Why holidays should mean getting out, not staying in

There’s a great temptation when the holidays roll around to do what seems easiest: stay put. After all, your home is full of familiar comforts. Your kettle knows your favourite mug. Your couch has moulded itself into the perfect dip to fit your weary body. Your Wi-Fi recognises you instantly, unlike that awkward moment in a guesthouse when you type “holiday2025!” ten times before realising the password actually has three exclamation marks and a capital H.

But let’s be honest. Staying home during your holidays is a bit like deciding to have a party but only inviting one friend.

It feels safe, it feels predictable, and it feels cheap. Yet, after a few days, you start to realise that the party is a dud. The laundry basket keeps whispering, the gutters look suspiciously clogged, and the fridge seems to judge you for daring to enjoy a sandwich while on “holiday.”

Travelling, on the other hand, is an act of joyful rebellion against the ordinary. It’s standing up and saying: “Not today, leaky tap. You can keep dripping until I come back.”

At home, your irritations stay glued to you like burrs on a hiking sock. The neighbour’s dog that insists on barking through your afternoon nap, the traffic drone outside your window, the family WhatsApp group pinging with demands for Christmas pudding. Staying home means staying in the middle of all these everyday annoyances.

Step onto a plane, bus, or even just into your car with a packed cooler, and suddenly those irritations shrink. The neighbour’s dog is a hundred kilometres behind you, and the only WhatsApp notifications you notice are friends gasping at the photos of your first campfire.

Travelling doesn’t erase problems, but it does put them out of reach long enough for you to breathe properly again.

A clear head is a happy head. Holidays are supposed to reset us. Yet staying at home often feels like pressing “pause” rather than “refresh.” The dishes still pile up, the bills are still in the post, and the walls feel too familiar.

Changing your location, even for a few days, clears mental cobwebs faster than any motivational podcast.

A mountain view does what no lavender candle can. A stretch of foreign beach, with its tide pulling at your ankles, resets priorities better than another weekend of Netflix.

Travel reminds you that life is not confined to your lounge. There is bigger, stranger, lovelier stuff out there, and sometimes you need to see it to remember.

Here’s an overlooked benefit: leaving your house in less-than-perfect condition can actually be liberating. At home, you keep noticing the dust bunny colony under the bed and the mysterious stain on the sofa that refuses to confess its origins. But when you travel, you walk out the front door and leave those flaws behind like a client who still owes you money.

Sure, you’ll return eventually, but by then the sight of your unwashed floors will feel less like a defeat and more like an oddly comforting sign that you have lived. And in the meantime, you’ll be too busy sipping wine in a vineyard or discovering a hidden bakery down a cobbled street to worry about your home’s imperfections.

People often argue that staying home is cheaper. It is, technically. But what’s the point of saving all your hard-earned cash just to blow it on yet another toaster, or to watch it evaporate into utility bills? Money, when exchanged for experiences, multiplies in value.

That seafood dinner you had in Cape Town with the live jazz trio and the waiter who danced while serving dessert will remain vivid long after the receipt has faded. The mokoro you rented on the lazy Okavango River will keep reappearing in conversation.

A holiday can become a kind of savings account, but the currency is memory, not rands.

Travelling isn’t only about postcard views. It’s about being someone slightly different for a while. At home, you’re the person who must vacuum on Sundays and remember the bin collection schedule. On holiday, you are the person who eats breakfast at 11, laughs too loudly at the table next to strangers, and takes photos of sunsets without shame.

You see yourself in a new light when you’re somewhere else. The version of you that emerges on holiday might even have better jokes.

So, yes, staying at home is easier, safer, and cheaper. But it also keeps you trapped in the same loop, replaying the same soundtrack.

Travelling, even if only a few hours away, lets you rewrite the script. It silences the barking dog, quiets the dishes, and helps you remember that life is not a series of chores but a string of moments.

Leave the dirty house. Spend the money. Clear your head.

Do this, because holidays at home might rest your body, but holidays away revive your spirit. And in the end, that’s the whole point of a holiday: not just to escape work, but to come back seeing the world, and yourself, with fresh eyes.

Pack the bag.

The laundry will still be waiting.
The house won’t run away.
But you should.

𝖶𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝖻𝗈𝗎𝗇𝖽𝗅𝖾𝗌𝗌 𝗉𝖺𝗌𝗌𝗂𝗈𝗇 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗐𝖺𝗇𝖽𝖾𝗋𝗅𝗎𝗌𝗍,
𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝙴𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚘𝚛.