🏡 Falling in love with HomeSwapping | #111
🏡 Falling in love with HomeSwapping | #111
Delving into the world and community of house exchanging
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🖊️ Edition #111 from Madrid, Spain.
Howdy loyal readers, hope everyone is keeping well!
I am in Madrid for a couple of days, as part of my new role as Head of Remote Operations at Nosana attending South Summit. Unfortunately, there is an early heatwave in Madrid, so most of the time here I have been sweating and seeking out some cool air. Although Zaragoza is a relatively big city - 5 or 6 biggest in Spain actually, depending on what list you check - it is a small city, relatively compact and provincial.
The noise and amount of people in Madrid, makes me think of the quiet and tranquility of our “piso” in Zaragoza and why I love the city and believe it is a very underrated part of Spain.
Our special home-base, which we now offer to others to enjoy, as part of the HomeExchange Platform, which you can view via that link, if you are already a member of the community.
Otherwise if you are new and want to join, use this link with my sponsor key.
Hidden Spain in Zaragoza
Penning this in article in my temporary city-center apartment in Madrid , and marvelling at the hustle and bustle that is Madrid as a Metropolis, I reflect on our quieter home-base life in Zaragoza. Particularly our privileged park center location, but that was hard-won.
Our current home-base is our third home-base in Zaragoza. It is in a beautiful park and for us, now, after two previous locations, it is our ideal spot.
Our first was a supposed to be temporary AirBnB base of a 3-bed penthouse apartment over-looking a park (which we stayed in for almost 2 years in the end!). Which had a terrible old style heating system and was relatively costly - for Zaragoza prices, it was just over e1k per month - so we downsized.
When we downsized slightly, to a second smaller 2-bed apartment in a quiet well located relatively quiet city center street BUT covid hit a few months after, so life took an unexpected few turns. Plus the city center street started to get filled with food and drink terraces post-covid, becoming increasingly noisy and our needs changed again.
So we - at this stage after 4 years in Zaragoza - knew our preferred spot, knew our checklist better and voila, we found our current home-base. Spacious, light and in a quiet, airy and spacious city park, it is super for family life and has the convenience of being within a 10 min walk of the city center. It is a 15 min walk to our daughter’s school and our gym is 10 mins to the other side.
In fact almost all our walks out anywhere, involved a walk across the park. A small but significant detail when living here, that I love.
Most mornings, I wake early and sit in our bright sitting room to have my morning lemon tea, journal and watch the sunlight spread across the wooden floors, whilst listening to the birds in the trees.
A total contrast to the tiny and stuffy Madrid studio I am writing this in now!
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Affiliates corner: Here are some of the products and services that I rate: Digital Nomad Spain set-up Advice, Nomad Health Insurance from SafetyWing or from Genki - Insurance for Nomads, best mobile laptop stand from Nexstand Laptop Riser 10% off code: ROREMOTE10, for pet and house sitting visit TrustedHousesitters to get 25% off annual memberships use: ROREMOTE25, for HomeExchanging visit this link and for reliable Spanish Accounting and Business Advice via Entre Tramites.
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Why HomeExchanging?
A nomad friend, with her home-base in the Netherlands, spends up to 8 months travelling a year and uses home swopping to reduce her travel costs. I have known her for about 3 years and her sharing of the photos of the various locations and home she swops and stays in, inspired me to check it out.
She sent me on her SponsorKey to join the platform, so I saved money on the yearly membership. Curious about Home Exchange? Use this link with my sponsor key.
I spent some time getting accustomed to the platform, because there are not just straight house-swops or reciprocal exchanges, there are also GuestPoints which are earned and mean some home owners (HO) will allow guests to use those points.
Simply completing our home listing (the first basic version) resulted in us getting awarded initial 1,200 GuestPoints to use to start, more on that later.
This whole theme of the sharing economy is part of our core family values. Plus we had already embarked earlier this year on some experiments to save money as part of my Menopause 3 Month Sabbatical Break, where I aimed to save costs as a Nomad, I tried:
A €50 lodging + food per day in the Spanish Pyrenees month long trip
House-sitting as a means to saving on travel accommodation costs
We travel for 4-6 months a year, so having someone else or another family use our empty apartment when we are away to earn points or swop, makes total sensible logic and financial sense.
Setting up the profile of myself and my home was simple enough, at least to get the first version ready and launched. Which over recent weeks I have started to share a little with some family and friends. During that process, I learned some other contacts were on the platform, some of whom have provided direct feedback to me and that has meant that our presence on the platform is slowing evolving and improving, bit by bit.
Or poco-a-poco as they say in Spanish!
As part of this general surfing on the platform my husband and I decided to use our initially earned GuestPoints on a local stay in Aragon.
A photos from the side of the home, to show the views, I am sharing below:
More to come on be written on that fist experience in HomeExchanging in the next edition.
👀 Stay tuned and any questions? Ask in the comments!
TLDR: 🫱🏽🫲🏾 In case you don’t know me already, I am Ro, I am based in Zaragoza, Spain with my Location Independent, somewhat Nomadic (4-6 months a years of nomading) family. For work, I am a Remote Work and Digital Nomad Expert, Advisor and Writer, oh and a Linkedin Top Voice. You can book a 1:1 here.
All my web and FREE resource links are here.
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May the road rise to meet you,
love n light,
💚 Ro