"My home isn't perfect... Is home exchanging for me?” Read Elodie's experience 🧡

Before actually getting started on HomeExchange, we often ask ourselves whether our home is good enough: will other members like it? What about the noisy toilet flush? What about the window that doesn’t close properly? Will anyone actually want to come stay in my home?

We loved reading Elodie’s experience and testimonial, which sums up the spirit of HomeExchange perfectly.

Elodie’s experience :orange_heart:

I’m still on vacation in La Rochelle (France) and, like many, I’m already thinking about my next vacations!

We’re looking for a perfectly imperfect house to make us feel at home for 4-5 days, no more than a 3-hour drive away, so we don’t lose an entire day on the road… But just enough to feel like we’re on vacation all the same.

Our house is based in Alsace, capital of wine, beer, pretzels, kougelhops…

Mind you, apart from its location, which is perfect for visiting Alsace, Switzerland and Germany (Europapark, there you are!), our house is perfectly imperfect.

We have in our home our dear friend “the kitchen window spider” weaves its web every day (no panic… it’s on the outside), one of our 3 hallway lights sometimes decides not to work (but the other two have no issues), the dust over our black toy cabinet finds its way back everyday despite our so-called magical “anti-dust” cloth, our scratched up office wallpaper that was a result of our beloved cat’s jealousy when our youngest was born… We have smaller-than-usual windows in the upstairs bedroom so unless you have arms that are 1.5 metres long, it’s almost impossible to clean the higher part unless you get out the big ladder…

In short, our house has its charming faults, but it will be perfect for lovely moments with your friends or family.

Have a nice day and happy vacations!

Elodie

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I still have these lines on my profile: “We have a very old sofa, with scratches from our cat Noekie and some stains that can no longer be removed. We only want to replace it when Noekie is no longer there, because she is already old and would damage a new sofa immediately. We can put a rug over the sofa if guests like it. However, the sofa is lovely to sit on!”
I will replace them soon, Noekie is no longer with us ( :cry: ) and we do have a new couch, but having these lines in my profile, I made sure my guests didn’t expect everything perfect!
I don’t want everything perfect in homes that I visit either, this would make me very anxious of doing something wrong!

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Perfection is not an absolute concept, IMO. It has some degree of subjectivity.

My profile reads that this a very old and humble house. It’s closed most of the year and it’s in the mountains so there will be mosquitos, spiders and bugs. It will be very hot in the summer. There’s no Wi-Fi, TV or A/C. If all you care is a picture for your Instagram this might not be the place for you.

Even with all these imperfections some people have spent a week there, had a great time and left a beautiful comment about it.

So yeah. Your house may not be perfect, but it can be the perfect place for someone to spend a nice time with family or friends and keep good memories.

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each house is perfect, in its own way. I’ve done 48 exchanges and every house we’ve stayed in has been excellent. It never bothered me if it wasn’t perfectly clean (we were always away from home anyway) or if the internet wasn’t fast, all of which are minor. all I care about is that the host is polite and communicative.