We are preparing for our first exchange, and we are very excited! We will be doing a direct swap. How do people feel about leaving the whole house accessible vs locking one of the rooms and putting confidential information in that room?
It feels unfriendly and even accusatory to put a lock on one of the doors but, at the same time, we do not have any ability to lock things in a closet. My primary concern is paper documents that include confidential information about us and our finances. I don’t care if somebody wants to use a computer - we can set up a guest account - but we have a lot of paper files in the office.
How do folks deal with this? Would it make you feel unwelcome or would you feel that it is a reasonable expectation that there would be a locked room?
Hello. Most members are ok with a locked office, if you precise it before.
But homeexchange is build on trust, so a lot of members leave all of their stuff, it’s my case. If guests want to see what I earn and pay my taxes while they’re in holidays, they can, but I doubt anyone would have read my papers in 15 years of experience
you could also maybe ask a friend or neighboor to keep you a box with your papers during the exchange, especially if it reassure you for the first time ?
If you have a clear office you can lock it up and just say that is the office and contains personal and work papers and hope you understand. When I was working I would have to have done this as my work required it. Now we have a locking filing cabinet. I understand your concern especially if you have had people you trusted violate your privacy. Just be clear with the exchangers and it works or it doesn’t. I would not care.
It is completely normal to have a locked room or cupboard for any valuables. We have a small boot room that we use for this purpose. There is other space in the hall for coats etc.
