How to Survive a House Exchange

This summer, my family and I decided to do a home exchange for our vacation. This means that for two weeks, we lived in the house of some family we’d never met, and they lived in ours. Half of the people I tell this to ask me a series of questions, often beginning with: Did they sleep in your bed? (Yes.) On your linens? (Yes.) Did they steal anything? (No.) But surely they broke something? (Not really.)

If you are in this group, then you might be too squeamish for house swapping. As the many websites [2] dedicated to the practice will tell you, this is a cheap, convenient, and popular way to travel. But it is also a form of willing identity theft. For two weeks, this family drove our car, rode our bikes, and cooked in our kitchen. Their daughters played with my daughter’s dolls, and their sons wore my son’s pirate costumes. For all I know the mom wore my clothes every day. That part was not in our informal agreement, but given the weird imposter feel of the arrangement, it could have been tempting.

I got the idea from my brother-in-law. He had signed up first, and one night he was at our house on the site checking on who had responded to him. This lead-up phase works much the same way as with online dating sites. You post a picture of your house and wait to see who bites. You can also initiate contact with people you’re interested in. I urged him to be aspirational and only contact people who lived in chateaus. Yes, this is just like contacting potential mates who are too good looking or otherwise out of your league. But, just as with dating, I convinced him that they had some flaw that would cancel out the family crest. In this case, it was shaky English. Owners of chateaus offered access to “musculation” rooms (exercise rooms) and nearby “equitation” (horse-back riding). One promised décor that was “castle-typical.” Ha ha, I thought. Such French inbreds would be lucky to stay in my 1940s Wardman.

The next day we signed up ourselves, and noticed another parallel to dating sites: The route to signing up involves encouraging fantasy. We took pictures of our house, which we described as a “large light filled house” in the “heart of Washington.” We took advantage of the European crush on Obama by adding “15 minutes from the White House,” hoping to prompt visions of Obama running past our front door every morning, or Bo wandering into the yard. My husband milked this beautifully: “One of the most striking things about our neighborhood these days is that it is jammed with Obama people,” he wrote. “Many of his staffers and advisers live near us.” We did not mention that they escape in the summer to avoid the killer humidity and the mosquitoes.

We got bites from Italy, Spain, France, California, Canada, New England. We imagined ourselves biking around Tuscany, sight-seeing in Madrid. Ultimately, reality set in. Nibbles turned into e-mail exchanges where we and our potential partners sussed each other out. City or country? How many beds? How many kids? How big is your car? Do the bikes have flat tires? Wi-Fi or no? We haggled over details and dates and finally settled with, not noblemen, but our French socioeconomic equivalent—a nice, middle-class family from Brittany, with four kids, and plenty of toys, bikes, and bedrooms. That’s one more kid than we have, but I figured French children are famous for being docile and proto-adult, so they wouldn’t do too much damage.

Writing in the New York Times recently about her summer rentals in Cape Cod, novelist Jumpa Lahiri [3] describes inspecting the kitchens: “the stale McCormick spices, the speckled enamel stockpots in which countless visitors have boiled their corn.” I have rented a couple of beach houses and recognize the sensation. The standard décor—the framed lighthouses, the wooden birds, the scented honey—is supposed to provide some light architecture for your imagination without filling in too many details, like a stage set for a not yet written play. On our beach vacations, the children run around pretending to be lost mariners, while we chat about beach houses we’d like to own some day.

A house swap is really not like that. It’s more like that Raymond Carver short story, “Neighbors,” where Bill and Arlene Miller house-sit for the Stones, acquaintances of whom they are somewhat jealous. The couple begins to imagine that they are the Stones, that merely by sitting at their kitchen table and eating their food, they have become them. There is a sense of transgression, and also a sexual thrill. I don’t know about the sexual thrill part, but I can say that the air of transgression is certainly true. These were no stale spices in our temporary French house, but we saw specks of the rosemary they had used yesterday. The Nespresso machine was still plugged in, the laundry was out drying and books were open on the bedside table. It felt less like renting a house then like breaking in and squatting. I tried my best to behave as I imagined the French family did. I dressed more formally than I otherwise might to go boating or on a picnic. I made the children take off their shoes in the house and line up and fix their hair and pick up the toys. I soon realized this was a losing battle. American children create too much garbage and chaos—a fact I decided to spin positively, as the source of their superior creativity and innovation. Once I relaxed, it was a fantastic vacation. We visited many chateaus and abbeys, we rode bikes along a nearby canal, picnicked, canoed, and swam. We bought croissants every morning and cooked most of our dinners at home. (See, it was home!) We used their car and their bikes, which means that, except for air fare and groceries we would have bought at home anyway, the vacation was free.

The only awkward part came when we returned. We had slightly screwed up the dates, so the family was still staying in our house, and we had to stay with friends for a couple of days. To show some European-style hospitality, we decided to bring the family brunch. This created a very weird occasion: We brought food to our own house and then had to leave—definitely a test of my nonchalance about turning over my house. Another woman had slightly rearranged my kitchen, and many things were not in their usual place. Strange children were sleeping in my children’s beds; dolls who would never acknowledge each other in my daughter’s tea parties were sitting together. The kids were utterly baffled by being exiled from their own stuff, and sat sullenly through brunch. The temptation was overwhelming to put everything back in its place and shoo the imposters away. But we had to resist. For two more days, this was their house, not ours.

From the clues I picked up, I suspect they did not have as good a time as we did. They spent most of their time at our zoo, which is unpleasant in summer, and the pool, which could be anywhere. It occurred to me that for foreign kids, D.C. is all anticipation but no fun. (Vois, Berenguer, le Memorial de Lincoln!)

After they left, the house was neat, but I found plenty of reminders of the foreign invasion. Every last toy was out of place, some computer settings had changed, and our bed was made in the French fashion, with no fitted sheet. This was all a little unsettling but not terrible, and definitely not worth the price of two weeks in a hotel.