At the end of an exchange I am feeling like a local, comfortable and familiar with the house and the neighborhood. I know how to get from A to B or if in Britain from A to Zed. I am sad to leave. It takes several hours to pack the bags, rearrange the house to its original condition, and clean it up.
You should leave the home as clean as you found it. Our most stressful cleanup was in Switzerland—the hosts were immaculate and it was culturally difficult for the barbarians from California to match their standards. Our easiest times were several occasions where our partner’s housekeeper was available to clean up. In such cases understand the fee involved and be happy to pay it.
We agree to leave dirty towels and sheets. There isn’t time for a family of five to wash and dry everything. As long as there is a second set of clean sheets to put on the bed and enough clean towels this is a good system. They do the same in our home.
You might leave a small gift for the returning family. You could label any food with a post it note showing the date it was bought or cooked. They should be able to find enough food for a first meal home without shopping.
It can be difficult to clean up the house and catch a flight home on the same day, especially if the airport is a few hours away. It might be more relaxing to spend the night at the airport hotel. This gives you time to clean the house without the pressure of a deadline. You should also clean their car and fill the tank with gas.
A few days before the end of the exchange we send an e-mail to confirm the end of the exchange and the handover of their car. If left at the airport you need to describe exactly where it is parked. Extra credit if you can personally welcome them at the airport. They should have a set of car keys. You lock the other set in the car, hopefully having remembered to first take your bags, phones, wallets, and passports.
It is common that there will have been a few things broken or damaged during an exchange. You should fix or replace anything if convenient. Otherwise you can leave it for them, but let them know what to expect. We offer to pay as do our partners. We don’t worry about it if the damage is minor. Twice I have damaged a car. Our friends received a quotation to fix it; I approved the amount and reimbursed them.
When you arrive home you will discover that plates, cutlery, cookware, and glasses may not be in the usual places. There might be oriental foodstuffs in the fridge and pantry. Maybe they bought cheap toilet paper instead of the good stuff. They might have depleted certain staples such as pasta, potatoes, or rice. The thermostat now reads Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. Plan on an hour or two and a few bucks/quid/euros to get everything back to normal. This is par for the course. It is a small price to pay for an economical and adventurous vacation.
Once home you should send an e-mail letting your partners know everything is ok. If you discover any major problems let them know. It is common for a set of keys to be taken across the world. You might have left books or clothing at their place. Anything valuable should be mailed back. Minor items can be donated to the other family or chucked in the rubbish bin. This is the end of the exchange. If you are lucky it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. That will be the subject of my next post.

This is the easiest part of home exchange.    After a few days you have gotten used to your exchange home, figured out its quirks, and solved any problems.   Many homes have formal dining or living rooms.  There usually is fine crystal and porcelain for special occasions.  With our three children we never use formal spaces or fine dishware.  We know what can happen.  If the salon has white upholstered couches we forbid our kids to enter the room with food or drink.  In fact you shouldn’t allow them to set foot in such fragile spaces.

Once in France my wife was concerned because our hosts had installed a new oven.  It was shiny and perfectly clean.  She was reluctant to get it dirty.   You should feel free to use the home; normal wear and tear is expected.

Sometimes an appliance will fail.  We had a microwave oven die, a computer crashed and should have been burned, and a hot water kettle failed with sparks and a puff of smoke.    Our partners arranged for a relative to supply a new microwave.  The computer was taken to the local expert who pronounced it obsolete and not worth saving.  We agreed he would communicate this to our hosts, who arranged for me to use the computer at the office.  As regards the hot water kettle it was only 30 euros to buy a new one at the hypermarché.    After paying for this I felt less guilty about draining his 35 year old bottle of Armagnac that had been left partially open in the liquor cabinet.  He had agreed I could try any opened bottles and once I tried this Armagnac I couldn’t stop.     The legal term is irresistible impulse.

Occasionally there will be a problem that is serious and can’t be corrected.  Once we had a car in the South of France with defective air conditioning.   This made travel difficult in the hot afternoons.  We only had about a week left in the exchange when this happened, it didn’t make sense to solve this problem.  Once in Stockholm lightning knocked out the Internet.  The normally efficient Swedes were slow to fix it because so many technicians were on vacation.   The local library and a kind neighbor offered free Internet access.   You need to accept problems such as these and not let them ruin your vacation.

Each family will have their own style and method for their vacation.  An advantage of a home exchange vacation is that you are in an area for a long time.  You can take a relaxed and innovative view towards sight-seeing.   For example, our house in the suburbs of Paris was only 15 minutes drive from Versailles.  We discovered that if we went at 7pm all the tourists were gone.  We could park in front of the Chateau, for free, and wander the gardens in the beautiful evening light.   You can think like the locals.  Normally it is crazy to drive in Paris.  During August folks are on vacation, there are spaces on the street for the car and you don’t need to feed the parking meters.   The traffic is much less.  We had a favorite parking spot next to the Luxembourg gardens, only about 30 minutes by foot from Notre Dame.

Your home will have a kitchen.  It might also have a picnic basket or a cool chest.  Our Danish partners kept a blanket in the trunk of the car.  You are well equipped for picnics, which are cheaper and more flexible than eating at a restaurant.

Check out activities designed for the locals.  We signed our kids up for a pottery decorating session at the Denby works.   We still have their plates as souvenirs.   A friend managed to play soccer on a semi-pro team while on exchange in England.   His son went to a soccer camp put on by Manchester United.

With home exchange you can get into your own relaxed vacation routine and rhythm.

Next lesson we will talk about the end of the home exchange.

You might have followed our advice in the last lesson and met your exchange family.  This doesn’t mean they welcomed you to their home.  Maybe the meeting took place chez vous or at the airport.  Let’s assume you’ve arrived at your exchange residence.   Unfortunately there is nobody to show you around. How do you make yourself at home there?

The first step is to take a tour of the place, inside and out.  Check out key items such as the bicycles and the car.  Many cars, ours included, bear minor scars.  Note any damage to the car and take a photo if it is serious.  It is always embarrassing to notice dents after you’ve been driving their vehicle for a few weeks.  We have discovered problems with the bicycles such as a flat tire, warped wheel, loose handlebar, etc.  Verify the bikes are safe to ride before you go down the steep driveway to discover the brakes don’t work.    Yes, this did happen to me.

Read their instruction manual again and start using equipment such as the TV, telephone, computer, and stereo system.  You are going to be living here for several days to several weeks, now is the time to discover you can’t figure out how the TV Satellite receiver works.   Better to get the confusion resolved early so you can enjoy the rest of your vacation without distraction from problems.

They should have left tourist information and maps for your use.  Go through these to get ideas as to what is there and what might be of interest.  Visit the local tourist office to get additional information.

Check out the food supply in the refrigerator and panty.  Determine how much space there is for you in the freezer.  Verify the location and presence of staples such as toilet paper, paper towels, plastic wrap, etc.    This will make your shopping more efficient.   When looking at expiration dates on food remember that 10/1/2010 is October 1^st in the USA but January 10^th in Europe.

You may be disappointed in certain features, furnishings, or details of their home.   Assuming they haven’t lied or deceived you try to be generous and understanding.    You may have assumed the TV would be a large flat screen with 200 channels instead of an aging box with five over the air channels.     In France I felt really bad that my wife couldn’t watch Wimbledon but was comforted by lots of soccer and bicycle racing.

In England we were astonished to encounter a kitchen in a 200 year old home that had last been modernized in the 1930’s.  This was annoying.  On the other hand the living room and master bedroom and bath had just been remodeled and were fabulous.  The car was brand new.  The bicycles were of high quality, in top shape, and fit our family.  In this home the positive surprises outweighed the negative discoveries.

We always ask our exchange partners to provide friends, neighbors, or relatives who will meet with us.  These kind folks can answer questions and be a resource.  They might invite you for dinner, take you for a boat ride or show you the local festival.    You should contact these generous souls at the beginning of the exchange, when you have the most to gain from them.  Once in France I enjoyed a friendly drink and discussion with the neighbor. He asked me how much longer I would be staying.  I was embarrassed because it was our last day and we had been there for five weeks.

Next time we will provide a few tips for your house swap vacation.

Most exchangers find their own way to their house exchange.   We recommend a more complicated approach: Meeting the exchange family, either at our house, their place, or occasionally at the airport.

This face-to-face meeting builds trust, confidence, and friendship.  There’s opportunity to be shown how the TV system works with an expert right there to guide you step by step.  This is easier than reading the manual and trying to figure it out.  You might get to meet friends or neighbors, eating and drinking with them is easier than calling them up because their name is in the manual as a resource.

Case Study: Netherlands

Our exchange with Jan and Maria of the Netherlands illustrates this process.  He was there to pick us up at Schiphol.  It feels great to be met at the airport by a respectable guy holding a sign with your name on it.  We arrived at his mini-van, he gave me the keys.  I benefited from learning to drive in the Netherlands with an experienced teacher.  He also found time to instruct my wife in the use of his navigation system.

We arrived at their lovely home and got a complete tour of it. We had time for him to show us the town center, supermarket, wine store, discount shop, and railway station.  They had invited neighbors and we shared a convivial dinner under the stars on their patio.  Their home was large so we all spent the night there.  We went over a list of instructions for our house and gave them the keys to our van with detailed instructions on where it was parked at SFO.   The next morning I drove them to Schiphol.  As we chatted he mentioned a fact I didn’t know—their town had the second highest per capita income in the country.   After dropping them off I managed to get home safely making only one wrong turn.  Meeting Jan and Maria was practical, the greater reward is that Jan and I stay in touch by e-mail and have become and remained friends.

The Alternate Approach

Preparation and planning can substitute for the red carpet treatment recommended above.   If you are picking up their car you need to have keys and its exact location.  Be sure you have a map and directions to their house.  Avoid traversing a city during rush hour.  Make sure you know what kind of gas the car uses.  Have local currency in case you need to pay tolls or buy coffee to stay awake.  Be sure you understand how to open the front door.  Many European homes have complicated systems that require the handle to be pushed up or down while you are turning the key.  Yes, we have heard of more than one exchange family that couldn’t get in their exchange home because of this problem.  If the home has a burglar alarm you need the code, location of the keypad, and special password when the monitoring service calls to ask why the alarm is ringing.

Our next lesson will be tips on how to quickly get up to speed on your home away from home.

Thus far in Home Exchange 101 Lesson 6, we’ve looked at such concepts as organizing your vacation, preparing your home for guests,  creating a user’s manual for your home and agreeing to the rules and regulations.  Today, we conclude lesson 6 by looking at preparing for the arrival and welcome of your guests.

Meet the Partners

We at Home Exchange University are huge fans of meeting our homeswap partners before the exchange, live and in person.  This happens at their home, our house, or occasionally the airport.  It’s important to personally know your partners.  It’s also helpful for one family gets a complete orientation to their home away from home.  Everybody appreciates the chance to ask questions and discuss concerns.

Organizing this meeting requires cooperating on travel arrangements. The family hosting this meeting may have a house large enough to share for one night or they may choose to stay with relatives or at a hotel.   We have enjoyed the hospitality of our friends and on several occasions have taken them to the airport the following day.

Things to Remember

Here is a checklist for the arrival and welcome of house exchange guests:

• How will they get from the airport to your home?  If they are picking up your car they need to know its exact location and have the keys.  They need to know how to find your home, even if it is dark.
• If you can’t personally welcome your guests to your home perhaps a friend or relative can do the honors.
• Keys and doors work in different ways.   We have heard several stories of families that could not figure out how to unlock and open the front door of their exchange home.  Specific and detailed instructions are advisable and you need to figure out how they get the key.   If you have an alarm they need the code. I f you get a new key cut for your guests try it out on the door to make sure it works.
• Have each other’s cell phone numbers.
• Extra credit for leaving flowers, fruit, or a bottle of champagne to welcome your visitors.

Yes, it is a lot of work to prepare for a house exchange.   Fortunately enjoying your homeswap is much easier than getting ready for it.  Our next topic in Home Exchange 101?  The arrival!

Enjoy this article?  Be sure to subscribe to this blog via email or RSS.  We have some great stuff coming this summer as we prepare for our own home exchange.  Click here and subscribe by entering your name and email on the top left of the page!

John Mensinger is co-founder of HomeExchangeuniversity.com and an experienced home exchanger.  His passion is helping others experience the enjoyment (and cost savings!) of home exchange.  John can be reached at jm[at]homeexchangeuniversity.com.

image credit

Thus far in Home Exchange 101 Lesson 6, we’ve looked at such concepts as organizing your vacation, preparing your home for guests,  and creating a user’s manual for your home.  Today, we’ll delve into negotiating details regarding duties and expectations.  Such issues should be clarified and handled during the preparation period.

Reciprocating Favors

Exchange partners often request favors of one another.  Here are examples of such favors:

• Perhaps you promised your partners use of your health club.  Be sure to set this up before they arrive and let your guests know the rules for visiting the club.
• Maybe you agreed to find a baby sitter for their children.  Let them know the person, contact details and the hourly fee.
• You may want your guests to pick up the mail, water the house plants, or feed the pets.  Provide instructions.  Figure out how these tasks will be completed if they leave your house for a three day excursion.
• If you are trading cars agree to mileage or usage limits.  Understand insurance coverage and your possible liability while using their vehicle.  Have a copy of their driving license and make sure they are covered by your insurance.

How We Do It

Our policy is that we will use the exchange home, make a reasonable amount of telephone calls, leave about the same level of food and household supplies as when we arrived, and freely use their heating and air conditioning.  Our children will spend inordinate amounts of time on the Internet.  We will eat fresh vegetables and fruit from their garden.  We generally don’t plan on reimbursing them for any of this and in return they can enjoy our home in the same way.  This plan may not work for you, in which case you need to figure out your own preferred system.

For the end of the exchange we know that we won’t have time to wash and dry all the dirty sheets and towels.   We agree that we will leave these dirty items as a welcome home present.  We make up the beds with fresh sheets and put out fresh towels. If you are lucky your partners will have a maid who you can pay to restore the home. You will want to know the fee in advance.

Emergency Measures

You need to arrange for friends, family, or others to be available if there is an emergency.   This could be the toilet tank breaking, water running down the stairs from an improperly sealed shower, or a dead microwave oven.  Yes, our family has experienced all of these minor calamities.

Join us next time as we prepare for your guest’s arrival and welcome.

Enjoy this article?  Be sure to subscribe to this blog via email or RSS.  We have some great stuff coming this summer as we prepare for our own home exchange.  Click here and subscribe by entering your name and email on the top left of the page!

John Mensinger is co-founder of HomeExchangeuniversity.com and an experienced home exchanger.  His passion is helping others experience the enjoyment (and cost savings!) of home exchange.  John can be reached at jm[at]homeexchangeuniversity.com.

Home Exchange University recommends creating a “User’s Manual” for your home.  The manual prepares your exchange partner for handling emergencies, maintenance issue and anything else that may come up during the exchange.  And remember: the more thorough your User’s Manual, the less often your exchange partner needs to contact you during the exchange and the more everyone can enjoy the experience.  Our fourth part of Home Exchange 101 Lesson 6 look at key elements to include in your User’s Manual:

The (Partial) List

Your User’s Manual should include:

• Contact information for emergency services such as Police, Fire, Ambulance, alarm company, and utility providers.
• Names, phone numbers, and addresses of your friends or family that will help your guests with problems or questions.
• Contact information for your insurance agent, mechanic, doctor, veterinarian, or anybody else that might be useful for your visitors.
• Detailed information on how systems work such as the telephone, satellite television, alarm system, or wireless broadband. Access code if they are using their own computer on your network.
• Location of gas and water shut off valves. Location of electrical panels.
• Location of manuals for the washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, etc.
• Advice on local shopping, tourist attractions, and restaurants.
• Information on public transportation.
• Rules and schedules relating to trash pickup. Location of recycling points.
• Local laws or regulations. For example, in certain countries you must have the car’s ownership documents and proof of insurance with you at all times.
• Rules relating to your home. For example, we have a swimming pool. It has a motorized cover. For safety reasons this cover must be closed if the pool is not being used.
• Warnings of hazards or potential problems. For example we live next to a park with a Disc Golf course. If the players throw their Disc into our garden they will often climb the fence to retrieve it. We advise our guests on making the distinction between criminal intruders and errant sportsmen.
• Costs and charges that your guests might have to pay. Normally this is zero but if you had to pay for Internet access by the minute or megabyte, had pay TV, or had an expensive rate for International calls your guests could inadvertently rack up huge costs.

Additional Items to Consider

Besides the User’s Manual be sure to include specific information requested by the incoming family.  Perhaps they want advice on local festival or camping opportunities.  Maybe they want to ride horses, play golf, or go sailing.  Either include this information in your User’s Manual for them or create a supplement with specific details for the particular exchange.

Consider maintaining a box or file with up to date brochures and tourist information on your region.  Equip your vehicle with a detailed road atlas, even if it has a GPS system.  Your exchange family will appreciate detailed city, bicycling, or hiking maps as well as public transit timetables and maps.

Click here for the next article in this series.

Enjoy this article?  Be sure to subscribe to this blog via email or RSS.  We have some great stuff coming this summer as we prepare for our own home exchange.  Click here and subscribe by entering your name and email on the top left of the page!

John Mensinger is co-founder of HomeExchangeuniversity.com and an experienced home exchanger.  His passion is helping others experience the enjoyment (and cost savings!) of home exchange.  John can be reached at jm[at]homeexchangeuniversity.com.

In this, our third part of Home Exchange 101 Lesson 6, we’ll look at some critical steps in preparing your home to receive your homeswap partners.

To Each Their Own…

Families vary in their approach to house cleanliness, condition, and order.  Standards tend to be higher in families without children, which is one reason we recommend trading with families with similar family structures.

There are also differences on this topic among cultures.  Some of our friends exchanged with a Danish family and had the sense that nothing had been done to prepare for their arrival.  That reflected the relaxed and casual attitude of the Danes.  This was OK for our friends: it meant they could enjoy the home and not have to worry about cleaning it up when they left.

In thirteen exchanges we’ve had only one family express disappointment with the condition of our home.  They were from Switzerland, a country renowned for its high standards.  We could sympathize with them as their place was immaculately clean and in brand new condition despite being ten years old and housing two younger kids.

Use Home Exchange as a Reason to Clean and Organize

A house exchange is an appropriate time for spring cleaning, repair, and renewal.  It is not a time for major construction projects which are rarely finished on schedule.  You need to organize everything to be as simple and easy for your guests as possible.  Here are some Home Exchange University tips for preparing your home:

• The home should be clean and orderly.
• Provide fresh towels in the bathrooms and fresh sheets on the beds.
• Clean (and hopefully empty) the refrigerator.  It’s OK to leave staples such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, etc.  We move everything to our second refrigerator/freezer in the garage.  Our guests are welcome to use anything in either of our refrigerators.
• Put away anything fragile or difficult to use/understand.
• Put away anything really valuable in a secure location.
• Fix any deferred maintenance items such as a leaky faucet, loose cabinet knob, or broken chair.
• Be sure the house is safe for the incoming family. If they have young kids disclose any hazards and put away household chemicals where they won’t find them.
• The incoming family should have closet space in their bedrooms, space in the kitchen pantry for food they buy, and a place to put their empty suitcases.
• If any basic equipment such as a toaster, cutlery, or cookware is shabby, give it to charity (or to your children living at University).  Buy new products to replace them.
• If there are items such as bicycles that you know your guests will use, verify that they’re in good operating condition.  Extra credit for having accessories such as helmets, locks, spare tubes and a pump.
• Secure your computer and back it up before your guests arrive.  If you are going to let them use it set up a guest account.
• The garden should be looking good.  If you have a pool it should get a service and cleaning just before your visitors arrive.
• If you are trading the car it should be clean with a full tank of gas.  It should have had a recent service and oil change.  The user’s manual should be in the glove box.

Extra credit if your garage is organized and clean.  We leave it as is and warn our guests that they enter it at their own risk.

So what’s on your home exchange checklist?

Click here for the next article in this series!

Oh, and be sure to subscribe to this blog via email or RSS.  We have some great stuff coming this summer as we prepare for our own home exchange.  Click here and subscribe by entering your name and email on the top left of the page!

John Mensinger is co-founder of HomeExchangeuniversity.com and an experienced home exchanger.  His passion is helping others experience the enjoyment (and cost savings!) of home exchange.  John can be reached at jm[at]homeexchangeuniversity.com.

In this, our second part of Home Exchange 101 Lesson 6, we’ll look at a few ways to organize your trip to get the most out of it.  But first, enjoy one of our typical slightly-off-mark-but-mostly-true analogies:

Party Like a Rock Star

Let’s say you want a party.  You want a great party.  You want people to get to know each other, experience a great setting, set records for most attendees per square foot and maybe end the night in a crazy drunken stupor.

You have two options for creating this party:

Option 1 is to casually mention the part to a few people, maybe prepare some food and buy some drinks, and then sit on your front porch and just kinda see who pops in.

Option 2 is to charter a jet to the Cayman Islands, invite everyone you know, pay their expenses, fly in U2 and Elton John and Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga for a concert and provide a week of the best food, fun and drink you can imagine.

Now option 2 would require quite a bit of planning (and a ton of money.)  But, which option do you think would produce the best party?

Why You Want to Prepare for Your Exchange

Planning your exchange is similar.  The more time you put into planning for and learning about your destination, the better your chance of having a rockin’ good time.

We here at Home Exchange University enjoy the anticipation and planning for a trip as much as the actual vacation.  Here are some tips for preparing for your next home exchange.  Have additional tips from your past house exchanges?  Leave them in the comments below:

• Using guidebooks and the Internet, learn as much as possible about the country and region you will visit.
• Come up with a list of thirty must see attractions for every trip.  We’ll be impressed if you visit even half of them.
• Research special events and performances taking place during your trip, like, say, Rolling with the Queen.
• Read topical books.  John read a history of Scandinavia before visiting Denmark.  This allowed a better appreciation of his surroundings.  The book was equally helpful for two visits to Stockholm.  If you’re visiting France we highly recommend Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French.  You will have an improved understanding of the country, its culture, and its institutions.
• You may want to study the language before visiting a country.  Yes, John has cassette courses in Danish and Swedish, and no, he can’t say more than a few words in either language.

Speaking of few words, if family conversation around the dinner table lags, it’s just the moment to discuss your upcoming vacation and the wonders and history of your vacation destination.

Click here to go to Part 3 of Lesson 6: Preparing Your Home for Your House Exchange Guests!

John Mensinger is co-founder of HomeExchangeuniversity.com and an experienced home exchanger. His passion is helping others experience the enjoyment (and cost savings!) of home exchange. John can be reached at jm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.

Deren S. Monday is co-founder of HomeExchangeUniversity.com and father of two. He is also a remodeling coach teaching others how to make their homes exchange-worthy.  Deren can be reached at dsm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.

Do me a favor.

Go and find a blindfold.

You heard me.  Go and get an old scarf, or a strip of cloth or something else that you can tie around your head for complete blindness.

Got it?  Good.

Now go and find some liquor.  Something with good kick, like scotch, or whiskey, or Goldschlager…

Now take a few shots.  You heard me.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait…

Good. Now spin around, secure the blindfold, and try to conduct your normal daily household routine.

How did you do?  Oh, not so good?  I’m so surprised!

Remember, when you enter a homeswap, your partner is entering a foreign territory (your home) as will you (their home).  Your job, being the good home exchange partner that you are, is to ensure even a blindfolded, drunken, dizzy exchange partner could function in your home.  Home Exchange 101 Lesson 6 is all about preparing you, your home and your home exchange partner for the exchange.

This is a dense lesson, so we will break it into multiple posts.  Here are the sub-topics of this lesson:

• Organizing Your Vacation to Maximize Enjoyment
• Preparing Your Home for Your House Exchange Guests
• Preparing Your “User’s Manual”
• Agreeing to the Rules and Regulations
• Preparing for the Arrival and Welcome

Click here for the next section of this lesson!

PS: To be notified via email when the new posts arrive, simply click here and enter your email address in the box on the top left corner.  Come on, everyone is doing it.  It’s the cool things to do…

Deren S. Monday is co-founder of HomeExchangeUniversity.com and father of two. He is also a remodeling coach teaching others how to make their homes exchange-worthy.  Deren can be reached at dsm_at_homeexchangeuniversity_dot_com.