlet on the bed. when we come home we put on the fresh sheets and blankets.
i also buy tons of post card stamps and print labels of family and friends that will receive post cards.
i have a giant file-folder thing that i fill with information on each destination and as we travel we just pull the file for the city we’re visiting.
i’m slightly OCD…i’m aware of this.
[I love the idea of printing the labels of family and friends that will receive post cards...I think I'll remember that for my honeymoon.
Oh, and OCD behavior is celebrated, embraced, and admired here. --trish]
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April 1st, 2008 at 7:37 am
I always clean before I go, too. I hate coming home exhausted from long drives and the house is dirty. I want to come home and relax before the early-morning Monday back to routine hits!
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April 1st, 2008 at 8:56 am
Yep, I have to clean too, although I can let some of the laundry go, and I don’t change the sheets unless it’s the scheduled time.
What I do before every vacation that drives me absolutely nuts is recheck everything I’ve packed about a million times and then freak out because I’m sure I’ve overlooked something. Before we traveled to Scotland about 5 years ago, I looked at my passport for the umpteenth time and read the expiration date wrong. I was sure I couldn’t go because it had expired several months before. I felt like I was going to faint until my daughter examined it and told me it doesn’t expire until 2013! Jayzus, how screwed-up is that?
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April 1st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Since I just returned from vacation, and spent the day before I left cleaning, I loved this post! How nice to not feel neurotic — or at least not alone in this predilection! I worried a bit if cleaning before a trip was superstitious (like if I never returned, how much nicer it would be for my family to pack up a tidy house), but then decided I simply love walking into a clean house! And I do love coming home from any trip… especially after a day of delays…
[There's something about walking into a clean house that is so refreshing after being on vacation. There's hotel clean (impersonal) and your clean...just so much better! --trish]
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April 2nd, 2008 at 11:41 am
You are not alone!! I do all of the above plus the bathrooms and pay all the bills in advance. I think for me it’s because I know my mom will be in and out of my house, bringing in the mail and taking care of the dog. It has to be spotless for fear she will judge me
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April 2nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I’ve shown your post (plus comments) to my husband who believed I was the only crazy woman in the world who did this. Thank you for helping me recover my credibility.
[LOL! Glad I could help.
--trish]
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April 11th, 2009 at 7:45 am
My mother has this same problem, before we go on a family vacation she has to clean every part of the house, multiple times. An hour before we are set to leave you can find her scolding the family for leaving their stuff around and making us help her clean parts of the house that hav’nt been cleaned in years. This puts unnecessary stress on the family, in a time where focus on our upcoming trip and not the messy closet is needed.
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