Hello and welcome to best laid plans, the podcast about all things planning and planning adjacent.

This is Sarah Hart Unger. Thank you so much for listening. Today's episode is going to do a Q&A, going to be a Q&A. Wow,

if I'm making grammatical errors this soon, we may be in trouble, but hopefully not. So I just

got back from vacation and let me tell you that is hard. So I remember a listener had written in

pretty recently asking for tips related to coming back from vacation. So I remember a listener had written in pretty recently asking for tips related to coming

back from vacation. And I absolutely see why you would need some of them because I am struggling

with digging out of that hole right now, although making steady progress. So I wanted to open the

episode by sharing a few tips that were sent in by other listeners about how to ease

in back to planning and just organized living after a vacation or time away from work.

So the first one comes from listener Ms. Candid.

She writes, number one, plan to come back to a clean house, i.e. try to keep the house clean

before leaving for a vacation. Totally agree with this. I mean, of course, it's always good to

make sure you empty all your trash and wash the dishes so that you don't come back to a house

that does not smell great or has new critters running around. But beyond that, it is very

true that coming back to a fairly clean slate is much preferable than coming back to a half done mess.

I will say for us, that ship kind of sailed because we didn't have any child care as we were leaving,

and I find it very difficult to clean up when I'm

also running after three young kids. But if you're able to do so, I think it's a wonderful

tip. Number two, as Sarah pointed out, grocery shopping can be done online during vacation or

during the trip back home so that some shopping trips can be avoided after reaching home. Yes, I didn't end up

doing this, but I did do an online grocery order the day, I think the night we arrived home to

arrive the very next day, and that was fantastic. So I didn't have to spend a lot of time with

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