Exchanging houses

There was a question on theThe Well-Trained Mind's K-8 General Board on Home Exchanging for vacations. I replied there, but then decided to also post the reply on our blog.

I've been able to arrange with my managers over the last couple years a program of working remotely about one month a year. I'll work remotely around twenty hours a week for a month and thus only have to use up two weeks of vacation. It is a bit stressful for me, but Janine and our daughters end up having a month long vacation in some fun place.

We've done a couple variations of exchanging houses:
1) One year we found some friends who were getting major reconstruction done on their house. We rented our house to them. We then found a furnished apartment in another city.

2) Another time we were able to connect with the brother of a good friend of ours. He wanted to bring his family to our part of California, so we exchanged houses.

3) In 2005 we just left our house empty and went back East. In 2006 we went back to Washington D.C.

We are starting to set something up for spring of 2007. I've found that it doesn't make sense to start arranging things too far into the future.

Our dream is to spend a month in England. We don't have anything looking promising in England for our next trip, but it does look like we might be able to go to Europe. We have some friends from Holland who think they may be able to find a family to switch houses with us. Another friend is from Sweden and she thinks there is a good chance we may be able to exchange houses with some friends of hers.

There are some organizations which will arrange house exchanges. We've been reluctant to do this. We feel more comfortable in renting to friends, or trading with people who are friends or family of people we know and trust.

We have found that spending a month in a place really gives you a better feel for a city, and it is more relaxing. When we spend a couple days or a week visiting a new city there is always a sense of urgency. We are always trying to cram in everything. With a month you can take it easy. We will even have days when we don't do anything touristy.

If you can arrange it, exchanging your house can be a lot of fun.

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