Unexpected pro travel tip.

Travelling can be stressful. I always get a tummy ache on the days when I travel, with an occasional bonus in the shape of a headache. My dad always called it reisefieber. It's an actual thing! A mixture of excitement and anxiety.

There is a lot of things you can do to make travelling this tiny little but less stressful. There are some obvious steps you can take. Like making a list of things to pack. I love a good list and I have a list of essential carry-on items. I'm not so fussed about items in the hold, these are usually easily replaceable at your destination - but anything truly important goes in my carry on bag and I make sure that I have all the essential bits and bobs that make my travel much more comfortable.

Another pretty obvious tip is to leave in plenty of time. Rushing automatically makes everything more stressful. When I fly, I arrive at the airport with about a hundred hours to spare. Well, that's an exaggeration, but I arrive so that I have at least a couple of hours to enjoy the wonderfully overpriced facilities of the departure area. I track down the water fountain, go to the loo about seven times (joy of having a peanut-sized bladder), explored the chilled food section of Boots and have a cup of tea. On a good day, I might even get some work done.

Both of these alleviate the stress of going on holidays prior to departure, but what about coming back? Some of the same principles apply: make sure you pack all the essentials on the carry-on list, leave early to avoid rushing. There is, however, one more thing you can do to specifically make your return from holidays much more pleasant. And this is to clean your house before going on holidays. I know, I can almost hear you saying 'Thanks Kat, as if I didn't have enough to do before going on holidays. And now you want me to clean?!' But hear me out. 

By cleaning the house I don't mean a deep spring clean with hoovering behind all pieces of furniture and cleaning the windows. What I means is washing up the dirty dishes, giving your home a quick hoover, taking the rubbish out. It shouldn't take you more than half an hour. Unless you haven't washed up for a week. We've all been there. But then you only have yourself to blame.

Trust me, after a long day of lugging your suitcase behind you, dealing with delays and sweating from running to catch a bus, you will be happy to return to a reasonably clean house with an empty sink and lovely-smelling bins. Also, make your bed before you leave for holidays, and make sure all the clothes you pulled out of the wardrobe in a packing-frenzy are put away. You will thank me for this one when you arrive exhausted after your lovely break away and are able to literally drop onto a clean bed.