We just got back from a two week houseswap last night. Ok, ok, I know what you’re thinking, and no, we didn’t redecorate each other’s living rooms with a budget of $1,000, or tell each other how to raise the other person’s kids (which, of course, I could have), or strand ourselves on a desert island and have to eat salmon testicles (do salmon have…..? nevermind).
No, my family just swapped houses and cars with a Swiss couple for two weeks.
Why would you do this you ask? Well, there are a lot of reasons, let me enumerate them for you.
1. Saving the Moolah, baby!
The main reason anyone does this is to save some money. Now we are not a poor family, but it was definitely stretching us a little bit to buy plane tickets for our family of five to Switzerland. There is no way we could have afforded to stay in a hotel for two weeks and rent a car on top of it. Quite simply, we wouldn’t have gone, and instead would have stayed at the Best Western Little Rock (free continental breakfast!) and visited the Ozarks. But if you take any trip and remove the cost of lodging and car rental, you cut the price in half if not better.
2. It’s a whole house!
Have you ever tried to squeeze a family of five into a hotel room for two weeks? It goes something like this. One kid on the bed, one kid in a play tent on the floor (no seriously try it, it works) and the baby in a crib in the bathroom. This means that no one can go to the bathroom after the baby goes to sleep and that when the kids all go to sleep, either mom and dad go to sleep too, or they stay up watching CSI reruns with the mute button on. It blows. After a few days you’re ready to kill everyone, plus your eating three meals a day at a restaurant.
With a house swap, you have a whole house for your vacation. The kids each have their own room, Mom and Dad can stay up watching CSI reruns in German and you have a full kitchen. Food and eating out was pretty expensive in Switzerland, so we had breakfast at the house every morning, usually made sandwiches for lunch and cooked dinner at home half the time and ate out about half the time (mmmm Weiner schnitzel). It’s like renting a vacation house for two weeks.
3. It’s cultural.
For me, the greatest part of the house swap is the cultural aspect of the exchange. You learn things about other cultures that you would never learn staying at a hotel. For instance, Europeans keep their eggs in the pantry, milk only comes in quart size containers, and that tiny appliance in the corner? That’s the refrigerator.
I love feeling that for a couple of weeks, we are a part of the area we’re staying in. I like shopping in the grocery store and trying to identify what animal various meats come from. I like trying weird beverages (dandelion-burdock soda anyone?) I like going to the bakery and the pharmacy and the butcher to get things for our stay. I like identifying the things that are superior in the houses (solid wood doors, a dish rack that has a drain directly into the sink) and the things that are not (washing machine that can hold two socks and a t-shirt, no dryer, $10 a quart ice cream). You really get to know a place when you live there.
Basically, I love it. We’ve done three now. One for three weeks in England during maternity leave a few years ago, one for a week on a sea island in Georgia, and this recent one. All have been awesome and no, no one has ever stolen our TV, left a giant mess in the living room, or driven our car into the garage door.
I can understand why people are nervous about it. It’s a little weird to have people sleeping in your bed (although a lot less weird to have one person sleeping in your bed, than, say, staying in a hotel bed that thousands of people have slept in and, lets be honest, done naughty naughty things in.)
And of course, there is the very real chance that someone could back up your plumbing, dent your car, or leave a stain on your rug (of course, if you have children, this is nothing new). But none of those things have ever happened. We have always returned to houses that, if anything, are cleaner than when we left them, cars that were dent free, and a TV that was still sitting where we left it.
In short, I think house swaps are awesome and I would recommend them to anyone. In fact I have, and so far no one has taken my recommendation. This says something about someone, possibly me.
If this seems interesting to you at all, there are lots of websites you can go to. (We use www.homelink.org ) It’s fairly simple. You pay an annual fee to list your house on the website and look at other people’s homes. Then you simply email people who have houses that you like in places that interest you and say something like
“Hey. You want to swap your house and car for two weeks in July?”
(swapping wives is optional)