Achieving a work-life balance?

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

I know that hosting and welcoming guests on a regular basis, takes lot of time and effort, plus for many of you, this may not be your only focus, perhaps you have full/part-time job or other commitments to juggle alongside this. With this in mind, the "term finding a work-life balance" is not always as easy as it sounds, however much you enjoy all the things you do. 

I wondered how do you find this, do you find you achieve a good balance? Do you have any tips, perhaps you are a champion of keeping to-do lists and they help with this or perhaps there is always one special thing that you allocate time for, like taking a morning walk or having your hair done every month. 🙂

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
Lizzie

[Βασίλης-and-Ann0]

Thank you @Lizzie for your kind words & yes, retirement, although I can recommend it, keeps us busy, especially with new projects.

We are seriously thinking of converting the garage & 2 defunct water storage spaces underneath our villa into a 2 bed/2 bath holiday let. The risk factor puts us off a bit, will it work ? It's exciting at the same time. Maybe we should leave it because at some point in the ( hopefully ) near future we'll sell our property then travel the world.

Lizzie, what about you ? What's your work-life balance? Your new life must be thrilling.

[Robin129]

Great question! 

I do a lot of my work from home, but have days where I have to attend meetings and receptions. I don't open my calendar too far in advance. I may be missing big money but I don't leave the major holidays open for guests. I do have a guest schedule the Monday-Tuesday before Thankgiving (US), but Wednesday-Sunday is blocked. 

I try to be very aware of appointments and other commitments so I don't have guests coming in or checking out at those times. I also try not to have back-to-back bookings. That allows me to flip the room without stressing. I do need to work on getting back on my walking schedule. I've neglected that.

The husband has to turn in his vacation days request for 2018 in a few weeks. I'll be juggling calendars LOL I don't know if we'll take a big trip (10+ days) or a series of short trips/long weekends.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Robin129,

It does sound like you have to juggle a lot of things and things pull you in multiple directions. Do you find that you use a lot of technology like online calendars, schedulers to help with this?

I am glad you are planning on taking some holiday, I find even short breaks can make the world of different and it gives you lots of exciting things to look forward to. Any ideas of places you would like to go to yet? 🙂

[Robin129]

There are many places we'd love to travel to. Finding the money is the challenge! 🙂

He's always wanted to attend a pro-football (US) game so I may try to arrange that. I would like to visit more of the US midwest. We've traveled through the northeast, and south. I lived in Texas. We visited Hawaii, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona. In high school I visited England and France as part of a 10 days school travel program. I don't recall much because most of it was spent commuting between desinations. I'd love to re-visit France, this time the area my grandfather and his brother served during WWI. 

[Lizzie]

Aw that sounds nice @Robin129. Well, I really do hope you get your holiday, it would be great it you make it over to Europe too, perhaps you could pop over London! 🙂

[Edwin57]

I work plus I go to school plus take care of my grandmother witch she 95 years old my Dad and I always keep in touch when Iam in the place the guest is always out by time I get there witch is 12 to 3 Iam gone but my Dad and Mom is always there for me 

[Thomas498]

@Lizzie great post. The ones who work from home seem to be the most happy in this situation. If they don't work from home, it seems they have a dependable partner to do the turnovers. 

Brittany and I both work and have a lide, and it is hard as hell. We desperately need a cleaning service, or we are going to switch back to conventional year-long leases.

Unfortunately, the available cleaning services in our area tend to be too expensive to warrant hiring them, as it would eat into our profits to the point where traditional leases are more lucrative. 

Currently we are blocking weekdays after a check out to give us time to do a turn at our leisure, however that eats our profit margin down to conventional lease amount as well. 

If anyone else has this issue, I would love to hear about it and what, if anything, you can do about it. 

Thomas

[Lizzie]

Hello @Thomas498,

This is a great point you have raised regarding cleaning and how to juggle this alongside jobs that you can't base around your house. 

Are any other hosts experiencing this and can share how you find it works?