It’s booked: 2 weeks of vacation in a pretty villa on the waterfront with your best friends and their children of the same age as yours. You all dream of long days at the beach, barbecues, aperitifs at sunset and children having fun all day long.
Only then, a little misunderstanding, a shift in pace, a slightly different conception of education and the youkaïdi youkaïda holidays turn into trench warfare!
Instructions for a successful holiday with friends:
1- Choose friends whose conception of the holidays is substantially the same as yours.
Basic rule! Do not go with sports freaks if you only dream of landing on a deckchair…Avoid those who love old stones if for you walks rhyme with communion with nature…Forget the early risers if for you, holidays are t is first and foremost lazy… In short, agree on the type of vacation you want before leaving.
2- Agree on stewardship management
On paper, everyone participates! Except that in reality, there will always be one who will not lift a finger, another who will automatically choose the least painful chores. And since you’re well brought up, you won’t say anything until, unable to take it any longer, you explode, thereby shattering your beautiful friendship!
So from the start, the rules are set: shopping, preparing meals, setting the table and clearing, cleaning the barbecue, tidying up common rooms, children’s breakfast, cleaning… At least, when it’s said, it’s said! And if you feel wronged despite everything, you talk about it quickly and calmly.
3- Apply the proverb “good accounts make good friends”
The budget remains one of the most delicate elements of holidays with friends.
First solution: establish a common fund that will be used for common expenses, without first forgetting to specify the common expenses… We can appoint one or two managers of the pot to simplify the task.
Another solution that avoids having to constantly put cash in the common fund: use the Tricount app. Very practical, we gradually enter everyone’s expenses in the app and at any time, we know who is in credit and who is in debit.
The app includes the number of children to weight accounts based on family size.
Our advice: we forget the system of invoices added at the end of the stay: between the risk of error, oversights and lost tickets, there will always be someone who will have the impression of having been cheated!
4- Organize your days
Getting 12 people moving is a lot less easy than getting 4 moving! So if you have all decided to take the shuttle at 10 a.m. to take a trip to Cap Ferret, it is better to have a minimum of organization! Between the one who gets ready in 10 minutes, the one who needs at least 30, the one who pedals more slowly than the others (because you’re going to the shuttle by bike!), so as not to miss it and weigh down your day, put you agree on a time not to get up but to leave!
And if some are thirsty for activities on vacation while others prefer to sunbathe all day at the beach, find a consensus that will make everyone agree and no one will be frustrated (one beach day and one day activities or activity in the morning for whoever wants and beach in the afternoon…)
5- Take time out with your family
You are delighted to go on vacation with your friends, but you are also happy to find yourself alone with your children and Loulou from time to time. The only problem is that you are afraid that your friends will get offended if you tell them that you want to spend some family time!!!
All you have to do is set a sufficiently flexible framework for everyone to feel free inside: day at the beach without a set schedule, you can join friends when you feel like it, afternoon with a joint outing alternating with afternoon ” free time “…
6- Slogan, tolerance! Never forget that they are your friends and that you want them to remain so!
Living in community, even with friends you adore and think you know very well, is far from easy. It will be necessary to show tolerance in order to live in harmony and to take a benevolent look that is always positive rather than critical. Emma spends a lot of time in the bathroom, her children do anything at the table, but she is an outstanding cook who spends much more time than you behind
