Finding and Loving Your Home Away from Home: Travel Nursing Housing Hacks
Working as a traveling nurse can be an adventure but can also feel depressing as you move from one city to the next and also miss your family at home. So what’s the best way to tackle homesickness and be able to do your duties as a travel nurse?
We recommend personalizing your space and making it feel like home. If done right, it can improve your mental health and make you more comfortable being indoors and away from your loving family.
So for travel nurses looking for ways to make their temporary stay feel comfortable and welcoming, this article will provide some useful tips. Keep reading!
Always Pack Light as a Travel Nurse
Before exploring the best way to make your temporary home feel comfortable, let’s talk about the importance of packing light. First of all, packing light makes it much easier to move, especially since you’ll be changing location frequently.
So when packing, your focus should be on essential and versatile clothing that you can mix and match based on the season. The same goes for gadgets and toiletries, as they should be portable and light to save space and weight.
For example, you can get a compact cooking set or collapsible laundry basket that’s easy to carry and won’t feel bulky in your travel bag. We recommend this because it makes relocation and unpacking much easier, which you need to make your new space comfortable.
1. Unpack Immediately
The first thing you should do once you reach your new temporary home is to unpack and organize your things immediately. Why? Because living out of boxes and storage bins makes you feel unsettled, like a visitor in your own house.
So you need to first offload all your belongings and allocate spaces for them. This means shoes, pots, clothes, utensils, and other things should be in a designated place. If you brought some decorating materials, you should set them up immediately.
However, if the journey is too tiring and you’re too spent on extensive unpacking, you can offload a few and then continue the following day. But if you feel energetic and can lay out your load, we recommend doing it to create a familiar interior space.
2. Personalize your Space
If it were your permanent home, the best way to personalize the space would be to paint the wall or change the furniture. But since that isn’t possible at the moment, you can explore less permanent options.
For example, you can bring framed pictures of your family and other loved ones to make the place feel a bit more familiar. Also, adding your favorite blanket to the bed can make the space feel more welcoming.
To deepen that sense of familiarity, you can use your favorite air fresheners, scented candles, or similar items to fill your home with a soothing, familiar aroma. This can significantly make you feel at ease and more at home since you are in the same atmosphere you had at home.
3. Set Up your Kitchen
Once you’ve set up the decorations and familiar scents, the next focus is the kitchen. This area is important because all hardworking travel nurses need to eat, and eating out instead of making a meal will cost you a lot of money.
To save money and still have a full stomach, you need to summon your inner chef and work on creating home-cooked meals. This means stocking on kitchen essentials such as spices, cooking oil, your preferred ingredients, and other items that you’ll need to create your desired dish.
However, you may need to either buy or bring along some storage containers for leftovers so you can reheat and enjoy them later in the day. But regardless of how you set up your kitchen, know that it’s fundamental for feeling at home and well-fed.
4. Make your Bed Comfortable
One reason you’ll start to miss home is because your bed doesn’t feel accommodating. This may be due to the mattress firmness level, the type of bedsheet you use, and pillow quality. So, in this case, we recommend making this space feel close to home by investing in more high-quality items.
This means getting a set of high-quality sheets, a mattress that feels “just right”, and some cozy throw pillows that keep you feeling warm and comfortable. Also, consider getting a comfortable blanket, either one that’s heated or feels very fluffy to the touch.
Doing these will make you feel at home and miss your original bed less. Besides, you need a cozy place to rest when you return from a tiring shift at the end of the day.
5. Prepare Entertainment
Too much work with no relief can make you feel burnt out really quickly. To make working as a travel nurse easier to handle, we recommend having something to keep you entertained while you are free.
This can be your favorite books, video games, or streaming devices. Other items are acceptable too, but what matters is that they are able to keep your boredom at bay. Also, note that you don’t have to be indoors all day.
You can take a walk, go for a jog, or hike some trails in your free time. Besides helping you fight boredom, this is also a good way to explore your new area and possibly take some photos.
6. Learn to Enjoy your Own Company
It’s important to note that sometimes, you will feel too tired to enjoy a jog, watch a movie, or read a book. In this situation, you are left with nothing but your thoughts, which many may find intimidating.
But to truly feel comfortable in your space, you have to feel relaxed with yourself. So make peace with your thoughts when you are alone; use the time to plan your next day, review the previous day, or just enjoy random thoughts.
You can also take yourself out on a movie date, shopping spree, or something similar and just enjoy the moment with no one else but yourself. This peace is quite crucial in feeling comfortable in your temporary home and being calm at work.
Bonus: Connect with Your Colleagues
Humans are a social species, which means no matter the situation, you need human interaction for balanced mental health. So, consider being closer to your fellow nurses at your travel nursing jobs.
Even beyond the hospital, you can organize group outings like movie nights or dinner dates to hang out and get to know each other better. You can also befriend strangers in the area, starting with local shopkeepers when you patronize their services.
This interaction replicates the friendship you have at home and can make your stay away from home more comfortable. Give it a try!
Conclusion
As we’ve mentioned before, being away from home on travel nurse jobs is an exciting experience because you get to travel to new locations. But at the same time, it can become challenging as you battle with homesickness.
To feel more comfortable in your new, temporary space, we recommend personalizing it with pictures, scents, and other familiar things. Afterward, set up the kitchen so you can make meals that you enjoy, which will cost less than eating out all the time.
At the same time, ensure to invest in high-quality bedding and entertainment systems so you can rest and refresh your mind on your off days. But despite everything, ensure to build a close connection with your colleagues and others around you so as to maintain a healthy social life while working travel jobs.
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