How To Staycation At Home This Bank Holiday When You’re Too Poor To Go On Holiday

Are you already getting FOMO about the fact that all your mates are off on holiday this weekend whilst you're broke as hell? Opt for a staycation (where you take time off work to have a VACATION while STAYing at home – get it?) but don’t do what I did and end up seeing nobody, organising nothing and ending up a haunted husk of a woman. I went four days without talking to anyone and, when the pizza delivery guy arrived (yep), my vocal chords were so shrivelled that I gargled at him. Gargled. Japanese horror movies are inspired by less.

Here’s how to staycate properly, with tips from experts (i.e. those who’ve done it, and done it well) to help you avoid gargling, crying or staying up till 4am digitally stalking people you didn’t realise you were jealous of until 4am. The thing is, if you get it right, a staycation can be a brilliant way of ‘resetting’ without having to worry about learning a language or getting back from Gatwick. Unless you want to spend it taking French classes or in the departure lounge at Gatwick, the former of which is impressive, the latter, inadvisable.

Organise to staycate with another person

Otherwise you’ll wake up on your first day and realise everyone is at work until 5pm and you have nothing to do until then. Unless you can stomach two weeks of walking around art galleries and parks alone, it’s probably best to rope in your best mate/fancyman, too. As well as this, why not use it as an excuse to invite those people you never get to see, for a little mini-break? 'My flatmate and I did a staycation, and one of our home friends came to visit because, when you’re working, you never have time to see people from outside the city,' says Danny, who staycated last year and had a fine time. If you live in a place that has at least one interesting element of culture within it, turn your staycation into a reunion – but be sure you organise it well in advance. Which leads nicely to…

Organise it well in advance

Don’t expect cool stuff to happen the moment you’re not in work. Remember when you were unemployed? Yeah, you spent all your time at the same two pubs (depending how flashy you felt) moaning about how long the days were. Or maybe that was just me. Either way, having stuff to do will mean you’ll feel like you’re, at the very least, making the most of your time. 'You can go on a dinner date every night if you plan your staycation in advance, and you won't be tired and want to cancel or have to limp along to a social event in your sweaty work clothes,' says Libby, a gold-card staycationer. Fran, who’s only been on one but learnt a lot, agrees: “Keep yourself busy or you revert back to student life, waking up at 3pm and obsessively bleaching the bathroom. Then, if your flatmates come home and make a mess, you feel like a pissed off, underappreciated housewife,” she says. “That was just a suggestion, and in no way from personal experience.”

Do all the shit you can never be arsed doing when you’re working

OK so nobody wants to spend a week cleaning behind the fridge and going to the dentist (unless that’s your thing) but make sure the flat doesn’t end up, after a week, covered in pizza boxes, dust and sadness. 'Going back to work after a staycation isn’t easy, but at least you don’t have shitloads of laundry to do,' says Danny. Don’t devote all your time to errands, but make sure you keep on top of things because what’s the point of having all this free time if you don’t use it to sort your life out? And by life, I mean that niggling toothache you’ve had for months and the fluffy, sticky thing behind the fridge.

Pretend you’re a wag

Libby does everything she wishes she could do if she was an incredibly wealthy housewife/minor celebrity which, for a week or so, sounds fucking awesome. 'I LOVE my staycations because I create a fantasy world for myself where I'm a lady of leisure, flitting from social engagement to social engagement like a WAG,” she says. “I get manicures in Kensington and Notting Hill where you can look down the row of manicurists and see a huge rock on every single left hand and try and imagine who they are engaged to…' It’s like playing pretend, but an adult version, so you can actually do all the things you’re imagining. The concept is blowing my mind, and making me want to staycate immediately.

Improve yourself, maaan

Don’t just use the time to eat pizza, learn how to make the pizza from scratch. Or something else. 'I've seen people use [staycationing] to learn a new skill, whether that's starting lessons in something or just going for a run/swimming. A friend I know took a week-long cooking course which basically makes you a pro,' Libby says. If you’ve always wanted to do a life-drawing class, try spinning or are rendered anxious by your inability to salsa dance, then a staycation is the perfect time to go for it. Mainly because you can get pissed afterwards and not have to panic about the hangover…

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.