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How to Recover from Post Vacation Blues
508 Plays1 year ago
Do you need a vacation from your vacation? Feeling the post vacation blues? In this episode, Bonnie & Audrey share 5 tips on being able to recover from your vacation. Follow these steps to make easing back into a routine easier.
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Transcript
Introduction to Post-Vacation Recovery Tips
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Episode 237, Post-Vacation Recovery. So you took a trip and now all the things are happening. Nothing's back to normal the way that you would like it to be. So we have five tips today, how to recover from a vacation, and we hope some of these tips are helpful for you so that it's not so hard to get back into your real life after your vacation.
Meet the Hosts: Audrey and Bonnie
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Traveling with Kids: A Humorous Tale
00:00:57
Speaker
Hey guys, we're back and we're going to be talking to you about how to recover from vacation. We have several episodes about vacationing, but we know that there's this time period kind of like a twilight zone when you get back, and we're going to be talking about that time today. But Bonnie's going to start us off with some humor. Yeah. If you've ever traveled with kids, guaranteed you've got some humor segments and maybe some that are only humorous when you think about them years later.
00:01:23
Speaker
If it's a little too fresh, it might be hard to laugh about. So several years ago, my husband was traveling for work during the summer. It was a thousand degrees here in Phoenix. And I was like, I can't cope with all these little kids around and no husband. So we hopped in the car and did a long road trip to visit a friend living up in Washington state. Well, we had to take multiple stops because little kids, you know. And one of those stops was to stay with an old friend in another state.
00:01:48
Speaker
And we said, hey, we're going to be rolling into town around 9 p.m. or so. Can we just crash on your floor and then get up and leave in the morning? They said, yeah, absolutely. So we did roll in probably 9, 9 30 may have been as late as 10, but her kids were already in bed. And I'm trying to kind of quietly get my kids out of the car and into her house. And, you know, if you've ever had kids in the car for a long time, you try to get them out, they immediately want to just
00:02:08
Speaker
hoot and holler and run around and get all this pent-up energy. And one of my children, the neurodivergent one, even as a small child, I think she was, gosh, maybe three or four, maybe five at the time, was immediately just overstimulated and all the things and wanted to look at all the new toys at this house. And anyway, at one point I walked out of the house to go get another load of something in the car and I came back to my friend's husband, sternly chastising my
00:02:33
Speaker
my little girl, you cannot yell, you cannot throw that. You can ... And I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry. Okay, yeah, I'll take care of that. A little bit stressful to get kids out of the car and calm down after you've been driving a long time, but that is just vacation. And we like to ... Over here at Outnumbered, we like to call it trips. If kids are involved, there are trips, not vacations because there's not a lot of vacationing you're doing, but they can still be fun if you prepare ahead of time.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yes, sometimes we feel like we need to go on a vacation to get over our vacation when we've been traveling with kids.
Overview: Five Tips for Post-Vacation Recovery
00:03:05
Speaker
So today we're going to have five tips for how to recover from a vacation slash trip. And these can also be applied like to sickness or an extended period of time where you're not home or you're not able to have normal routines. So we're going to talk about getting back into, but especially vacation is what we're focusing on. Partly,
00:03:22
Speaker
because I just got back from vacation and Bonnie's getting ready to go on vacation and these things are very fresh in our mind and we're Excited to share with you the things that work for us
00:03:34
Speaker
Yes, and as it's summer for you, you're probably experiencing a similar thing. But before we dive in too deep, make sure that as a companion episode, you check out our episode on survival times. That is one of our favorite episodes because it is a concept that every mother and father need to learn very early on in parenting days that there are phases of life that are just survival and coming home from a vacation is absolutely one of these.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't last very long because if you do the tips that we're going to share with you, it'll make it go smoother, but it is, it is an intense time.
First Steps: Prioritize Essential Tasks
00:04:08
Speaker
Okay. Number one is baby steps. Just, just don't expect that you're going to come back and fall into the normal. You're just going to take one little step at a time. So the first day back from vacation, my baby step is laundry.
00:04:23
Speaker
currently focusing on it and that's it. Nothing else is going to happen except getting the kids clean underwear. So that baby steps.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yes, and that's a very important baby step. They all start complaining for some reason after you have a date with no underwear. Jerks. Do you know what I'm trying to get done here? Yeah, and obviously in survival times, it will include feeding children. And that's honestly about it. Feeding children, feeding yourself, some bare basic personal hygiene. But this is the time to figure out what you need most, what the household needs most, and to make sure that that happens. Again, back to essential basics.
00:05:01
Speaker
food, shelter, clothing, right? Plus, now is a great time to remember that it takes time to both prep for a vacation and to kind of detox from a vacation, right? So when you get ready for a vacation, you probably don't schedule a lot of things before that. You probably don't jam-pack everything because you know you're going to take time to pack and take time to
00:05:20
Speaker
set up the dog walker or whatever it is to prepare yourself and your household to leave. When you come back, also acknowledge that it's going to take several days, especially if it's a long vacation, at least that many days to just kind of get back into the normal routine of things and make sure that the household is clipping along at a good pace.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, I like to kind of use the thought of as many days as I took to prepare for vacation to allow that many days to get back to where I want it to be. And I just have to put on blinders to everything else that's not getting done and focus on the things that I accomplished. It's all about my managing my mind on this. It's all about where my focus is. Great. I managed to get everyone clean underwear today. That was a success. Wow. Good job. Pat myself on the back.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And unfortunately, if you have work or projects that you put on hold during a vacation, you might be thinking, I'm going to come home and dive right into those, but you just can't. It takes a significant amount of time to get back into just regular routine of just household management, and then you can start thinking about work or other projects.
00:06:25
Speaker
I love to use the analogy of a giant freight train is what running a household is like, right? Especially when you have a bunch of kids that you're like pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling and feeding the fire and, come on, come on, let's get moving. Then it gets up and moving along at a good pace and then a vacation or a sickness or a new baby screeches it to a halt.
00:06:46
Speaker
You have your survival time and then you got to get it moving again, but it does not happen instantly. It takes time and effort to little by little get everything moving and going, especially when you have lots of other people in your household because you're not the only one doing the work. You have to get the other kids in the routine of doing their chores and remember this and remember that and this is your bedtime. No, it's not the same as on the vacation, right? It's different.
00:07:06
Speaker
So the second step is to just manage those expectations. As usual, we will always come back to this. If you can manage your expectations, you can find so much more joy even when everything is going as you see it poorly.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah. What if your expectation is that things are going to go wrong or go slow or go hard? Then you won't be frustrated when it happens because that's what you were expecting, right? It's all about managing your mind. So yeah, I expect when we get back, um, Oh, what happens with us on vacation because we eat such a nutrient dense diet and it's so hard, um, to get a nutrient dense diet when you're on the road is my kids are inevitably kind of sick. And so.
00:07:46
Speaker
It's hard when they're sick and they're not ready to help jump back in and fold laundry and do everything that is needed to be done. But if I'm expecting, oh yeah, we ate crappy and so it's going to take a couple of days for us to get back to feeling normal, okay, then I'm not frustrated anymore because I was expecting it to be like that.
00:08:04
Speaker
Right, absolutely. Get your brain to the place where it knows that abnormal is normal, right? Just like after having a baby, you have a baby, you would not think, well, I hope you would not think, gosh, I didn't get all my work done and this and that and I'm such a failure. No, that's recovery time and post-vacation is also recovery time.
00:08:27
Speaker
Having expectations that remain unmet is absolutely a surefire way to get to frustration, right? That just equals frustration all the time. You're going to expect things to be up here and they're going to be down here and you're going to be angry about it. So if you lower your expectations, you just guarantee you will be less disappointed and it feels so much better to not hold yourself and your poor kids to such a high standard after being away for a while.
Embrace Progress, Not Perfection
00:08:53
Speaker
Okay, here's a mantra that's gonna be a little bit more helpful for you, or a logo.
00:09:01
Speaker
Should we put it on a t-shirt? We should. So here's a motto that's going to be more helpful for you in post-ification recovery. Progress, not perfection. Okay. Yes. Let's put that one on a t-shirt. Progress, not perfection. Just move the needle a little bit forward. So you can ask, does this activity or thing I'm doing move us forward a little bit? Great. Let's do it. But like, you know, some of those buffering things that we kind of fall into as moms, like, you know, scrolling Instagram, this is not help. This is not progress.
00:09:30
Speaker
And it's definitely not perfection. But if we can just focus on progress, just moving one tiny baby step forward, just keep the needle moving. Just go forward. Go forward a little bit. And that, like if we're focused on progress, not perfection. Again, it's our focus, isn't it?
00:09:48
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And let me just say here that rest also equals progress. So don't run yourself ragged coming back thinking, I only have two days to organize the pantry and put all the suitcases away and all these things. No, you're going to go crazy. Taking a nap and getting to bed on time is also progress back to the normal life that you're trying to get back to. So yeah, those escapist behaviors, not progress, and will actually make you think that you're getting rest when you're not. You're just kind of escaping. But if you need the nap, take the nap. That's also progress.
00:10:17
Speaker
And in the same vein, note that progress looks like very small steps sometimes, right? So you might look at your disaster of a laundry room and think there's no way I'm going to get through all this. Well, yeah, for sure today you're not going to, maybe not even this week. But maybe your goal for today could be you just get it through the washer. It might not be dry, it might not be put away, might not be folded, but it's just going to get through the laundry machine. Laundry machine.
00:10:42
Speaker
it's just going to get through the washing machine today. Or maybe it looks like, well, I'm going to feed my kids tonight, but it's going to be on paper plates for the rest of this week because I don't have the energy in me to make sure dishes get done. So do that. In fact, I kind of think of post vacation life as like weaning yourself off vacation, right? So if vacation was eating fast food all the time, now you're eating homemade food, but on paper plates. So you're just kind of easing out of that do nothing, you know, sit around kind of junk food type life back into your wholesome life that you have. But you cannot do that all at once.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, this is the time. This step is where you can start to move out of survival mode and start move moving toward normalcy. You're not there yet, but you can like add in one little thing a day. So maybe day one, you have pizza for supper. It was easy. It was on paper plates. It happened. Right. Day two, you add in.
00:11:31
Speaker
Fresh fruits and veggies for a snack just like to start moving you toward more what's normal, but not like yanking the rug under them right away Getting them back so you know when we got back we currently got back from a nine-day trip And we had nine days of laundry plus bedding like you know we were sleeping out during that time So that's pretty significant because I usually do one to three loads of laundry every single day and
00:11:55
Speaker
So how long is it going to take me to catch up on nine days of laundry? A long time, right? So I can't expect I'm going to get it all done and put away and fold and everything in one day. But if I'm, if I'm making progress on the laundry mountain, we're not having enough avalanche anymore. It's only knee deep now. It's not over my head. Hey, great. That was progress, right?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I am no longer literally drowning in laundry. Now it's just around my knees. Love it. And side note, as you're saying that, Audrey, I'm realizing this is really the way to win in any lifestyle change, right? Because that is a lifestyle change coming from vacation back to real life.
Gradual Lifestyle Adjustments Post-Vacation
00:12:28
Speaker
Maybe it was only a lifestyle for 10 days or a week, but it was still a lifestyle for a while that now you have to shift you and all your household members out of.
00:12:36
Speaker
But same thing if you want to just eat a little healthier or start exercising or start adding in meditation, you start so small and so gently with yourself. We all know what happens when we dive deep into our goals and think that we're going to become a marathon runner tomorrow when we've never run a step. It does not go so well. We start so small and to be so patient with yourself.
00:12:54
Speaker
And this is frustrating because you miss the routines as well. Kids miss the routines, whether they say so or not, they just do better with it. So being willing to take that progress over perfection and saying that's enough can be difficult, but it's super essential. I think one of the hardest periods of time for me is going to sleep in one of these transition periods because I lay down at night and just think, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Everything's out of control right now. Tiles of dishes or piles of laundry or this or that, you know, suitcases in every room.
00:13:22
Speaker
but it all gets done. It all gets done little by little and it's all gonna be okay. Just lower those expectations, right?
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, that is such a good point about it being a lifestyle change. Like I have heard so many people fail at a new diet or eating healthier because they try to do it all at once. No, stop. Just add in one little thing at a time. That's a great point that it is a great way to, like it's too hard on, like maybe you have the self-discipline to completely change your diet all in a week, but your kids don't. So same thing for, for this, what we're trying to do, get recovered from vacation as well.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, and a great reminder that even if you might have the superwoman stamina to stay up all night to do the laundry that first day, your kids are still adjusting as well. So try not to be like a total crazy person, dictator, running around shouting orders all day long. Let's all ease back in together.
00:14:12
Speaker
So that leads us to our fourth tip, which is to communicate with your kids. Get them on this same team of progress, not perfection. Even on the drive home, you can say, hey guys, when we get home, what are you looking forward to? Get them excited about it and then just say, and what do you think needs to happen for life to go back to normal? Well, we have some laundry to do. Just get them aware. Okay. When we get home, I'd like everyone's help to unpack three things. Make sure you grab your pillow in the suitcase.
00:14:36
Speaker
and then take your suitcase and drop it off at the laundry room, whatever. Just communicate with them and get them knowing that little by little, we're going to get back to life as planned. Yeah. It is hard for kids to adapt back to normal after the travel of excitement because kids have a very short perspective. If they're on vacation, now that's normal for them. They don't remember that they're going back home. That's not normal anymore. Vacation is normal. Totally.
00:15:05
Speaker
Another thing is travel is so good for kids. It literally expands their horizons, their world. It literally does. Their world gets bigger. Home feels boring at first. They already know all that. They already learned all that. It's not moving and traveling and trying different things and seeing different people.
00:15:26
Speaker
It's boring at first, and we have to get them kind of, I don't know, reigned back into what normal in a routine is. But this is, understand, this is hard for kids.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. You know, what's interesting about travel is my mom used to always say she's a speech therapist, so she's kind of extra attuned to kids development. And she would say that anytime we would go on a trip, we would come home and many kids' vocabulary would explode or they would all of a sudden have new tasks, especially the little ones, you know. And it was because all of a sudden, so much more and new stimulus was coming in for the week or so. So it really is so great for them. But like you say, conversely, it means that when they come home and it's like, oh, back to this place.
00:16:07
Speaker
Even though we get homesick, we're excited to be back home. It does seem boring because there's no water park every day and there's no cousins to play with and there's no new adventures and new sites to behold. So be patient with them too because of course, obviously, there's the behavior adjustment that happens after coming home from a vacation. Everybody's just entitled to fun and fast food all day and it's like, oh, we got to come back and eat vegetables. This is the worst.
00:16:33
Speaker
No, that is such a good point. I love that your mom notices it in speech because I notice it in my kids. They always take a cognitive leap after a vacation. They're trying new things. It's like their brain has just, well, like we said, it expanded. It expanded and they reach new milestones. It's kind of pretty impressive actually.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, and it really goes to show that I should really take my developmentally delayed two-year-old out of the house more often. She gets left at home being the teenagers all the time. I'm like, that's probably why you can't talk. You never go anywhere. I should take you on a trip. Oh. Give it a try. But why take her when she's so content here at home? I guess I better shoot.
00:17:16
Speaker
So, like we mentioned, settling back into a routine after a vacation really does help kids get back to normal.
Routines Provide Comfort and Stability
00:17:22
Speaker
And like I said, they really do crave routines even though they might not know it themselves or tell you, and it can be hard to get started. But once they settle in, they welcome that routine pretty quickly because they know what to expect. And just like the boundaries that we talk about, understanding a routine gives kids safety. They know,
00:17:40
Speaker
You know, mom's not going anywhere and never coming back. Like this is our home. We live here. We always come back. This is my bed. This is my levy. This is whatever is normal and comfortable for a child. That is really crucial that they get back to those routines and expectations. It helps them a lot.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah, we noticed this when we go back to regular school after taking the summer off from school, how fast our kids settle down and like settle in. Summer's great. They love it. Their brains grow because they're doing all sorts of different things. But when they get back into that school routine that's familiar and safe and comfortable for them,
00:18:17
Speaker
It's just like my husband comes home from work and he's like, what'd you guys do today? Because I can feel the difference. Nobody even has to say anything. It's just like the river has calmed. And it is true, yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
Okay, now we have a little segment for us moms, and especially those of us moms who do something other than just be a mom. Okay, so work ahead before your vacation, keeping in mind the difficulty to get back to normal afterwards. I forget this every time. I work ahead to get, for example, Project Run and Play had two weeks scheduled ahead on posts, and I was all ready to go, and I forgot to do anything about the week I got back.
00:18:58
Speaker
It's like dropping a big ball, right? So you work ahead before vacation, but you need to work beyond just the time you're going to be gone. You have to remember that there's going to be this recovery time and work ahead through that part too.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yes, totally. Again, like having a baby, right? You wouldn't just get maternity leave until the baby came out. You want that recovery time after the baby comes, right? I did this recently myself for my own solo podcast that I scheduled things or I'm working on scheduling things through my trip, but then I thought, you know what? I'm going to schedule it for one week after.
00:19:35
Speaker
especially because I'm going overseas. I'm not going to come home with jet lag and immediately bang at another podcast episode. It's just not going to happen. And that means that prepping for a vacation is extra hard for working moms or for anybody that has projects that are working on outside of the household and the kids. So give yourself a long lead up time. Don't expect to prep for everything just the week before. I try to do just a little bit here and there, a little bit here and there.
00:19:56
Speaker
for a month, six weeks leading up to a big trip. And then you can go and really enjoy yourself and come home and also enjoy that easing back in period instead of thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so behind already. That's a terrible feeling, right?
00:20:12
Speaker
And then finally, do not, or at least if at all possible, don't schedule appointments or activities for the week you get back. I make this mistake all the time because I have kids that are just always having some sort of appointment, orthodontist or an evaluation of some sort. And I think, oh, that week's free. Not realizing, oh, I will have come home Monday night and I got a doctor's appointment on Tuesday. Terrible idea.
00:20:35
Speaker
Watch out for that week, if necessary, block it out. Maybe you can call it rehab week or something, right? This is where we're going to rehabilitate and ease back into real life schedule for the week after. Yeah, this is exactly the mistake I just made. I scheduled an appointment. We got back Tuesday and I made an appointment for Wednesday morning. We weren't even awake at my appointment time because we're transitioning back like three time zones. We weren't even awake. So yeah, that was fun.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. Don't schedule those appointments. You've got to remember to work ahead beyond the time when you'll be gone. And also, I find it hard to fall back into the rhythm personally of my work stuff when I get back in. Like, I just don't want to do that anymore. I still want to kind of savor the vacation a little longer, plus then there's all these kid issues that I'm dealing with, you know, or home issues with the laundry mountain or all that.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I just don't want to be pushed back in or fall back in right away. So eventually I'll get there. But remembering to work beyond the time is something that I always forget. So maybe this little segment is for me.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yes, and I love that you mentioned not necessarily wanting to jump right back into work. And this is kind of my, what I'll wrap up with is that for those of us, especially that are kind of goers and doers, the ones that always have a full plate, it's so easy for us to gain a sense of satisfaction and like feel those productivity hormones racing through us. We get so excited when we do things.
00:22:08
Speaker
that going on vacation is sometimes a challenge for us. But when we settle into that relaxation and enjoy our kids and enjoy our family, it's so wonderful. And so just give yourself permission to take another week of that, right? Sometimes you're ready for the schedule to be back on, the routine to settle back in, right? And so that can be hard to say no to that. But I try to just embrace it and go, no, this is the time when I can still continue to cuddle my kids longer.
00:22:34
Speaker
you know, watch a family movie or something instead of go, go, go, go, go all the time. This is just ease back in time. And then when the routine is all up and ready the week after, I'll be ready to work too. But just be gentle with yourself.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, I find on vacation, I'm often reassessing why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Integrating New Insights from Vacations
00:22:52
Speaker
And then when I come back from vacation, if I haven't allowed any time for myself to kind of implement those things that I reassessed, then I kind of like resent a little bit being pushed back into what I was doing before because I had all this intention from this clarity on vision of stepping away. And so, yeah, that's important too.
00:23:14
Speaker
Okay, my final thoughts on this are that vacationing obviously expands our horizons too, not just our kids. And so we need to give ourselves a little bit of time to, just like I was saying, be able to go ahead and
00:23:35
Speaker
If we've been expanding our horizons, what's the point of expanding our horizons if we're just going to shrink back to what we were before vacation? Give ourselves a little space in this recovery time. It's very similar, like you were mentioning about after having a baby. You've used that analogy a couple of times. It is very similar because you have this new thing that you're going to be
00:24:00
Speaker
It feels a little similar. I don't know how to put it right into words, but it's like you just want to
00:24:06
Speaker
you want to accept this new part of yourself that you gained. And you have to help your kids through accepting that new part of themselves that they've gained too because, you know, their kids, they have their life in front of them. And this is, they're doing kind of that mental reassessment too. Like, why am I doing what I'm doing? And is this, you know, little kids do this thing about when we were traveling, my six year old said, this is too pretty not to live here.
00:24:32
Speaker
in this beautiful spot that we were out west. So little kids are expanding. They have their whole future open before them. Where am I going to live? What am I going to do? Who am I going to be? All that sort of thing. And so traveling causes a lot of big questions to come up. And if we just jump back in with no space to kind of
00:24:52
Speaker
adapt to these thoughts that we had in these changes. It seems kind of big and deep, but there is some of that going on in kids' minds as well because we know it's going on in ours too. So anyway, just be patient with yourselves, be patient with your kids, and be open to maybe some change following a vacation that you weren't expecting.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yes, I love that you brought that up because I personally get so many amazing insights when I travel. In fact, especially if it's a really long flight or a really long car ride. And I actually just recorded an episode for Burning Brightly about the difference between
00:25:27
Speaker
physical rest and mental rest. And I think part of it is just there's hours of mental rest, which I don't allow myself to tap into sometimes. I just listen to audio books and read, whatever. But sitting there stuck on a plane with nothing to do allows these synapses to make connections and for things to really sink in. And then you go and expand your horizons by seeing new things and meeting new people and having new experiences. It is a beautiful time to reevaluate life in general and maybe make some real progress on some of your own goals.
00:25:56
Speaker
And just seeing the world a little bit differently, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. All right, guys, that's it for this
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:26:02
Speaker
episode. We hope some of these tips have been helpful for you the next time that you go on a vacation and you're feeling like you need a vacation from your vacation. So that's it for this week. I'm Audrey. I'm Bonnie, and we're Outnumbered.
00:26:17
Speaker
Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.