I swear 2020 is going to be a great year, I’m going to make sure of that~

This my friends is one of my New Years resolutions, I want to blog again as much as I can. I want to be more creative, i am actually happier when I’m being creative. I want to get my 100 Things I Want To Teach My Daughter and have it printed into a book. I have been blogging since April 2009, its been 11 years. At the time I started I was 37 years old. My kids were 14 and 11 yrs old. Today they are 23 and 26, a lot changes in 11 years. It seemed much easier back them to come up with ideas and topics. Parenting, marriage, teenagers, grief, special needs parenting. Now, I’m just an old married woman who seems a bit obsolete from giving advice or information on the topics that I once did.

I am a different person, and I’d probably give advice slightly offbeat from who I was those many years ago. Who am I today? I need to figure that out and share it with my space here in blogger world.

What I will share today is how our experience with Airbnb went two summers ago when we rented our cottage for the whole summer. We are huge Airbnb supporters, we prefer to use Airbnb when travelling, except when going to destinations that are meant to be of luxury. It’s not always relaxing if you have to cook your own meals and make your own beds, sometimes its nice to have that stuff taken care of for you! #allinclusisive

So, two summers ago we gave it a try. We turned our little cottage in to an Airbnb and it was the most fun I have had in a very long time. It was a lot of work, i did not hire a cleaning staff because to be honest I didn’t think it was going to be as busy as it was. I had two moments during the summer were I had to clean the whole cottage within 3 hours before the next group of people were scheduled to arrive. The first time it happened it was fine, the people that had just left the cottage were super clean. They probably tidied up too much. The second time it happened I started to cry. I was so overwhelmed. The place was a mess, it was disgusting. I even had to clean the whole fridge, they had some sort of cooking sauce that leaked out into the bottom of the fridge and stuck underneath the crispers. It was awful. They had mud on the screens of the windows, a neighbour informed us that they had water and balloon fights, Normally that would be fine, but at least spray off the mud from the windows and doors. 😦

Those people were also the ones who tried to tell me we had rats running around on the counters while they were playing cards late one night. They had too many visitors as well. We have rules about how many people can stay overnight. I will say I did feel sorry for the lady, she was the only adult with some teenagers and as they were standing around getting ready to leave as I arrived, she was frantically running around trying to collect things and tidy up the bit she could. She clearly had no help from any of them.

After they left, I cried. RATS?? What the hell? I have never seen a rat. What the hell was I going to do now? I have a family coming in with 3 little boys. I called my last renter before the dirty people and asked if they had seen any rats or any droppings from rats and they said no. I calmed down, got to work frantically cleaning the place. Called my husband who then called in a company to come and check for rats, mice, spiders, ants all the things related to cottage life. We now have a company that checks in constantly for mice and other critters. And for the record, the exterminator said there was absolutely NO sign of rats on or in our property.

Considering we rented the cottage for the whole summer, that really was the only issue we had.

One of my favorite memories of renting the cottage was when a mom, her sister and mother along with their 5 combined kids showed up while I was still there. The little boys came squealing out of their car running up onto the porch, so excited to get inside and check out their new accommodations. Those little boys were so appreciative, they gave me hugs and thanked me profusely. Cutest little fellows, that made my heart so happy, Knowing that my cottage was going to be a holiday for these kids, making memories and sharing experiences just made things feel so worth it.

Pretty much every Airbnb we stayed at would leave us some sort of treat or small gift upon arrival. This was another favourite part of mine. I LOVED coming up with personalized gifts for each family/renter. I will share here a couple of my cute little gift ideas:

Our first renters was a small group of friends who wanted to get away together for the long weekend in May. I made them this basket filled with yummy snacks. S’mores for the fire pit and chips, peanuts and popcorn. They loved it, they in return left us the nicest note with a bottle of Canadian Club and a captain hat! How cute is that!!