5 Tips to Survive Hotel Life During a PCS

You’ve arrived at your new duty station. You settle into the hotel room you booked weeks ago, and by settle in, I mean you unpacked your suitcases and totes.

You filled the fridge with the few groceries you just picked up and gave the meager remains of the travel snacks a designated shelf.

Might as well… You have a month before your on-post home is ready.

This room is home until then.

How do you deal with the cabin fever? The potential boredom?

I’m in the trenches of this right now, and these five things are making all the difference for my family:

1. Stay in a hotel that offers a hot breakfast (not just continental), like a Candlewood Suites. One meal you don’t have to worry about aside from getting to the lobby on time.

2. Stay in a hotel with a kitchenette in the room, so you don’t have to eat out for the other two meals.

3. Recognize that the kitchenette will not enable you to cook everything you would normally make. Don’t plan on four-course meals. Plan to eat random assortments of things.

4. Know that it’s okay to be bored of cooking the same 3-5 things, and go out for meals, even if you hoped not to. Create some wiggle room in your food budget if you can. It will ease your stress. (Don’t you have enough of that, what with sharing a small space with your spouse and children—whom you love dearly—but with whom you hadn’t anticipated being squished with between two beds and a coffee machine?) But I digress.

The room in the budget for meals out gives you the best possible thing—an excuse to get out of the room. Which brings me to my last two tips which I will roll into one:

5. While you and your family are out of the hotel, explore and, if you’ve connected with people via social media at your new duty station, take this time to meet them!

And a bonus tip: Remember that this hotel life is only temporary. You’ve got this!