The backyard's benefits

The economic turmoil of recent years has had many effects on the way we live our lives, some of them more profound than others. For example, we spend less than we used to, we plan more, and our tendency to see things pessimistically has increased by a sizable margin. 

Not all of these changes in attitude and behavior have been bad, though. Some of them might even turn out to be beneficial for humanity as a whole. Now, I don’t want to claim that staycation, the backyard-barbecue-pool-version of an actual vacation, is one of the more significant changes, but there are definitely a number of reasons why we may count it among the Big Crash’s more useful   consequences.

While the idea of “going on staycation” is nothing entirely new, in the wake of recession more and more members of the middle class have been forced to “tighten their belts”, which gradually turned it into a mainstream notion. As it turns out, not knowing if you’ll still have a job tomorrow – or if so, how long it will take your spouse to find a new one – can be kind of a mood spoiler. It certainly lessens the historical dignity of the pyramids when you have to think about how many incoming bills you could have paid with the money you’re spending on this family trip. 

But even though staycation has become an acceptable alternative to traditional vacation, there are many who still look down upon it as a demonstration of laziness, cheapness or a lack in imagination. Going abroad, on the other hand, is still taken as a sign of cultural curiosity, initiative and a cosmopolitan mind, which is just not true anymore. I’d like to present you with reasons why staying at home can be just as great as going on vacation abroad. 

It is a well-established cliché that vacations are usually horrible and that memory turns them into lovely events full of joy and hilarious occurrences. However, clichés exist for a reason. Think about it. Isn’t there at least one vacation on which you would have loved to have a magic button that could transport you back home directly? If you admit that much, it’s likely that there are more of them. All things considered, vacations are basically nothing more than fairly expensive bets. You pay a lot of money beforehand and hope everything will be as you imagined it, but actually there are myriads of things that can go wrong and usually at least some of them do. Flight delays, lost baggage, failures of transportation systems, bad weather and problems with the hotel are just a few. Add to them the often existing intercultural gap and language barriers and the mess multiplies.

       

 All of this you avoid when staying at home. First, you save hundreds, often thousands of euros for transportation and accommodation which you can use to do really cool things in your own backyard. Depending on where you live, there’s a wide variety of things you can do with, say, 2000 euros. If you live in a city, you can enjoy a lot of the cultural activities it offers, which most of us never take the time for during the year – exhibitions, shows, plays, concerts that you never would have seen otherwise crave your attention. If you don’t live in a city, you’ll probably have a house and a garden, in which case you can use the money to transform your backyard into a constant paradise of recreation and wonder. Think barbeque, think pool parties, think Beethoven underneath a starry sky. What’s best about a staycation in comparison to a vacation, though, is that you can be one hundred percent certain that you’ll like the destination of your staycation – why else would you live there?

One argument often used in favor of going on vacation is the chance to explore different cultures and broaden your horizon. This may be the case for a set of people who are eager to learn new things even in their free time, but in my experience most people really prefer recreation over education. Especially if young children are added into the equation, it becomes very hard to argue for a castle-sightseeing tour from Scotland to Southern Italy. The realistic outcome all too often is a secluded bathing resort offering childcare services as well as a spa and a cocktail bar. The foreign-country aspect then becomes quickly reduced to the woods or plains you can observe from within your little fenced-in paradise. The irony of this is that many of the families who choose such a vacation are often not even familiar with all the recreational opportunities near their own home. Why travel 1000+ kilometers to drink Bordeaux in a French vineyard if there’s an exquisite wine bar just around the corner?

Finally, there are a few more minor advantages staycations offer I’d like to point out. The first one is company. Have you ever really wanted to go on a certain trip with certain friends, but they couldn’t because of financial or work-related reasons? Even though it would have been great to have them, you wouldn’t have invited them just for their company, right? With staycations, you can just do that. If after days of solitary reading, swimming and sunbathing you discover that it would be neat to have some friends with you, why not invite them over? You can relax together at home just as well as at some beach.

Two last benefits of staycation I want to mention have to do with security and the environment. As you know, holiday seasons are a very busy time for criminal individuals. Everybody knows the stories: empty houses, stolen cars, damaged windows – all while the owners were away. Because it is a fact that some living areas are just more likely to be uninhabited during a few weeks in the summer or in the winter. It would be negligent of burglars not to exploit this. They can’t, however, if you’re on staycation. You could even have your neighbors fund your beverages since you’ll do them a service by maintaining lively activities near their homes while they’re away.

Last but not least, the environment would benefit greatly if more people decided to leave the car in the garage, not buy a plane or train ticket and just stay put. The earth’s atmosphere could surely use a short break from its constant swallowing of our emissions. 

Until now, staycation has been vacation’s  slightly ragged little step-brother, but as more and more people chose to adopt it, it turns out to be a more than just an alternative.