The local supermarket here in a port near Panama City has a little internet station. I´m taking a moment here before heading back to our cruise ship to try out the forty foot tall water slide.
The exchangers who are staying in our place while we´re on this cruise sent an email update. It´s always thoughtful to let your hosts know you got in OK, especially if you have the responsibility of caring for their pets or garden or other living thing.
If you´re the host, it´s nice to check on the exchangers in your home to make sure they are finding everything and feeling comfortable. In this case, the swappers seem not to have found the garbage bags under the kitchen sink. I´ll let them know where to look.
As always, a non-home exchange vacation has us missing the space we enjoy when swapping. We´re fortunate to have a suite but it´s still a tiny space compared to any exchange home we might use.
There is one huge difference between this cruise and home exchange, however. This is the one factor that has us completely delighted with this vacation and ready to take a cruise any time: free, high-quality child care.
I am telling you, if you know of a local day care center or have a great babysitter, mention it in your swap listing. Family togetherness is great, but sometimes parents want a break, especially those of us with small kids. This is the first time in four years that we have had time to ourselves for longer than it takes a toddler to nap. It´s a revelation, I´ll tell you.
Tomorrow our ship will dock in Costa Rica where we will float down the famous canals through the rain forest. It´s not a home exchange vacation, but it ain`t half bad...
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Preparing for Home Exchange
We are not doing a home exchange this month but there are still swappers in our home.
Before we left for vacation, everything had to be just so. It is hard to co-ordinate last minute packing, get two kids ready and also do heavy cleaning.
In situations like this we hire a cleaning service. But we departed on New Year's Day. The cleaning service we use was closed for the holiday. What to do?
You may remember the solution from one of my previous columns: have the cleaners come in the night before, then clean as you go the following morning.
Here is a partial list of what we did to get ready for our home exchange guests while someone else cleaned our apartment:
1) Wash all clothing and bedding. No one wants to vacation with a pile of your dirty laundry.
2) Strip and re-make all beds. We chose our nicest Frette sheet set for mom and dad home exchanger and our cutest set for their young daughter.
There's nothing like really luxe sheets to make a home exchange feel like a castle.
Actually, I don't even know if anyone but me notices these things, but it's hospitable to put out the nicest things for guests. No polyesther sheets for my home swap partners!
3) Remove my family's towels and my children's potty training accessories and bath toys from the bathrooms.
Interacting with one of those little potty seats every time I use my bathroom isn't any fun for me even though I'm happy to be putting my kid's diapers "behind" me.
There's no reason to suspect it would be a thrill for anyone else to have such paraphenalia in their life either.
4) Empty garbage cans in all rooms and clean out that morning's coffee machine filter. It is easy to forget these two items but yucky if you do.
5). Fill welcome basket with area maps, guide books, transit pass, home and cat care instructions, regional magazines with weekly events listings and brochures.
6) Leave easy meal next to welcome basket. This time I left a variery of high-quality soups.
7) Clean out fridge and leave at least 1 shelf clear for rxchangers' food.
8) Empty 1+ clothing drawers and leave empty hangers.
9) Stash baby clothes I didn't have time to take to thrift shop in closet. Eliminate clutter in office area.
10) Chill welcome bottle of champagne (or sparkeling apple juice if you met your swap partners through Mormon Home Exchange or Sober Swappers).
11) Write welcome card. Inform exchangers that food and champagne is for them since they should leave your provisions alone if not specifically invited to enjoy.
12) Leave out guest book for swappers to sign.
It took a few hours to accomplish all if this but for a hospitable person it's pleasant work. If this list looks excessive to you, home exchange may not be worth the energy for you.
Let me know what I forgot. Is there a crucial part of your pre-swap routine you wish more exchangers would attend to? Don't keep it to yourself, comment below.
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Leaving for the Cruise
Even though we are not taking a home exchange vacation we still have home exchangers staying in our place while we're gone.
Force of habit? Perhaps that's part of it. But a bigger factor is that it is simply more convenient to have exchangers in our home when we are gone than to leave it empty.
How can that be? Well, first of all, we have two cats. When swappers are not in our home, the going rate for cat care where we live is $15 per day. We will be gone for 10 days. Having exchangers in our home saves us $150 in cat sitter fees.
It is also much nicer for the cats to have people around to feed and pet them more than the once per day the cat carer would come in.
Then there is the issue of security. Having someone home to take in the papers that pile up around our door when we are gone dissuades naughty people from bothering our home.
We live in a high-rise apartment in Manhattan. If I lived in a house I would be even more concerned about leaving my home empty while on vacation. Breaking in to a free-standing house is a breeze compared to an apartment 150 feet off the ground with a solid metal door.
The plants are less likely to die with home exchangers in residence to water them. The swappers might even eat those oranges I forgot to juice before we left.
All in all, having responsible exchangers stay in your home while you are away is beneficial for everyone. Even if you're not taking a home exchange vacation.
Confidential to Sandra: my figuring of fractions in yesterday's Blog post was pretty pathetic. But math is hard.
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Force of habit? Perhaps that's part of it. But a bigger factor is that it is simply more convenient to have exchangers in our home when we are gone than to leave it empty.
How can that be? Well, first of all, we have two cats. When swappers are not in our home, the going rate for cat care where we live is $15 per day. We will be gone for 10 days. Having exchangers in our home saves us $150 in cat sitter fees.
It is also much nicer for the cats to have people around to feed and pet them more than the once per day the cat carer would come in.
Then there is the issue of security. Having someone home to take in the papers that pile up around our door when we are gone dissuades naughty people from bothering our home.
We live in a high-rise apartment in Manhattan. If I lived in a house I would be even more concerned about leaving my home empty while on vacation. Breaking in to a free-standing house is a breeze compared to an apartment 150 feet off the ground with a solid metal door.
The plants are less likely to die with home exchangers in residence to water them. The swappers might even eat those oranges I forgot to juice before we left.
All in all, having responsible exchangers stay in your home while you are away is beneficial for everyone. Even if you're not taking a home exchange vacation.
Confidential to Sandra: my figuring of fractions in yesterday's Blog post was pretty pathetic. But math is hard.
--
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OUR SACRELIGIOUS VACATION
We're going on vacation, but I have a confession to make. It's not a home exchange. Please don't tell anyone. We love swapping homes. Just this week I received three great offers from families with gorgeous homes in great locations.
Right after New Year's my father turns 85. Dad is a mint-on-the-pillow sort of traveler. To celebrate surviving more than 7-twelfths of a century, Dad wants to do the Panama Canal cruise he has always dreamed of.
Our only request was that we use one of the two cruise lines whose child care centers accept two-year olds who are not completely potty trained. That limited our choices to Norwegian Cruiselines or Carnival. Though its "fun" ships have a bad reputation with the more sophisticated cruiser, Carnival recently created two new classes of vessels that are better-appointed than the normal tubs they float.
Though we booked a suite, we will only have about one-tenth the amount of space that we usually enjoy in a swap house. But this vacation will have a distinct advantage over a home exchange, one that makes a big difference to us at this time in our lives: up to 12 hours per day of free child care.
This will be the first time since our son was born in 2004 that the two of us will have hours to ourself during the day with no child care duties. It's an amazing thought. And it's one I'm wondering how to apply to home exchange. I'll share my thoughts on that another time, but no time soon because we won't have internet access on the ship. See you when we return to port!
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Right after New Year's my father turns 85. Dad is a mint-on-the-pillow sort of traveler. To celebrate surviving more than 7-twelfths of a century, Dad wants to do the Panama Canal cruise he has always dreamed of.
Our only request was that we use one of the two cruise lines whose child care centers accept two-year olds who are not completely potty trained. That limited our choices to Norwegian Cruiselines or Carnival. Though its "fun" ships have a bad reputation with the more sophisticated cruiser, Carnival recently created two new classes of vessels that are better-appointed than the normal tubs they float.
Though we booked a suite, we will only have about one-tenth the amount of space that we usually enjoy in a swap house. But this vacation will have a distinct advantage over a home exchange, one that makes a big difference to us at this time in our lives: up to 12 hours per day of free child care.
This will be the first time since our son was born in 2004 that the two of us will have hours to ourself during the day with no child care duties. It's an amazing thought. And it's one I'm wondering how to apply to home exchange. I'll share my thoughts on that another time, but no time soon because we won't have internet access on the ship. See you when we return to port!
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HOME EXCHANGE IS 10 TIMES BETTER THAN HOTELS
A correction is in order. Previously, I compared home exchange to hotel stays and mis-reported the cost of the average Manhattan hotel room. It turns out that the average figure is for all hotels in New York City. So those grim airport hotels in Queens and properties in Staten Island and Brooklyn that are over an hour from midtown are lumped together with the kind of Manhattan hotel that most tourists want.
The 2007 average price of a New York City hotel room is $303. Per day. Plus 15% in taxes and fees. That means a Manhattan hotel room costs closer to $400 per day. And the average room size of 154 square feet may well be smaller in Manhattan. It's big enough, however, for bedbugs, and for the used hypodermic needles an Italian visitor's toddler found under a hotel room seat cushion. And it was a well-respected mid-level hotel chain, not a flop house.
Now do you see why home exchange is the best way to travel? The average Manhattan home is 1255 square feet, which is about 10 times the size of that bio-hazard infected hotel room. And it's free.
OK, so I understand why thousands of people write to me each year asking for a home exchange. Is it too much to ask that they read -- or at least skim -- my listing first? After I finish this series on the Florida swap I am going to take to task everyone who spams home exchangers with inappropriate requests. Let's all resolve to be better swappers in 2008.
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The 2007 average price of a New York City hotel room is $303. Per day. Plus 15% in taxes and fees. That means a Manhattan hotel room costs closer to $400 per day. And the average room size of 154 square feet may well be smaller in Manhattan. It's big enough, however, for bedbugs, and for the used hypodermic needles an Italian visitor's toddler found under a hotel room seat cushion. And it was a well-respected mid-level hotel chain, not a flop house.
Now do you see why home exchange is the best way to travel? The average Manhattan home is 1255 square feet, which is about 10 times the size of that bio-hazard infected hotel room. And it's free.
OK, so I understand why thousands of people write to me each year asking for a home exchange. Is it too much to ask that they read -- or at least skim -- my listing first? After I finish this series on the Florida swap I am going to take to task everyone who spams home exchangers with inappropriate requests. Let's all resolve to be better swappers in 2008.
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