Break free from your routines

How to Staycation

Article

No. 14 • August 2025

Journalist and writer Iris Hannema has travelled solo to more than a hundred countries. But as a seasoned explorer, she knows you don’t have to board a plane to capture that holiday feeling. Her secret? Break free from your routine. Here are ten ways to do it.

Fig 1. Julie Cockburn, Tent, 2018

text: Iris Hannema

Turn off your phone, unplug everything, including the Wi-Fi,
doorbell and television. A successful staycation takes place without social media and messages. Do you think you won’t be able to do this? Then buy a simple Nokia, one without internet, and call your parents or close friends every evening.
Camp in your own garden
What a shame that we only use all our wonderful camping gear at campsites. No, let’s turn the compass around: homeward bound. Lie on your back in your own grass in the evening and gaze at the starry sky.
Write a travel story
You only have two choices of subject: your own house or your street (up to the corner!). Start by observing, looking with completely different eyes and describing what you see in detail, touching everything, trying to describe colours and describing what you smell.
Exotic food. Only buy groceries
that are not normally on your list. The goal is to open the fridge and have no idea what will happen when you start cooking with these strange products.
Take a siesta. Between noon and two o’clock
you are unavailable and everything is closed, period. It takes some getting used to, resting your body in the afternoon, closing your eyes, but you will soon notice how refreshing and relaxing it is.
Start conversations with strangers
because the only memories that don’t fade with time are the encounters. People’s stories colour a place, so the same applies at home. Chat away!
No rush! As soon as you feel rushed
(which we mainly do to ourselves, wanting everything to be done quickly), stop what you are doing immediately and close your eyes for a moment. Calm down, nothing is mandatory, relax: as if you were floating on an air mattress.
Make a photo reportage of your staycation,
of what you do, cook and notice. Try to photograph what you would never normally capture: suddenly you realise you’ve never taken a photo of your own kitchen or bed in atmospheric evening light.
Do a big clean-up.
Not that we necessarily want wrinkled hands from bleach and a roaring vacuum cleaner on holiday, but it does give us peace of mind to put things in order. Take the time to clear out the house, make space, and decide again: is this ballast or does it have a function?
Then finally visit that one place in your own city where you’ve never been before.
All the tourists are queuing up to see it, but you, proud resident, have never seen the inside of that museum, cathedral or tower. That’s about to change, tourist in your own city, olé-olé!