The Single Best Thing You Can Do Before Going on Vacation

Going on vacation is supposed to be relaxing and fun. But there is always so much to worry about before you leave — and even while you’re away! You need to check your luggage to make sure you packed everything you meant to. Then when you’re actually on vacation, you are worrying about your house and your pets, hoping that they are being good for the sitter.

And how many times have you stressed about turning the stove off before you left the house? Did you turn it off? You can’t remember! On vacation, you can’t just run back home really quick to make sure. This is a fear that everyone has, even if you didn’t use the stove at all that day before you left the house.

According to a study of more than 200,000 UK homeowners, “more than 16 million adults across the U.K. (33%) worry at least once a week that they’ve left things on at home.”

If you don’t want to spend your entire vacation worrying about the stove, there is a simple solution! Right before you leave, you should take a picture of your stove and the dials on your stove. Make sure this is the last thing you do before walking out the door, so you don’t convince yourself later that you might have turned it on.

According to Psychology Today, physically double checking things like this that make us anxious actually can make it worse. By going back to check, you then will doubt that you properly checked it. Or, you’ll tell yourself that you turned the stove on when you were trying to check it.

A picture will help ease that vacation anxiety because you aren’t physically there to accidentally turn anything on. Instead, you can clearly see that the stove is indeed off and your house or apartment won’t burn down while you’re gone. You don’t have to worry about your pet dying because you left the gas running, because you have proof that everything is off.

This post originally ran on Apartment Therapy. See it there: You Should Always Take a Picture of Your Stove Before Going on Vacation