One of the brilliant things about Home Exchange at HomeForHome is that you can receive all the benefits of taking very low-cost vacations, and it’s all available to you as part of our free service.

So if you’ve had a good home exchange experience, and if you like the website, then you could let your friends know. That is, if you think that they’d be interested and up for a home exchange! If you or people that you know are finding the economic crisis is really starting to grate and make things difficult, then you could offer a little bit of help or advice by introducing them to the idea of home exchange.

You could easily paste this link into an email and make the suggestion to some of your friends http://en.homeforhome.com.

Considering that membership is completely free, they’ve got nothing to lose. Plus, if they sign up and have some fantastic vacations then they’ll be very grateful! They might even bake you a cake

So. Keys under the flower pot. Or under the doormat. Does anyone do that anymore? I don´t think so. But there is something really quite romantic about it. Something really very World War 2 era, or something very teenage there, lingering somehow.

Which of course brings us to the question of: how do we transfer keys when we do a home exchange? The most obvious thing to do would be to leave the keys with a neighbour. Safe, reliable, easy and simple.

But what about if you don´t have a neighbour you would feel comfortable asking this from? It could happen. People don´t connect as much anymore. Gone are those playful days of a gentle loan of a cup of sugar, or leaving the front door unlocked so that neighbours can come and go as they please. (Like, to access inside of the house.) So some people might not feel comfortable asking a neighbour to do this.

Or what if the other home exchangers have flights that will arrive at 4 o´clock in the morning and you just can´t quite bring yourself to ask Bob and Sue (or Geoff and Viv) to wake up in the middle of the night to do you this favour.

Well. There are other ways of organizing these things. Firstly, depending on your preferences, you could send a copy of the keys via special post delivery. It´s a bit extreme, but possible nonetheless. Obviously don`t put your address on the envelope.

If you don`t feel comfortable with this, you could organize for a family member, or friend to come around on the day that the guests will arrive, and get them to open up and welcome in the new family. Or, if it´s a “4 in the morning” type scenario, they could put the keys in an envelope and hide them in a specific and predetermined point outside of the house. (Flower pot!! It´s screaming out to you!)

Another way to do things is to get the exchanges to overlap a little, so that the family stays with you one day, and that way you can do everything by your own hand. Often home exchangers do like to meet their fellow exchangers, as it puts a nice smiley face on top of everything, and makes you feel more comfortable.

There are fifty ways to leave your keys to the incoming exchangers. You just need to be a bit imaginative, and don´t be afraid to ask for a bit of help from a neighbour or friend. Most people are more than willing to do it.