There’s nothing like the end of a vacation to smack you back down to reality. You drank your Aperol spritzes and twirled your tiny cocktail umbrellas and dug your toes deep into the sand, but the time that once felt magically suspended has now run out. Your calendar for the next week is already at capacity, that dentist appointment you put off for a year is coming up, and also rent is due in two days. But just as the weight of the world threatens to crush you into a pulp, you remember: the fun’s not over yet. You still get to do your “vacation post-mortem.
The vacation post-mortem, or “trip autopsy” as some Redditors call it, is a thorough cataloguing of everything you packed, everywhere you went, and everyone you traveled with – basically everything that worked and everything that didn’t, and why. It’s a way to not only relive the glory of the vacation itself, but to iterate on the experience for the next time you can get away. (A much-needed reminder that there will be more vacations in the future. Don’t cry, sweetie!)
Plenty of people already do these post-mortems in one way or another. But the idea for a full-blown, highly organized autopsy came from a Reddit thread in the subreddit r/HerOneBag about tips for how to pack lighter. Commenters offered solid advice about “learning to do a proper sink wash instead of overpacking ‘just in case’ clothes” and only bringing the “superstar items” in your wardrobe that can be worn several different ways. But when one commenter mentioned the power of lists – “Make lists of everything packed and evaluate it at the end, was everything used?” – the post-mortem pros swooped in to build on the idea.
“EVALUATE! If you don’t review how that stuff worked, you don’t know if you need it next time,” one Redditor said. Another chimed in to say that they not only keep trip autopsy lists of everything they packed, but also vendors and tour groups that they booked ahead of time, as well as hotels they stayed at. It’s useful if they plan to return to the same place again at some point, of course, but can also be informative for planning different trips and keeping track of the types of experiences that resonate and the ones that don’t.
But the real beauty of the post-mortem is that you can apply the process to just about any element of your travels. If it was a group trip, you can look back and identify what worked between you all and what didn’t. Was there consensus on budget throughout your stay? Did all the personalities mix well together over the span of the trip, or were there rocky moments? Did everyone feel included and like their needs were met? Think of it like the debrief you have with friends after a night out, but on a bigger scale.
Some people take their post-mortems very seriously, making spreadsheets and PDFs and keeping track of everything in apps like Packr. That’s one method – but a vacation post-mortem could look as simple as taking some time, either on the plane back or once you arrive at home, to sit with a journal and reflect on the experience that you just left behind. Travel – even when it’s meant to be relaxing – is overstimulating. It’s hard to keep track of everything, to really register how it’s all making you feel, when you’re immersed in and trying to be present for all that “new.” Sometimes it takes until you’ve settled back in at home for the full power of the experience to wash over you. The post-mortem, then, is a way to ritualize that very natural process, and help you hold onto the memories that are worth taking with you wherever you go.
Emma Glassman-Hughes (she/her) is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she’s covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.
