Sometimes it's easier (and smarter) to escape, de-stress, and make merry within (or just outside) your own four walls. Here are 25 low-cost, low-effort ways to do it
Ellen Silverman
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Have It Done for You
Bring your destination
home for dinner. Can't make it to the Chesapeake? Order one of Harbour House Crabs' Maryland blue-crab dinners, complete with mallets and a roll of brown paper to lay over your picnic table and toss when you're done ($130 for a jumbo dinner for two, including shipping; www.ilovecrabs.com). Thoughts wandering Down East? Spread a cloth on the lawn (or the rug) and dig into a direct-from-Maine picnic of lobster rolls and whoopie pies from Hancock Gourmet Lobster Company
($98 for six of each, including shipping; 800-552-0142).
Get your house cleaned from top to bottom. Part of the pleasure of a vacation is having the bed-making, dusting, and order-restoring consigned to someone else while you dedicate yourself to the task of lolling about. Why shouldn't it be this way at home — for one brief, shining week, anyway? Let Merry Maids send a cleaning crew to render your place spotless (from about $200 for a onetime cleaning, www.merrymaids.com). They don't do laundry, though, so why not let it pile up, then send it out to be done just this once? Or hire a cleaner on a friend's recommendation and negotiate the extras.
Have dinner delivered
every night. Place a stack of your favorite take-out menus next to the phone, and follow where your fancy leads you, from Chicago-style pizza one night to a Thai buffet the
next. Use plastic cutlery and paper plates and napkins for practically zero cleanup.
Organize a babysitting trade-off with two or three friends or neighbors. Have all the kids report to a designated house for an evening of organized fun — pizza, games, Shark Tale — leaving the other parents free to enjoy a date night (while saving money on sitters). Another night, rotate houses and repeat.
