New Friends; A new home exchange; York, UK

We arrived in Manchester in England yesterday after a nine hour flight on Air Transat. Final destination: the city of York. Once again, Laurel Leif and Kendra have organized a house exchange to the UK. This time we are swapping home with Josh, Shelley, Isabel and Alex, a family that was keen for a visit to Vancouver. Their home is a short walk to the centre of York, in North Yorkshire, and a place that I was hoping to visit sometime.  They contacted us back in November and  suggested we make an exchange in July and August. Although we had been looking for for a spring exchange this year, we decided the location was worth shifting our time a bit. Alex and Isabel are still in school, and summer holidays in the UK begins in mid July, so that was the only time they could make it.

We arrived in Manchester at 11:15 am.  It was very rainy but that didn't make any difference to us because the airport is directly attached to the train station via a wonderful enclosed walkway.  Josh and Shelley had advised against a flight to Gatwick or Heathrow because the transport to York through London is a royal pain. After we sailed through customs and picked up our bags we had a nice dry saunter over to the train station to pick up our pre-purchased tickets to York. "Leaving in eight minutes, Platform 2b" is all the fellow at the desk said to as he printed out our tickets and handed them over. We rushed to the trains and jumped on board for our 90km (56 miles) approximate 1 1/2 hour trip.

On the train from Manchester to York

Grinning ear to ear, Canadian style. 

Josh was waiting at the station for us and we bundled our suitcases into their cute little red car for the short drive to their home. So nice to meet them all in person although I felt they were like friends already as we had exchanged many emails and skyped a few times. As well, Kendra and Isabel had chatted on facebook.  We had a  cup of excellent tea around their large kitchen table and for a few hours swapped stories and advice about our homes and our planned trips. We both laughed about the efforts we made about getting our houses ready for the exchange in time for our visit. I joked that they mustn't look in our garage, as it was stuffed with boxes and bags of things we decluttered, and they laughed admitted their loft (attic) was where they had put all of their things.

The truth is, no matter how excellent a home-owner and house-keeper one might be, we all have much more stuff hanging around our house than we need. A home exchange puts all these things under a microscope. When we know that someone is coming over to actually experience your home directly, on a daily basis, everything looks a little different. Suddenly, that big yoga ball you bought on sale as an ergonomic seat looks rather silly. Bags of clothes from drawers (its always nice to leave a few drawers empty and a little space in your closet for your guests), miscellaneous baskets full of stuff you once meant to put away,  the semi-working espresso machine that you use every morning but would be very difficult to explain how to work, all these things come under a critical eye when you are passing your house keys to someone else.

So what do you do, toss em? of course not! You either write a long note of explanation or box and bag 'em up and put them in a part of the house that is out of the way.

And maybe, just maybe, when you get home, you'll get to that stuff, and give it away or send it off to the landfill where it belongs.

But maybe not.

"Pftttt Pfffft Pffft Pfft" (sound of yoga ball being pumped back up)