But where does all your stuff go?

Our house is rented this weekend so we moved out to our favourite Airbnb near Folkstone- imagine a huge manor house with big grounds, orchard, tennis court, sheep - and us in the Gate house :) Each window has a beautiful view of nature and you just feel like you are million miles away from the world and all its problems.

Firstly, I never want to move out. Sometimes I quietly hope people cancel because it’s such a huge job moving out of our 6 bedroom house just for the weekend. In fact it’s a massive job for any length of time - but particularly just for the weekend.

You might wonder where does all our stuff go? At the beginning of this year most of it was given away or sold. We would never have been able to do it had we not done that because there just isn’t a space to put it unless we hired a storage unit. That would have made it really difficult though so we opted for offloading stuff because really, how much do we actually need to live comfortably?

And what’s left is quite well organised. We have my husband’s office and a few cupboards inside the house that get locked and then there is the garage with plastic storage tubs. Imagine how you have your stuff organised in your own home, it’s like that except our stuff is organised in those cupboards and the garage. When we are back, we live out of our suitcases and just get our own duvets and pillows out. All the Airbnb bedding (duvets, pillows, throws, etc) gets put into one room or stays in the room that’s not used. Kitchen is actually the only real pain. It takes constant back and forth from the garage or opening and closing of plastic tubs in the cupboard in the hallway. Before we left I started to reorganise it and I think it will work much better when we are back. I decided to treat the inside cupboard as a pantry so it means less trips to the garage and less stuff that needs to be put out and packed away. I need to do more work in the garage because the cold months are approaching and I don’t want anything to go mouldy so I will most likely need to relocate those tubs inside.

It’s an ever evolving project. When we first moved out, there was still so much stuff and each time we got back we got rid of more. To be honest there is still stuff that could go but I worry I might miss that so I am waiting to see what happens. I think I would like to be able to get those items out again when we are living somewhere more permanently like all my punching stuff, my crystals, clothes and some books. It’s really not much.

I do love the feeling when everything is out of the house, the cleaners have just left and I do a final walk through the house to make sure everything is perfect. It’s such a good feeling seeing how great the house looks and by then I am excited for the people staying. I have sixteen 5* reviews now and have just got a Superhost badge. I’ve been hosting for less than 5 months so I do feel very proud.

And once we are out of the house having fun somewhere else I then don’t want to go home 😂 typical.