Treat yourself like a guest

How to make our everyday homes more like vacation homes

Interior designer Glenn Ban’s dreamy, beachy house, shot for my first book, The Little Book of Living Small.

Months ago I found myself reading a blog post about buying a wood-fired hot tub by Stephen O’Grady, an analyst in the tech industry who lives in Maine. I have no idea how I found myself on Stephen’s site, but something he said really struck me. He wrote, “We decided to deploy some of that vacation budget to exaggerate the vacation-like characteristics of our existing house. How could we make it even more enjoyable to spend time here during vacations?”

I was reminded of Stephen’s idea of exaggerating the vacation-like characteristics of a home when I bought new towels for our apartment. It felt like a big indulgence buying half a dozen new towels that we didn’t technically need (the old towels, while quite threadbare, could still dry us off). However, as soon as the towels arrived, my whole family thought, Why did we wait so long? The new towels felt downright luxurious.

You might be thinking that new towels and wood-fired hot tubs are a far cry apart, but they’re related in that you’d never stock a vacation home with sad, fraying towels, but somehow you’d tolerate it in your own home. (I know because we own a home that we rent out to vacationers!). I found myself wondering how else I could apply this idea of “vacation-like” features to our everyday home. (I don’t know about you, but I could use a vacation right now.)

So, I called up my friend Rachel Lipson, who has become something of a travel expert in recent years and writes the newsletter Brooklyn Family Travelers. I asked Rachel if she could help me figure out what other little tweaks might make our everyday domiciles feel like a holiday home. Here’s what she told me:

Create breathing room

Rachel immediately mentioned that clutter—or rather, a lack of it—has a lot to do with what makes us feel so good in a vacation home. Whether it's your own second home or a rented property, a vacation home doesn’t have a lot of excess. “You sort of acclimate to your own stuff,” Rachel explains. “You might not see it as clutter sometimes because it's yours and you know what it is.” Vacation homes also usually have empty shelves and drawers, so there’s always room to put things away out of sight.

Be intentional with what’s on display

This desire for breathing room doesn’t mean that a home must be devoid of personal objects to feel like an escape. (In fact, Rachel and I both hate staying in homes that are dedicated AirBnBs that no one has ever lived in.) It means that you are more intentional with what is out and displayed. A collection of interesting books at a holiday rental is an invitation. At Rachel’s home, instruments are displayed throughout the house and she says the families she swaps homes with always mention them.

Fix broken things

Something else we tolerate in our own homes that you’d never find in a vacation home? Broken things. “We get used to things not working in our own home, but when we're hosting someone else, I always make sure everything is in working order,” explains Rachel, who is an avid house swapper. I immediately thought of the closet door in our apartment that won’t close in our bedroom and the kitchen light that sometimes flickers. Make a list of all the little things you’d fix if you were planning to rent your home to someone else tomorrow.

Keep things fresh

Another part of what makes a vacation spot feel so nice is how fresh things tend to be–think: fluffy towels, crisp, white sheets, and pristine baseboards. This doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy all new things. For example, you might take the time to soak your white linens in oxygen bleach and wash them on a deep clean cycle or break out the paint to touch up scuffed spots. However, if you are like me and tend to hold onto things for too long in the name of thrift and sustainability, you might need to give yourself permission to start over with some things. Personally, my next freshness upgrade will be a set of dishtowels to replace the mountain of tired, stained ones.

Indulge in little luxuries

I’ve written about how little indulgences can have an outsized impact on our homes. Even if they’re not worn out, upgrading your soap dispenser, hand towels, or your doormat to something genuinely beautiful might seem like a little thing, but those small improvements are the ones that make our homes feel more luxurious. Pick one or two things you’d like to upgrade in your home and see if it gives you that holiday feeling.

Cultivate experiences

I also called up Stephen O’Grady, the author of the original blog post I’d read to ask him about how his theory was working out more than a year after acquiring his hot tub. Stephen told me he uses the hot tub almost daily and that he and his wife had even rented a portable sauna to see if it was something else they wanted to add to their home (he says the rental has persuaded them they do).

Stephen says that what the hot tub has given them is more than just the experience of a hot soak. “It's a process. With a wood-fired hot tub we have to plan for it. It is distinctly technology unfriendly,” he told me. “It’s a way of spending time together in which there's nothing else to focus on. There's no tv, there's nothing. It shifts how you think about your leisure time.” Perhaps building in features that create experiences (and separate us from our tech) is part of the key to encouraging a vacation-like vibe at home?

I’m not sure that I’ve found a precise answer for how to make my everyday home feel more like a vacation home, but I think at the most basic level it’s about treating yourself more like a guest. Whether that’s springing for the new towels, fixing the annoying thing that you and your family have learned to tolerate, or buying yourself a fresh bouquet of flowers. Make things nicer for yourself.

Have you ever done anything to make your everyday home more like a vacation home? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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3 More Things

The best small space I saw last week was this amazing houseboat(!) in The World of Interiors, which the writer calls a “paragon of pragmatism.” Thank you

Christene Barberich

for linking to it. Also eager to see this story shot by Ngoc Minh in the current issue of WOI–so gorgeous!

New newsletter alert: My friend Danielle, the style director at Apartment Therapy, has launched a newsletter called Design Defined. I love how she pulls out ideas and finds from the site each week–and she’s answering reader’s questions about their decor dilemmas.

A good read: What one town learned by charging residents for every bag of trash. Think about what an impact it could make if every town made this switch!

One last thing: A miracle.