Here is a happy discovery that awaits everyone who takes a long trip: your life at home is far more pausable than you think. The mortgage doesn’t need you present. The garden will negotiate. The post can follow you, the bills can pay themselves, and the goldfish, well, the goldfish needs a plan, but a modest one.
Working out how to pause life for travel is mostly a matter of making the one honest list (every thread that ties you to home, written down in one place) and working through it calmly over two or three months. That’s what this article is: the complete list, drawn from what long-term travellers consistently wish they’d known, organised so that nothing ambushes you in the final week. It’s one chapter of our complete guide to how to travel for 3 months; the biggest single item (the house itself) gets a full article of its own in what to do with your house when travelling long-term, so here we’ll deal with everything else.
A note on framing before the practicalities. “Pausing your life” is the common phrase, but it slightly undersells what’s happening. You’re not stopping your life; you’re demonstrating to yourself how much of it runs on automatic, and how little of the weekly churn actually requires you. Many travellers come home and keep half of these simplifications permanently. Consider that a bonus. And you’d be in growing company: research from UK retirement operator Inspired Villages found that nearly 25% of retirees have either taken extended travel or would seriously consider it.
Mail and post: how to pause life for travel without missing anything that matters
Physical post is the classic loose end: the driving licence renewal, the HMRC letter, the hospital appointment that arrives three weeks after you’ve left.
Royal Mail redirection is the backbone. It redirects to any UK address (a son, daughter or trusted friend) from around £20 per person for three months. Book it at least a week before departure, ideally three. Redirect to someone who will actually open things and message you, not someone who’ll stack it politely in a drawer.
Go paperless first. Six weeks out, switch every bank, pension provider, utility and insurer to email correspondence. This shrinks the redirected pile to almost nothing and means the important items stand out.
Brief your opener. Give whoever receives your post a short list of what matters (anything from HMRC, DVLA, your bank, the NHS) and permission to open it. A photographed letter reaching you in Kyoto within a day is the entire system working as intended.
Money, bills and admin
The goal is a household that pays its own way for ninety days with no intervention.
- Direct debits for everything essential: council tax, utilities, insurance, broadband if you’re keeping it. Check each one is set to collect automatically rather than waiting for a manual payment.
- A buffer in the bills account. Leave enough to cover three months of outgoings plus a margin; an unexpected £200 bill shouldn’t be able to bounce anything.
- Cancel or pause the discretionary layer. Gym memberships (most will freeze for a small fee rather than cancel), streaming services, magazine and wine subscriptions, milk and veg boxes. Diarise the restart dates as well as the stop dates.
- Tell your bank and card providers your travel dates, and take at least two cards from different providers. A fraud block on your only card, eight time zones from the call centre, is an avoidable adventure.
- Check what falls due while you’re away. Car tax, MOT, home insurance renewal, TV licence, any fixed-term deals ending. Anything that expires mid-trip should be renewed early or set to auto-renew.
- A letter of authority. A signed letter authorising a trusted person to act on specific matters, with a copy of your passport, resolves most problems. For fuller cover, a lasting power of attorney is worth having anyway at this stage of life, trip or no trip.
The car
A car left untouched for three months acquires a flat battery, seized brakes and an air of reproach. The options, in ascending order of effort:
- Declare it SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) if it can sit on a driveway or in a garage: free, done online in minutes, and you reclaim the road tax for full months unused. You cannot park a SORN car on a public road.
- Recruit a driver. A neighbour or family member taking it for a twenty-minute run every fortnight keeps the battery and brakes honest. Add them to your insurance properly.
- Fit a trickle charger if it’s garaged near a socket; it solves the battery, not the brakes or tyres.
- Tell your insurer either way. Some policies have conditions about extended non-use; and if you’re tempted to cancel cover entirely, remember an uninsured car must be SORN, and an insurance gap can nudge up future premiums.
Inflate the tyres a little above normal pressure to resist flat spots, leave it clean (bird droppings etch paint over three months), and don’t leave the handbrake on in a damp garage; leave it in gear with the wheels chocked instead.
Pets: the item that shapes everything else
Be honest early: the pet plan often determines the trip’s shape, so make it first, not last.
- Cats generally do best staying home with a daily visitor or live-in sitter. Catteries for three months are possible but expensive (£10–£20 a day) and hard on territorial animals.
- Dogs do best with people, not premises: a family member who actually wants them, or a professional home-boarding arrangement (roughly £20–£35 a day; budget £1,800–£3,200 for three months, a real line item). Long kennel stays suit very few dogs.
- House-sitters are frequently the elegant answer: someone living in your home specifically because your dog is there. Pet care is the main currency of the house-sitting world, and it solves the empty-house problem simultaneously.
- Paperwork: whoever cares for your animal needs vaccination records, vet details, insurance documents, and written permission to authorise treatment. Have the awkward conversation about spending limits before you leave, not from a beach.
The garden
Three unattended summer months returns a garden to nature’s management, and nature is an enthusiastic manager.
- Mow short and edge well just before leaving, and arrange a fortnightly cut; a local gardener typically charges £15–£30 a visit, or a teenager rather less. In summer this is the single most important item: an uncut lawn advertises an empty house.
- Pots and baskets either go to a neighbour’s care, onto drip irrigation with a £30 timer, or get planted out and left to fate.
- Cut back before you go rather than after you return; June growth on well-pruned shrubs is manageable, on unpruned ones it’s a hedge.
- Water off at the outside tap, and clear gutters if you’re leaving in autumn.
Neighbours, keys and the people layer
The best home-security system yet devised is a neighbour who likes you.
- Tell two or three neighbours your dates, and give at least one a key and your number. Ask them to park in your drive occasionally, flatten delivered boxes’ evidence, and generally make the house look ambiguous.
- Leave a one-page house sheet with the keyholder: stopcock location, fuse box, boiler quirks, alarm code, plumber’s number. Ninety seconds of writing, hours of transatlantic phone calls saved.
- Don’t announce the trip publicly; your insurer would appreciate the same courtesy. Share the departure on social media after you’re back, or at least keep it to friends.
- Family arrangements: agree a communication rhythm before you go: a weekly video call, a shared photo album, whatever suits. Vague “I’ll be reachable” promises generate more worry than a fixed Sunday call ever does. A rhythm you set yourself, on your own trip, is a far lighter thing than being on call.
Health and ongoing appointments
- Medication: arrange three months’ supply well in advance; GP practices often issue only one or two months by default, so ask early and explain. Carry it in original packaging with a copy of the prescription; check the rules of your destination country for any controlled medicines.
- Book the routine appointments (dentist, optician, any monitoring your GP does) for just before departure or just after return, not the middle.
- NHS logistics: you remain registered with your GP for a three-month absence (deregistration questions only arise with much longer stays). Order repeat prescriptions through the NHS app, which also holds your records if a doctor abroad asks sensible questions.
- Screening invitations that arrive mid-trip can simply be rebooked on return, but tell your post-opener to flag them.
The final week: shutting down the house
The last pass, best done from a printed list on the final morning rather than from memory in a taxi:
- Fridge emptied, cleaned and, if switching off, propped open; freezer either left running or defrosted fully.
- Water off at the stopcock if the house will be empty (and in winter, heating on a low frost setting; your insurer likely requires it).
- Timer switches on a lamp or two; curtains in their normal daytime position, not theatrically closed for three months.
- Bins out or arranged with a neighbour; nothing perishable left anywhere, including the fruit bowl you will otherwise remember somewhere over the Alps.
- Unplug the non-essentials; leave the broadband router on if anything smart depends on it.
- Spare key with its keeper; your own keys in hand luggage; and one slow, unhurried walk through every room.
If you’re weighing bigger options for the property itself (a sitter, tenants, an exchange) that decision belongs months earlier in the planning timeline, not in the final week.
The one honest list, at a glance
- Post: Action: Go paperless, book Royal Mail redirection, brief your opener; When: 6 weeks out; redirection 3 weeks out
- Bills and money: Action: Direct debits on essentials, buffer in the bills account, travel dates to banks; When: 2 months out
- Subscriptions: Action: Pause or cancel the discretionary layer; diarise restart dates; When: Final month
- Car: Action: SORN, recruit a driver, or trickle charger; tell the insurer; When: Final month
- Pets: Action: Sitter, family or home-boarding arranged, paperwork handed over; When: First decision; 4–6 months out
- Garden: Action: Mow, prune, arrange fortnightly cut, water off outside; When: Final fortnight
- Neighbours and keys: Action: Keys, dates and house sheet with a trusted keyholder; When: Final fortnight
- Health: Action: Three months’ medication, appointments moved out of the trip window; When: 2–3 months out
- House shutdown: Action: Fridge, stopcock, timers, bins, final walk-through; When: Final morning, from the printed list
Common questions
How do I pause my life to travel for 3 months? Make the one honest list (post, bills, car, pets, garden, neighbours, health) and work through it calmly over two or three months. Almost everything about how to pause life for travel comes down to automation (direct debits, redirection, timers) plus one trusted person with a key. Nothing on the list is difficult; the only mistake is leaving it all to the final week.
Do I need to tell anyone I’m leaving my house for 3 months? Yes: your home insurer, first and in writing, because most policies restrict cover after 30 or 60 days unoccupied. Beyond that: your bank and card providers, your car insurer, and two or three neighbours. What you shouldn’t do is announce the trip publicly on social media before you go.
What happens to my post while I’m travelling long-term? Royal Mail redirection sends it to any UK address from around £20 per person for three months; book at least a week ahead, ideally three. Switch everything possible to paperless first, then brief whoever receives the rest to open anything from HMRC, DVLA, your bank or the NHS and photograph it to you.
Can I stay registered with my GP if I travel for 3 months? Yes. A three-month absence doesn’t affect your GP registration; deregistration questions only arise with much longer stays. Arrange your three months’ medication supply well in advance, carry it in original packaging with prescription copies, and use the NHS app for records and repeat prescriptions while away.
Planning your own three months away? Start with the free DECADES Gap Year Guide: the practical starting point covering budgets, planning, health and everything between deciding to go and boarding the plane. Get your free copy here.
The pause that teaches you something
Almost everyone reports the same thing after doing this properly: the pause holds. The house stands, the post gets opened, the standing orders stand. Somewhere around week four (perhaps over coffee on a morning that belongs entirely to you, perhaps mid-way through DECADES’ Greek Islands programme with the logistics handled by someone else altogether) it dawns on you that the life you carefully suspended is doing perfectly well without supervision.
Far from unsettling, that thought is a liberating one. It means the door you’ve opened this year stays open, and next time, the one honest list is a list you’ve already ticked once.
About the author: Laura Cannon is the founder of DECADES. She has spent the past twenty years travelling solo and long-term across the world; experience she now puts into designing three-month experiences for people in retirement and semi-retirement.
