Back to Reality

What happens when you return from a few days out of town? Does the suitcase stay in the car for a week? Or does your luggage make its way to a corner of your home and get ignored for a few more days? My routine is fairly consistent unless the drive is a lot longer than anticipated. Generally I like to knock all the tedious work out of the way beforehand. It probability is high that I will need to return to work the day after I arrive home from any type of trip out of town. This little routine has kept me from letting home turn into a mess.

Lets just assume that I am returning from a couple of days in Las Vegas. We depart at around 11 am and can be back in Los Angeles by 3 pm if traffic is good and made one to no stops along the way. Since we travel to Vegas Sunday thru Thursday for the most part we tend to not have any traffic till we are back in California and the hour of most traffic begins. From 11 am till 1 pm is the lunch rush and after 3 pm is when the after work traffic begins. Like I said. this has not really been an issue for us due to the days weekdays we travel.

Once home, I open all doors and windows and allow the house to breathe in life due to it being closed the whole time we are gone. When that is done I take my suitcase to the back and wash everything in there. Las Vegas tends to be very smokey and somehow the clothing, even the items I did not wear will always be soaked with the smell of cigarettes which for me not at all appealing. My children are also asthmatic so the sooner I can remove the irritant smell the better.

Once the clothes are in the wash, I get to the work of giving my home a quick little cleaning once over. I have a soul dog and there is never a shortage of her hair on the ground whether she is there or not. Typically when we are out of town someone will come to my home and watch her there. Not ideal I know but, pets are not for everyone. She is never left with people she doesn't know and her human companions have always been family in one shape or form. That being said it mean that when I get home, my girl is home too. As with most dogs she sheds constantly and a lot. I start with sweeping all the rooms in the house, making sure to reach into all the cracks and corners.

After the sweeping, the load I threw in when I got home is ready. That gets transferred to the dryer and ill next throw in the sheets from the bed that got slept in while we were gone. With the bedding in the laundry Ill start dusting the rooms and cleaning the bathroom. By the time I am done with that, the dryer is done and I transfer the bedding into the dryer and bring the clothes in to fold and put away. While the bedding is in the dryer its on to food.

A tip I picked up over the past two years since the COVID is to order my groceries. I choose Walmart all the time, it just works out better for me than other options for pick up out there. Usually the day before we go out of town I pull up my Walmart app and select all the food Ill need once we return from our trip since the frig is pretty much empty when we come back. When you go one the app t you have the option to select the day and time you want to pick up your food. When that's done, I click all the choices, pay and thats it. The day we come back home I will receive alerts in reads to my order and when its ready I just drive up to the designated orange pick up parking spots and it comes right to me and I can go home without needing to walk into the store and dealing with the crowds of people.

Food is a topic worth touching on because I have a process for that and it has become a part of my traveling routine. The week or two before going on a trip i have a mission to go thru and finish just about everything in the refrigerator and I do this because it grossed me out for food to spoil over the days no one will be home. Personally I see it as a waste of money and I refuse to do that. Meats and Dairy products and basically anything that will go bad all have to be consumed before we leave. The frig is nearly empty when we leave and in need of a restock when we return. All I have to do is head to Walmart and pick up my order an we are goo to go for the next week or two.

By the time I am back home the dryer has run its cycle so all I need to do is put the groceries away and then put the linens back on the bed. From this point things can go one of two ways. I am either exhausted from the entire experience of both travel and clean up or I have enough energy to keep going. It will depend greatly on how much and how hard I partied while I was away.

If I can keep going, I will meal prep for my remaining days of work, depending on the day I return. Sometimes there are still one or two more days in my work week when I return. As soon as that is done, then I am done for the rest of the day. I will most assuredly veg out and recover as much as I can before I have to get to work the next day. If I am not feeling as if I can do anymore than I have already done by that point then I will usually take a quick cat nap. When I wake up, I will make myself a sandwich and another one for work the following day. I am not about to struggle unnecessarily if I do not feel well.

All I really strive for when coming back from a trip is making sure the days that follow flow as smoothly and as seamlessly as possible. Without a doubt the last thing I want to do is clean and wash and pick up groceries for the week. However life is no longer just exist alone, I am a single mother and a fur momma. They count on me as much as I count on myself. This routine has become a way I decompress when I return from a trip. All the steps involved to acclimate myself to reality once again. I depend on it and to skip it now after so long would be foreign to me.

Younger me would definitely not recognize older me. It is absolutely a good thing.I attribute these key changes to true growth as well as comfort and security within myself.