Yesterday we talked about making a hotel room feel a bit more like home, but sometimes the joy of traveling is staying in a place that's clean, pristine and a little less cluttered. Try out one of these ideas to make your home feel a little more like a vacation and a little less like a headache.
1. Wash Your Sheets More Often: Although many hotels are doing their best to conserve water and aren't washing your sheets as often as they used to, we're going to guess that it could still be more often than many of the lax homeowners out there (ourselves included!). Stick to a schedule and enjoy that fresh sheet feeling just a little more frequently!
2. Less Media: When you're on the road, it's easy to absorb yourself in the world around you and we don't feel as focused on our home media as often. Save the iPod for the gym, turn the TV off and pretend you only have a few channels that are difficult to surf through (even with a channel guide) and opt instead for a book near a sunny window or just go for a walk around the neighborhood instead. More still and chill versus loud and crazy!
3. Would You Pay For It?: It's easy to collect things we like, but don't always love. It usually happens when there's a sale sign around or someone gifts you something that although pretty, isn't quite your taste. Examine your room from the viewpoint of a paying customer. If you wouldn't pay to spend a night in a room in your house, make changes! Declutter, add lighting, dim lighting down or thrown open the curtains!
4. Stock Something Special: There aren't many who don't find travel size products adorable on some level and even if they're not your chosen brand, there's still something about pint size packaging that makes people go weak at the knees. Try picking up a few small candies or special beverages that might add a little zip to your step and make today (or tomorrow) feel extra awesome.
5. Clean Before The Weekend: The time spent in a hotel, although not long is always refreshing because it's uncluttered and clean. The hours that we spend in that space leave us rested and focused on more than what needs to be done off the chore chart. Even if you do daily chores to keep your family on track, try doing an extra push on Friday, or even Thursday night to get your weekend off on the right foot. Having the cleanest house possible during the time we occupy it the most will let you do the things you want to instead of need to (like laundry... ew).
Do you have another suggestion to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below!
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Comments (24)
Seems to me the main way to make my place feel like a hotel would be to have someone other than myself come in and clean it every day after I leave. That's the thing about being in hotels that makes the experience feel relatively carefree ... when it's done well and the bathroom doesn't have that extra-special old hotel mildew.
Fresh Flowers. :-)
Hookers. And fugitives.
But then again, I live on the South side, so our "hotels" are a little rough around the edges.
My husband & I just moved a pedestal table & 2 chairs into our bedroom and have started taking the morning coffee in there instead of in front of the computer.
Feels like a retreat somewhere special.
Who wants their home to feel like a hotel???
What cremedela said.
LOL@Fred
Trying to picture how that'd look here on AT.
I love using the little soaps & shampoos from hotels and cruiseships - I also bring home the gold-foil-wrapped pillow chocolates to enjoy at home as well...
...'cause after coming back to the cabin at 2 am, it's much too late to eat a chocolate!
"Who wants their home to feel like a hotel???"
Who wants to come home to dirty clothes on the floor, an unmade bed with craptastic mismatched sheets and a filthy bathroom with damp towels?
Given the choice, I'll take a hotel or shipboard cabin every time!
The easiest way to make your home feel like a hotel would be to move your home to Rue des Ecoles, in the quatrieme. A barely working elevator and a steep staircase and you've got a hotel in the sublimest of cities.
But seriously, folks, changing your sheets, making your bed, stocking your shower with all the little amenities, such as Occitane en Provence, etc., and getting rid of clutter goes a long way to making your home more hotel like. Also, along with the sheets, wash your towels once or twice a year, throw a little comet in the bathtub...you get the idea.
I completely understand the idea behind the bedroom as a hotel room. Because it's really another way of expressing that whole bedroom as a retreat idea. The idea of getting away from it all, being relaxed without laundry or tv or whatever distracts you normally.
That said, I never understand why this is inextricably linked to hotel DECOR which to my tastes is usually a bland sort of luxurious "everyman" decor even in the nicest hotels. It is a type of decor that goes out it's way not to jar anyone so it's very subdued. Which is conductive to relaxation for sure, but not individuality.
So for me, when I come home from a trip, I'm SO ready to get back to my own room. It's relaxing and soothing and at the same time like nothing you'd find in a hotel room. Maybe it's more of a state of mind?
And here I was wondering how to make a hotel room feel like home.
Wait, don't hotels always talk about how staying with them is like staying at home?
Warm cookies and milk at my bedside usually does the trick. Just don't eat the cookies in bed ;-)
I guess we're progressing from yesterdays
"10 Tips for Feeling at Home in a Hotel"
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/travel/10-tips-for-feeling-at-home-in-a-hotel-121633
Buy a bathrobe and laze about.
I really don't want my bedroom to feel like a hotel. I travel a bit with work and though I have stayed in some nice hotels (and a couple that were not so nice), they all fall far short of home to me.
I think hotels have a "surface" type of cleanliness to them, but when I stay in a hotel I fully realize that the day before I arrived a long series of strange people have been crapping in the toilet and touching all of the bathroom fixtures, spitting in the sink, touching the remotes and the furniture (and goodness knows what else), doing who knows what on the upholstered furniture (I always avoid sitting on the the easy chair or sofa no matter how inviting it looks), dropping who knows what on the carpet, etc. Lysol is wonderful, but I think an average hotels must test its limits of its effectiveness. I experience hotels as germ-filled places despite the superficial sense of orderliness that can appear at first glance.
Although my home and bedroom are not always as neat or clean as I would like them to be, I do have a good idea of the types of germs and activities that have taken place there and I know that the stray hair in the sink is my own.
I recently reorganized my bedroom with the intent to make it feel more like a hotel! I kept my style decor (which isn't very hotelish at all), but made sure to keep the tops of the dresser and bedside table clutter free, storing books and jewelry inside drawers. I absolutely love it! Waking up to a fresh sunny room with minimal clutter is a great way to start the day!
Mid-C Frank, if this picture is the hotel room look we are going for, count me in.
@fred - i'm still laughing
"...when I stay in a hotel I fully realize that the day before I arrived a long series of strange people have been..."
Geex - Put it that way, and it's a wonder anyone manages to leave their house at all...
good lord kworld how do you live like that?
Count me in as one who loves my bedroom to feel like a very nice hotel room (but with more personal, less generic decor).
I think a big factor is the bed and linens. Hotel beds are BIG and comfy, the linens not just utilitarian but also very pretty and often of varying textures. You may only need 1 or 2 pillows, but a hotel room bed always offers multiple pillows, some of various sizes, shapes and covers.
Also - get RID of the clutter, keep it very clean, add fresh flowers.
While I may not always have all the money I need to travel, the thing that really holds me back is my job. 10 days/wk vacay?! Blah! After 3 years, you get 14. Grrreeaat.
I LOVE to travel, I have to feel like I'm not "here" or even in this country sometimes (have my trip booked to West Africa already, next year! woohoo!) As soon as I moved into my house I went to work to make it look like something, some time, someplace ELSE. So I am a big fan of this concept of making your room look like a hotel.
A hotel doesn't have to be bland. They aren't talking about style, so much as concepts/rules that nice hotels follow that add to that relaxed feeling we get from travel. After my trip next year, I'm going to build a fijian-esque hut, or sleeping lodge at the far back of the yard, in front of the bamboo-plants backdrop so I can have some tea there in the afternoon and pretend I'm on a tropical beach somewhere. Right now I'm working on making my bedroom feel like a south-african treetop hotel.
I want my bed to feel as good as a great hotel mattress (mine is sagging), but can't afford a new one right now.