Unlike the rest of the world, the USA celebrates Labor Day in September. This Labor Day weekend, we labored to get our home in shape for the exchangers who we actually met (a rarity in home exchange). What did we do to prepare for them?
CLEANING
...and cleaning and cleaning. Actually, we had our housekeeper do it. We asked her to pay special attention to tasks we don't do every week like cleaning the blades on the ceiling fans. While she was busy scrubbing we handled organizational projects we had been putting off.
We did all the laundry so we could leave the hampers empty, including the new towels, which need to be washed before use.
PET CARE
Immediately before leaving I thoroughly cleaned the cat litter box to avoid odors. I brushed the cats to remove excess fur. We washed and filled their 1-gallon water fountain so the swappers would not have to be bothered with changing their water bowl. Their cat food jar moved from the closet to the counter so it would be easy to find.
RENEWAL
Some of our towels were looking kind of ratty so I bought thick Turkish towel sets to replace them. We painted over the newly-plastered areas in the kitchen created when we moved our wall lamp.
All the beds were stripped and re-made with fresh sheets. It's no fun to arrive in a strange home after a day of travel and immediately have to make beds.
ORGANIZATION
We finally went through those file boxes we needed documents from, and put them back in our storage locker.
Reading material has been piling up by the side of the bed. We replaced all the books and magazines on the appropriate shelves and recycled anything that didn't look engrossing.
The kids have even more books than we do and their shelves tend to look messy quickly. We spiffed up their bookshelves since one of the exchangers will be staying in their room.
OBSCURE TASKS
To avoid feline freak-outs I plugged in a Feliway. This is a device that vaporizes synthetic cat endorphins. We can't smell them, but the cats can and it makes them feel calmer despite the new people staying in our home.
Before leaving our home to exchangers, I like to take all of the towels and as many toiletries as possible out of the shower area. Our daughter is potty training and I don't imagine they are interested in sharing the bathroom with her potty, so that went away as well.
SECURITY
We have one locking closet in the house and we put things in it that we don't want handled by the swappers. There are lots of valuable items we leave out, but we store things like my special cooking knives that are hard to care for properly and fragile things with sentimental value. And, why not, my jewelry box.
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