Keeping Your Home Exchange Connection

Courtesy of Nicole Feist, Home Exchange Travels

When the home exchange is over our connection to our swap partners is just beginning. Swap partners often become friends. Even if they don't, it is good to maintain contact. We share references with future swap partners on behalf of former exchangers whose homes we have used. We have a resource in each community we have visited: we can ask questions only a local can answer and visit with exchange friends when we return. Often, we swap again and again with the same family.

END ON THE RIGHT NOTE

What is the etiquette for ending a swap? And how do we maintain contact? Step one begins before your vacation ends and you head home. It is imperative that you leave the swap house in better shape than you found it. That means clean, don't just straighten up. Strip the beds, wash the sheets and remake the beds. This is not a hotel room, it is someone's home. The swap family is about to return from vacation. They will be tired from travel. The last thing they want to do is deal with your dirty linens or clean up after you.

BE A GOOD GUEST

Part of not making work for your swap hosts is taking everything with you. People forget to pack an item here and there. Policing each room before you leave can help you round up stray items. Having to ship your forgotten belongings back to you is a hassle so try to avoid imposing it on your hosts.

END WITH A NICE NOTE

Before we leave we write our hosts a thank you note. Whether we loved their home and area or wished we were back home, allowing us to use their home is a magnanimous gesture that deserves thanks. We also fess up if we broke anything (as in your own home, it happens) and we leave reimbursement no matter what the cost.

EVERYONE LIKES PRESENTS

We also choose to leave a "hostess gift", just as we would if we had been invited to stay with someone for the weekend. It's never a very expensive gift because we do not expect one in return. We do not want to make our swap partners uncomfortable if they are unfamiliar with this custom.

We keep our swap gift to no more than $100 and we make sure it is in some way reflective of our home area so it serves as a memento of the swap for our exchange partners.

GIVE SOME FEEDBACK

We write a note after the exchange. If we returned to find our home in good condition we thank our swap partners. Here is a kind note I received this morning when I returned from our Florida swap:

"We arrived around 3:30 this afternoon and were pleased and surprised to be greeted by clean sheets, towels and house! Thank you for all of your work: it's quite an effort, to clean, get everyone ready and entertain two little ones. We hope your flight went well. The internet predicts that your weather for the next several days will ease you back into NY temps before cold comes again...

Give our regards to all. Thank you for taking such good care of our home."

That is the right way to communicate with folks you have just finished swapping with. It is the same sort of friendly tone one aims for all along with a swap partner. We rate our exchanges for our own amusement. This one was the second "perfect 10" we have ever experienced. And it's why we're addicted to home exchange.

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