Home Even in Hotels: 6 Ways to Cozy Up Your Room

Hotel stays are a common part of relocation. Even after you’ve moved to your new home, you might travel more often than before as you head back to see friends and family.

Relocating is stressful. Travel is stressful. Transforming your hotel room into a cozy haven can bring calm, familiarity and ease, and make it feel more like home.

If you can, choose to drive instead of fly. That way you can pack everything you need for a relaxing hotel stay. Otherwise, just select a few suggestions from this list:

1.     Pictures of your loved ones (including pets) quickly warm your heart. Soft-sided picture frames pack especially well.

2.     Nuts, protein bars, loose leaf tea (with your own special mug), and other staples. Nourishing your body with wise choices keeps you healthy while on the road.

3.     Luxurious pillowcase. Having a high thread count case next to your face is wonderful. Choose a color that will stand out from the hotel’s own linens.

4.     Comfortable slippers. The ability to slip your feet into soft footwear is a divine indulgence.

5.     Essential oils. A few drops of lavender on your pillowcase or in your shower can instantly calm your nervous system.

6.     Shower towel wrap. Envelop yourself in softness and warmth, instead of settling for those sometime scratchy and small hotel towels.

To make it even easier, keep these items in a special soft-sided storage pack that is ready at all times – just grab and go.

When you arrive at your hotel, take the time to make a personal connection with the front desk staff. Let them know why you’re there, where you’re from, and find out who they are as well. This will make it feel like a neighborhood, not a hotel. You’ll feel the difference when you come and go.

It takes some upfront planning to transform your hotel room into a haven, but it’s well worth the effort.

Thriving in Transition

At some point in our lives, we will all relocate. It’s inevitable. The one constant in life is change, and you’re destined to go through many relocations – both internal and geographic.

The principles highlighted in the following story have helped guide me and my clients through many of life’s most challenging transitions.

A weed and a tree were growing near one another on the bank of a swiftly running river in the jungle. The tree was shaming the tiny weed by comparing their height, strength and sturdiness. The humble weed simply bowed her head and asked to be pardoned.

The next day, a heavy rain came, flooding the river and eroding its banks. The strong, stiff tree was pulled down instantly. The weed, however, bent down, flattened herself, and let the water flow over her.

Once the river receded, the weed rose up, looking for her mighty neighbor. From far away, she heard the tree calling to her – lamenting his own lack of suppleness, humility and simplicity.

Whether you thrive or dive during transition depends, in part, on how supple you are. What life situation is raining down on you right now? Where are you stiff, and where are you supple?

Set an intention to bend around a situation rather than muscling through, and see how much easier it is to weather your current life storm.

Stay Fit, Even in Temporary Housing

Temporary stays are often inevitable (and sometimes dreaded!) when a family is relocating from one zip code to another. This is due to the lag time created when the employee starts the new job before the house is sold, or if the kids are completing the school year before the move.

Unfortunately, between welcome baskets filled with microwave popcorn and chocolate bars, loud music playing in the stairwell, and postage stamp-sized fitness rooms, temporary housing can wreak havoc on one’s physical and emotional health.

After all, it only takes about 30 days to create a bad habit or undo your good habits, which is quite often the minimum amount of time spent living in temporary housing.
Daniel Corridon, CEO of Stay Fit Housing, recognized how challenging it is to stay healthy when you’re away from home for extended periods, and so he created a solution:

Stay Fit Housing is a company that provides a unique and holistic offering to those wanting to keep up their fitness habits during a temporary stay. Stay Fit Housing is committed to helping their guests maintain or increase their overall well-being.

Leases at Stay Fit are 30 days or more, and include fully furnished apartments, a consultation with a Stay Fit health and fitness expert, and 10 fitness classes at local clubs. They also provide nutrient-rich food and drinks (no Snickers bars or microwave popcorn!). All of this value for a price that is less than you’d pay for a luxury hotel.

If you’d like to maintain your wellness lifestyle wherever your transition takes you across the United States, contact Stay Fit.

Relocation is a Growing Industry

“In a 2013 survey of more than 600 global organizations, auditing firm KPMG LLP found that 83 percent of multinational companies expect the number of their global employee relocations to increase or remain the same, presenting challenges to HR and relocation coordinators in charge of facilitating smooth transitions.” – SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management)

To address this growth, more and more relocation resources are popping up to assist companies, employees and their families during the relocation process. In fact, Inc. magazine listed relocation as one of the “six best industries you’ve never heard of,” and one to consider as a business opportunity.

As they point out, relocation is a $12.5 billion industry that is projected to grow over 6.4% over the next two years, which suggests it as a great business opportunity.

With the projected growth as well as the size of the industry, it’s clear that lots of people are moving! It’s critical to stay organized during this hectic time, because when rushing, you may forget what you’ve already purchased or lose receipts. Professional Organizer Lauren Gardner from Get Organized with Lauren, recommends these 3 tips to maintain order for receipts and personal finances during a relocation:

1. Keep an envelope or small accordion file, like is used for coupons, to keep track of any receipts for your move. These are important for your taxes, as many relocation expenses can be deducted.


2. Use a binder or planner to track your "to-do" list. Include things like school registration, timing for utilities to be turned on and off, or change of address forms.

3. Keep a notebook handy for recommendations you receive for doctors, childcare, neighborhoods, dentists, etc. Writing these down will help you see which are recommended the most, and will decrease your stress by not having to remember them when you are already overwhelmed with information and choices.

Keeping your external and internal worlds in order will help your move be smooth.

Onboarding Begins at Home

Onboarding is a structured process that companies use to help new employees succeed, and may involve different types of multi-media training and hands-on orientation sessions.

Another common term for this is organizational socialization, which makes it clear that we’re talking about emotional considerations as well, beyond the person just being capable at their job.

When a company actively cultivates a new employee’s job satisfaction, the result is a higher commitment to the success of the company; it’s far more likely that employee will stick around and be happy to be there. Everyone benefits from that, which is why so many companies use these structured onboarding programs.

In “Leading With Culture,” an article from the executive search firm Spencer Stuart, the authors call out some alarming statistics:

·      Executive failures can cost up to 40 times the base salary of leaders

·      Forty percent of executives who change roles or get promoted fail in the first 18 months (source: Fortune Magazine)

·      Companies with strong onboarding programs see 2.5 times the profit growth and 1.9 times the profit margin than those that don’t (source: Boston Consulting Group)

At Holistic Relo, we’d like to see one more component formally added to the onboarding process – the effective assimilation of the family. Our tagline, “Success from the family room to the boardroom” indicates that the family’s success is every bit as important as the executives success in the boardroom. It is our belief that the addition of relocation coaching to the onboarding process will save corporations money.

Holistic Relo would like to help improve the odds of an executive’s success by adding the family’s assimilation to the onboarding process.

Would I Choose This State if it Weren’t For a Corporate Relocation?

United Van Lines’ Annual Migration Study tracks the states its customers move to and from during the course of the year. Oregon is once again the number one state people moved to in 2014. South Carolina comes in second, and North Carolina is the 3rd most moved to state in the US.

The top outbound states last year were, in this order, New Jersey, New York and Illinois.

This is the first year United Van Lines added an interesting new question to their study: Why are you relocating?

The answers made sense. According to the study, people are choosing to relocate to southern and western states for lower housing costs, better climates, and more positive job growth. People are also drawn in by things like outdoor recreation, cultural activities, and green space.

A corporate transfer is certainly a different type of reason than moving to the Carolinas for the warm climate and outdoor activities or Oregon for the green space. In fact, as I look at the migration study results, I wonder how many of these moves were a conscious choice, versus a corporate relocation that dictated the new zip code with no input from the family involved.

If you’ve had to move to a state you didn’t embrace, my congratulations to you for making it through and finding a way to call it home. If you’re still striving for that feeling of being settled, here is a relocation resource that can help.

Moving In

The top inbound states of 2014 were:

1. Oregon
2. South Carolina
3. North Carolina
4. Vermont
5. Florida
6. Nevada
7. Texas
8. District of Columbia
9. Oklahoma
10. Idaho

Moving Out

The top outbound states for 2014 were:

1. New Jersey
2. New York
3. Illinois
4. North Dakota
5. West Virginia
6. Ohio
7. Kansas
8. New Mexico
9. Pennsylvania
10. Connecticut

9 Motivational Quotes for the Relocation Journey

When you are moving, everyone knows it. They see the For Sale sign. They see the bags of donations on your doorstep as you attempt to clear out before the movers come to pack. They see your anxious expression as you try to juggle many projects all at once.

Since what you are going through is so obvious, everyone seems to want to offer advice (even if you would probably prefer they drop off a healthy meal or offer to watch the kids while you make calls to switch utilities). Unfortunately, this unsolicited advice doesn’t always contain the kind of positivity you need right now.

Following are some of my go-to quotes while navigating an unsettling time like relocation. They help set my internal GPS to destinations that keep my mind focused on the many gifts of change. I hope they keep you on a positive path, too.

1. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” 

~ Dan Millman

2. “Focus on where you want to go,
 not on what you fear.”

 ~ Anthony Robbins

3. “Do not follow where the path may lead. 
Go instead where there is no path 
and leave a trail.” 

~ Muriel Strode

4. “Done is better than perfect.” 

~ Sheryl Sandberg

5. “Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny.” 

~ David O. McKay

6. “Still round the corner there may wait, 

a new road or a secret gate.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

7. “No journey carries on far unless, as it extends to the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within us."

~ Lillian Smith


8. “Travel many roads. Turn around. Make a wrong turn. Get lost. It’s all part of being found.”

~ Maripat Abbott

9. “Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.” 

~ Maripat Abbott