When you take into account the resources that you have to wage freedom, rather than making your life a shrugging monument to inertia, a home that you own is one of the biggest. It’s a store of value that might be sold or borrowed against in pursuit of a dream. But there is another vastly under-appreciated way to enrich your life with your home.
I’m referring to a Home Exchange, or a House Swap. Maybe you have heard of it: you trade your house with someone else in another part of your country or from the other side of the world, for any period that you agree upon. You might include your cars in the deal, taking care of each others’ pets, etc. The web is littered with very good sites to help you find situations that might suit you. (links)
Maybe the reason one hears very little about it in the media is that there is no money that might be made by a 3rd party like a bank or Expedia.com. This is exactly the beauty of it: in addition to maximum autonomy that the arrangement affords the participants, the straight barter also involves no out of pocket costs. In fact, the costs probably will be in the neighborhood of what you spend to live normally. In any case, expenses will bear no resemblance at all to a normal ‘holiday’.
Rather than being obliged to eat all meals in restaurants while paying for a sterile hotel room, you can cook yourself if you prefer, while shopping at grocery stores. The dimension of authenticity that is totally lacking on a holiday floods into the experience of having a livable situation that you can step into when you unlock the door to your co-swapper’s home.
It’s not for everyone. Maybe you’re reluctant to allow strangers to sleep in your bed; maybe you like the feeling of being pampered after working for a long time for your holiday. But who knows who slept in that hotel bed last, and you can wash your sheets when you get back home! The point is that if you’d like to go not as a desperate visitor hoping to drink Paris in for one week, but for something a little bit more real, a Home Exchange can be more life than you ever had a on vacation.
{ 0 comments… add one now }