Right before you go on vacation, there’s always a hectic to-do list. This episode covers 11 things to do right before you leave for vacation.
11 Things to Do Right Before You Leave for Vacation
Last week or several days leading up to vacation…
- Notify Credit Card companies (or banks)
- Verify your cell phone service
- Home Security or trusted neighbor
- Confirm trip reservations/print off or download what you will need
- Make any advanced payments for bills
- Check Weather (travel day, destination, return travel day, and home on return)
- Clean out food/trash
- Leave travel info with family or friends
- Clean out your wallet/purse or transfer items to your travel gear
- Stop mail or arrange pick-up
- Put away outside stuff (patio, garden, etc.)
Question: Which of these items do you usually forget before your vacations?
Please let us know in the All Things Travel Podcast Facebook group!
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Ryan and Shayne are both Travel Advisers with Creating Magic Vacations, an authorized Disney Vacation Planner. Feel free to reach out to us for a free quote and to start making magical memories.
- Contact Ryan at DisneyTravelDad.Com.
- Contact Shayne at Shayne.fun.
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Episode 140 Transcripts
Episodes are transcribed with artificial intelligence, so there are likely some highly amusing translations!
Ryan: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to All Things Travel right before you go on vacation. There’s always a hectic to-do list Today, Shayne and I have a few tips to keep your home organized and ready for you to enjoy your upcoming travel. So Shayne, what do you always forget to do before you go on vacation?
Shayne: Set my alarm earlier so I can arrive at the airport at a reasonable, relaxing time.
Ryan: So you, so it’s always like the morning of, you’re like running around trying to do things.
Shayne: there’s always, I’m always comprising a list of things that I should have done the night before.
Ryan: You know, I’m pretty good with that. I, I, I pack early. I keep my packing list of, of like last minute things. I’m pretty good. There’s been a couple times where trips have kind of snuck up on me and, things like that.
Shayne: s [00:01:00] seriously though, I, I’m usually packed and ready to go. I just don’t get up as early as would be more comfortable.
Ryan: Well, you could be like me and just not sleep well before a trip and so therefore you’re, you’re
Shayne: Oh, I don’t, I don’t How about you? Is there anything that you always forget before vacation?
Ryan: whatever reason right before we go on a trip, my work tasks. Trying to pile up. Like, not that I’ve, not that I haven’t done them, but yet I keep getting new things that come in and like, so I’m constantly trying like to the very last second of getting, cuz I really, I mean I always work when I’m traveling, but I always try to clear the deck as much as I can before I, before I, I leave.
But I always will inevitably just get to the point where I’m like, okay, I’ve gotta deal with this at the airport, or I’ve gotta deal with this.
Shayne: You need to quit letting us know that you’re traveling cuz then everyone says, oh, Ryan’s about to travel. I better ask you my
question now.
Ryan: Exactly. There you go.
Well, we have some [00:02:00] quick tips to keep you organized and specifically for kind of your, your house stuff or your, your day-to-day things. What are some, what are some tips to keep you organized and ready to go for vacation mode? Most families are confused and overwhelmed when planning a vacation.
We work with you to plan the perfect trip for your interests, saving you time, money, and stress.
Shayne: We would love to help you plan your next amazing vacation.
Ryan: Reach out to me atRyan@creatingmagicvacations.com. That’s R Y A n, at Creating Magic Vacations dot. So this list that we’re gonna talk about today, Shayne, is kind of in the last week or even the last day, depending on kind of your, your workflow, your life flow, you know how these fit in. And the first thing to do, especially if you’re going international, Is to contact your credit card companies and your bank to let them know of your travels so [00:03:00] you don’t have any unexpected hiccups when you’re trying to get cash or trying to use your credit card.
Shayne: I’ve heard some people say that you don’t have to do this anymore, but it just takes a couple of minutes. I would, I would get on the side or call ’em and, and take care of it.
Ryan: and I know with my credit card, I don’t have to do this. But I know with my bank they really prefer that, especially internationally, that, that I let them know. If nothing else, just so you have peace of mind that, that they’ve got your back while, while you’re.
Shayne: Sure, yeah, I’m gonna, if you let ’em know you’re going to France and there’s charges showing up in Croatia, then they know that they’re probably not.
Ryan: Exactly what’s the next one?
Shayne: Find out ahead of time about your phone service. Are you gonna be long enough that maybe you should pause it? Are you going to need your phone overseas and want to add an international plan? Do you already have coverage there? Find out what your phone service is going to be like there.
Ryan: Absolutely. And I, and I would put with this, you know, if there’s a way, if you’re gonna, if you know you’re [00:04:00] gonna need wifi for work or you know that, you know, you’re somebody that uses wifi a lot, maybe get to know what the wifi situation is gonna be, where you’re staying.
Shayne: And certainly have a V P N installed on your phone so that you can get inside protective tunnel to make sure that your data is secure.
Ryan: So the third tip is contact your home security company, or if you don’t use a home security company, maybe a trusted neighbor, just to let them know that you’re gonna be out of town and to keep an eye on the house.
Shayne: There’s a lot of people might put flyers on your doorstep or in your mailbox or something, so, even if you have your mail held, There might be clues from other people that show that you are away for a few days and
Ryan: Right. Amazon boxes or things like that, that get delivered in another way. Absolutely. If you have somebody in your neighborhood that you trust, let them know you’re gonna be gone. Ask them to, to kind of keep an eye on your house or obviously if you already work with a security company reach out to them.
Shayne: Speaking of Amazon [00:05:00] boxes, I’ll have a little bit of a tip for number five coming up.
Ryan: Okay. What’s number four?
Shayne: Confirm your trip reservations and don’t rely completely on your phone and having digital copies of everything. Go ahead and print off or download what you’re gonna need so that you have those hard copies available.
Ryan: You know, I’m a little old school. I will print off confirmations of things and I have a, a folder that I carry. , and you would be surprised how many times it’s, it’s been better for me to pull those out than to find something on my phone or when I haven’t been able to find it on my phone because maybe the wifi is not as good.
Or maybe I didn’t download something before I had to go on airplane mode. And those paper copies work every time.
Shayne: And it may not be your phone. You might be somewhere and the site you need, maybe their systems are down, or maybe there’s no, maybe the phones are down or the wifi is down at at your destination, and you won’t have access to those things that you need.[00:06:00]
Ryan: absolutely number. Make any advanced payments that you would normally make ahead of time so that you don’t have to worry about ’em when you’re on a trip. So this may be bills or things that are coming up that, that you, you know, are gonna be due while you’re gonna be gone. Take care of those so that you don’t have to worry about things Lapsing.
Shayne: Now this one reminded me of something that happened. when we had our longer trip to Spain, I was having fun, you know, working at my mother-in-law’s place, walking around the city, and one day I thought I should check my emails and, you know, of course this is before I got into. Travel professionally.
So I didn’t have that email address to check, but I went and looked and I noticed from Amazon that they had ordered, and in the next couple of days we’re about to deliver all of my subscribe and save items. of course we had our, the rest of our mail held for while we were gone, but, Amazon was gonna deliver with their own truck.
So then I had to go and cancel all those orders and spend some time working on getting those canceled. Where if anything that you [00:07:00] have, not just Amazon, subscribe and save, but whatever you subscription services you have that are gonna deliver, whether it’s food, dog, food, clothes, deodorant. Make sure that you schedule those or cancel those months deliveries so that you don’t get those items while you’re away, cuz they may not come through the postal service with your and, and get held with the rest of your mail.
Ryan: Well, Shayne, before we get to the rest of the list, I wanna know where in the world does all things travel?
Shayne: Greensboro, North Carolina.
Ryan: Greensboro, North Carolina. Welcome. One of my good friends went to grad school at UNC Greensboro, so it’s good to hear from you.
Shayne: I think we need to move North Carolina up to the top of our All Things Travel visit list because we have a lot of towns in North Carolina in our top download locations,
Ryan: Well, that’s great to.
Shayne: and I think that while we’re there, we should go hang out at Macau’s Public House.
Ryan: That sounds like our kind of place [00:08:00] in greens.
Shayne: In case you couldn’t tell by the name. It’s a really cool, kind of a smallish Celtic bar with a nice patio and food that looks absolutely delightful.
Ryan: Well, hey Greensboro, we would love to buy you a Guinness or a Smit at uls and do us a favor, reach out to me either on the Facebook group or via email I have a nice little gift for being featured on the show today.
Shayne: And to make sure you hear where in the world is all. Thanks. Travel next week. Be sure to subscribe to the show or follow the show so that you never miss any of our travel tips, travel ideas or travel stories.
Ryan: So Shayne, what’s our sixth tip?
Shayne: Check the weather.
Ryan: Check the weather and not just for travel. When should you check the weather for
Shayne: You wanna see what the weather’s gonna be like to see if you have to plan for a possible delay when you’re departing and when you’re returning. And you wanna know what the weather’s going to be like while you’re there. Cuz maybe you need a coat, maybe you need [00:09:00] short sleeves, probably needs sunscreen.
Ryan: Some weather you can look at a pretty good ahead of time. Others, you have to wait till a couple days before you know if you’re going someplace. You know, every time I go to Cancun, we freak out about the weather cuz it says it’s gonna rain all day, every day, and that’s never the case.
It’s just rain is always in the forecast. But I want to give you an, an example of returning. You know, when we left Indiana to travel to Hawaii, I talked about that last week. You know, it was pretty mid fifties, you know, nice, comfortable fall weather. When we returned back to Chicago at midnight, it was 18 degrees
Shayne: I hope
you.
cracked a jacket.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly. So you know, there was no jacket in the car, there was nothing like that. So, you know, kind of thinking about that ahead of time could have given us a little more comfort than what’s warm this car up as quickly as possible.
Shayne: You know what? I think I would’ve not packed the big coat for the trip to Kauai, and I would’ve [00:10:00] just been okay with just freezing for a few minutes
Ryan: Oh yeah, the coat. The coat would’ve stayed in the car. The coat wasn’t gonna go to Hawaii, so number seven is clean out any. As far as, you know, perishables in your, in your refrigerator, I go through and I’ll free stuff that I can for when we get back, clean out your trash, your recycling, all that kind of stuff so that you’re not coming back to unwanted you know, food smells and whatnot.
Shayne: Yeah, we will plan the meals around the trip just to make sure that there’s nothing smelly in the gar in the garbage cans. Like we get it, our trash picked up once a week, so we don’t want to put some, you know, I have to cook some chicken and have that out there from Wednesday until Monday.
So we always plan around to make sure that nothing like that’s gonna be out in the bin.
Ryan: What about number eight, Shayne?
Shayne: Leave some travel information with your family and friends. So you want to let people know where you’re going, where you’re gonna be maybe a, a check-in time so that if they [00:11:00] don’t hear from you at this certain time, from that certain place, they know, maybe they should be concerned. And then just in case anyone else needs to reach you for any reason, somebody knows where you.
Ryan: Number nine is clean out your wallet or purse. So get rid of those receipts, get rid of things that you don’t wanna travel with. Or something that my wife does is she actually has a separate wallet that she travels with, so she will move stuff over there. And make sure that she has everything she needs for the trip.
So again, you’re not taking, you know, in my wallet, Shayne, I mayShayne, you know, like 10 receipts or something for over the last you know, couple of weeks. And I, I don’t want to travel with that stuff. I want to clean out as much as I can.
Shayne: It’s kind of a security issue because you’re gonna have to dig through those to find the cash or the card that you need. And that means you’re gonna be holding your wallet out that much longer. And that it’s just, it might make it a little more stressful too, if you’re wanting to find something quickly and you’re having to dig through all that clutter.
It’ll be a lot less stressful if all that stuff isn’t there. And something related that we also do is that we [00:12:00] have ring. That we wear when we travel, depending on where we go versus our usual
wedding rings, just
Ryan: I’ve, I’ve heard I’ve, we don’t do this, but I’ve certainly heard of people doing it. Yeah.
Shayne: Well, and, and it’s because my stepdad on a trip one time lost his wedding ring, and it really bugged him for a long time that he didn’t have the ring that my mom gave him originally.
Only
Ryan: So this next one, Shayne, you already kind of alluded to what is number 10?
Shayne: stop your mail or arrange for someone to pick it up for you. So you can go to your post office and have them hold the mail and not deliver it. You can either go to the post office and pick it up when you return, or you can have them deliver it all to you at some point after your trip.
Ryan: Yeah. And, and I would say along with this, you know, you, you talked about Amazon boxes earlier, you know, my wife and I are independently ordering things either for business or for the family. And so checking in and knowing, you know, knowing who’s ordered what, and, and you know, when things are coming because [00:13:00] it.
You know, you may not know that. And so coordinating that with, with people who are getting your mail are, we’re lucky enough our in-laws live close enough that they just come over and grab our stuff every day. But, you know, coordinating that with either the post office or, or the people who are gonna do that.
And the last tip. Is to think about stuff you have outside your house. So maybe pulling in patio chairs, pulling in the grill, not only for safety because you’re not gonna be around and you don’t want people tampering with that stuff. But you know, just like last night here we had a really nasty windstorm and things started blowing around and you know, if I hadn’t been home for five days after that stuff was gonna be laying in my yard.
And so kind of cleaning up the outside of the house to minimize that.
Shayne: Yeah, we’re pretty used to having to make sure that everything is secure or stowed away, especially during the spring and summer when we have the, crazy storms here in Texas.
Ryan: right. So, Shayne, as we kind of wrap up here, which [00:14:00] of these is something that you don’t normally do, that you may think about doing next time you.
Shayne: I have to admit to you, Ryan, that ever since that time when I noticed all those orders from Amazon that I had to go back and cancel and spend that time on, I am. We’re very thorough about all of these things. There’s not any of these that we miss out on now.
Ryan: That is really good. I would say for me, we’re kind of lucky that we have family that live really close so we don’t have to worry about people looking at our over our house and getting mail and, and all the. That kind of stuff, but I don’t always do a good job of leaving information with them.
It’s always more like, Hey, we’re going and doing this, and you know, you’ll see in our pictures where we are. I probably need to do a bet, little better job of leaving some information along the way.
Shayne: Yeah, and we could probably have a. conversation about whether or not you should post those pictures while you’re
Ryan: I know I, yes,
Shayne: I would be guilty of that too. So I can’t, I don’t have much to say there.
Ryan: No, I, I totally understand your reasoning behind that. Absolutely. [00:15:00] And hey, what did we leave off the list? Fellow travelers, folks on our Facebook group let us know today or this week, what are some things that you always make sure that you do before you travel? That should have been on our list here today.
Shayne: and to make sure that you have a reason to take care of all these things. We would love to help you plan your next amazing vacation.
Ryan: You can reach out to me atRyan@creatingmagicvacations.com. That’s R Y A n, at creating magic vacations.com.
Shayne: Most families are confused and overwhelmed when it comes to planning a vacation. We work with you to plan a trip that’s perfect for your interests, saving you time, money, and stress.
I’ll have a little bit, little bit a little bit, little bit a little bit, a little bit, little bit little bit of a tip