Collection Member Story Q&A: Rebecca

In the HomeExchange Collection community, every story is unique. In this new series, we’ll be sharing Q&A style responses from HomeExchange Collection members, offering you a closer look at their experiences, tips, and insights. If you're considering joining HomeExchange or HomeExchange Collection, these stories might just inspire you to take the plunge and start your own exchange journey!

Rebecca has been a member since 2022 and has completed 22 exchanges (and counting!)

Tell us a bit about yourself and where you live.

I’m Rebecca Hamilton, an award-winning entrepreneur, author, and personal growth advocate based in Ontario, Canada. After building a seven-figure business, I made the bold decision to walk away and realign my life with purpose and authenticity. Now, I help others do the same—through my podcast Scrap the Sweet Talk, my creative services, and my latest book Wake Up & Smell the Coffee, a no-fluff wake-up call to stop following the crowd and start following your heart.

What was the best part of staying in someone else's home compared to traditional accommodations?

One of the things I value most is creating meaningful connections with people from all around the world. That’s why I love staying in someone else’s home when I travel—it’s a far more personal and enriching experience than a traditional hotel. You get to see a place through the eyes of someone who lives there, feel the heart of the home, and often walk away with new friends and fresh perspective. Living like a local!

Share a memorable story from your exchanges. What made it special?

This is an excerpt from my latest book recently published about my HomeExchange experience. My book is called: Wake Up & Smell the Coffee.

"I stumbled upon the concept of detachment. I spent a great deal of time reading and researching it until I felt confident enough to try implementing it. Slowly, I began to understand the concept, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to put it into practice. I wanted to start with the object that felt the most valuable to me—the one that made me feel all kinds of intensely attached emotions: comfort, happiness, safety, joy, peace, pride, and the very thing that got me thinking about this entire concept in the first place—my home. I thought of all the different ways I could detach myself from my emotional attachment to it. I considered moving, but I quickly realized that by replacing one object with another, I wouldn’t alleviate the underlying attachment that I felt. If I moved, I would just end up moving into another home that I’d have to learn how to detach myself from. I was trying to get creative in my approach to detaching myself from my home while still learning how to appreciate and enjoy it for the comfort and shelter it provided my physical body. Eventually, it dawned on me and I remembered the part of the science of happiness equation that talked about how adding people to experiences creates meaning, purpose, and happiness. This gave me an idea for an experiment: what if I periodically traded my home with other people and shared my little piece of paradise with them? They could stay at my home, and I would stay at theirs. I loved travelling and exploring, and anytime my husband and I went away, our home just sat empty, unused, and vacant. This idea reminded me of the movie The Holiday, one of my favourite movies of all time. I thought that maybe by providing other people access to my home and allowing them to stay there for short periods of time to enjoy all the peace and tranquillity that it provided, I would become less attached to the idea that my home was mine and more open to other people enjoying it too. It seemed a little cringey at first, and if I’m being completely honest, it took a little while for me to warm up to the idea that strangers would be sleeping (among doing other things) in my bed. However, the more I thought about it and realized that anytime I stayed at an Airbnb or hotel room, I was sleeping (among doing other things) in someone else’s bed that many strangers had previously slept in before. I understood it really wasn’t that different or strange after all. We’re all just humans, and if I was willing to sleep in hotels or Airbnbs with beds that had been slept in by many people before me, then why should it bother me to have other humans in my bed? All you need to get is some separate bedding, extra pillows, and a bottle of bleach. Next, I had to get over the fear of all the worst-case scenarios—people trashing my place, breaking things, partying irresponsibly, leaving it a disaster, etc. It’s funny how our minds go straight to the worst-case scenarios and not the best-case ones (being human is fucking strange sometimes, you guys). Our brains are always in survival mode, eager to point out the worst-case possibilities without evaluating the probability of them actually happening. It's the same reason people are afraid to swim in the ocean for fear of a shark bite, even though, statistically, it’s very unlikely. The more we recognize the tricks our minds play, the better we are at intervening and interrupting those autopilot, fear-mongering thought patterns. I had to accept that if I was going to attempt detaching from my home, this would be a pretty radical way to test the concept.

I began researching how to share or trade my home with others. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon a website that had been facilitating home swapping for over twenty years. On this website, you can trade homes with people from all over the world for free. There is a nominal annual fee to be part of the exchange community, along with a verification process, but other than that, it’s as simple as it sounds. I couldn’t believe this existed without me knowing about it all this time. Then again, even if I had discovered it years earlier, I wouldn’t have been open to the idea back then. What really struck me as ironic, though, was that this very platform had already appeared in one of my favourite Christmas movies—The Holiday. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet used this exact site to swap their homes in the film. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched that movie (every year around Christmas for what seems like forever) and never once noticed the website. What are the odds? The fact that this site had been around for years with a solid reputation gave me the reassurance I needed to sign up and participate.

Fast forward to the present moment as I’m writing this book, and I’ve been using this site for almost two years now, trading my home with over a dozen different people worldwide. I can confidently say that sharing my home has not only helped me learn to detach from it, but has also taught me a new dimension of joy, brought on by others' expressions of gratitude and happiness when they enjoy and relax in my home. There’s actually a word that best describes this feeling that I learned about in Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic called Freudenfreude, a German word defined as ""finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune or happiness."" Could there be a more beautiful word to embrace and live by? I don’t think so. I definitely feel immense and immeasurable joy by sharing my material things with others who appreciate them. It actually brings me a much greater sense of happiness to share my things than it does to simply own them and keep them all to myself. There’s something magical that happens when we share our things or open our homes to others that’s difficult to explain until you try it for yourself. Every time I read a thank-you card thoughtfully left behind by a guest, my heart melts hearing about how great of a time they had enjoying our home with their families. Knowing that I contributed to their memory-making is as meaningful as it gets. After realizing that everyone in this online exchange community is a homeowner with similar fears and reservations, it doesn’t take long to establish trust in each other as you swap homes.

I’d like to end this chapter with a very powerful true story of the impermanence of time that segues into my next chapter of living in the present moment. Back when I first found out about exchanging homes, I’d joined some Facebook groups dedicated to helping people navigate questions, concerns, offering advice and tips on how home exchanging works. This whole concept was foreign to me, and I was extremely nervous and skeptical about trading homes with strangers. As you can imagine, I had a lot of questions. I started asking my questions and concerns in the groups as they came to mind. One woman, in particular, consistently stood out for her eagerness to help, always providing thoughtful and thorough answers to all my inquiries. Her name was Lena, and I would always see Lena’s name pop up as the very first comment on any of my posts. She was so consistent and diligent in her responses, and she was the first person to really make me feel comfortable and confident in my decision to add my home to the site. I was so grateful to have connected with someone who offered honest and authentic feedback and who took the time to chat with me on several occasions. Being new to the site, I didn’t have any reviews and, as a result, was having a difficult time finding people who would exchange with me. It was one of those things that in order to get reviews, I needed to stay somewhere, but in order to stay somewhere, I needed to have reviews. Lena graciously proposed that we do an exchange together. She offered me the chance to stay in her cozy cottage in North Carolina, and she was equally thrilled about the prospect of visiting my place in Canada. I couldn’t contain my excitement as I prepared to officially book my first exchange and see how the experience unfolded. We planned our home exchange a few months in advance for the fall. The idea of swapping homes is not the only exciting part, but it also opens the door to meeting incredible people from all around the world—this is truly the highlight for me. We connected on social media, and during one memorable conversation, she opened up sharing her enthusiasm about officially retiring next year after a fulfilling career as a registered nurse. She was eager to finally have the time and freedom to travel whenever and wherever she wanted. She shared details about a few pre-planned trips that were on the horizon. I could sense her zest for life and passion for travel, as if her high vibrational energy was being transmitted right through my computer screen. Though we hadn’t met in person, I couldn’t help but be ecstatic on her behalf about her upcoming retirement and future freedom. It all sounded like a dream come true.

A few months passed, and as our exchange date approached, Lena sent me a message one evening. She regrettably informed me that she needed to cancel our plans due to medical reasons, which would prevent her from travelling. Being as this was supposed to be my first exchange, truthfully, I didn’t know what to make of it. She’d always been so eager and excited, and this time it felt abrupt and short. I wasn’t sure why she didn’t suggest rescheduling for a later date instead of straight-up cancelling. Many thoughts crossed my mind. I wondered if maybe after getting to know me, she didn’t trust me enough to stay at her house. Perhaps I’d posted something on social media that she took offense to, or maybe she just didn’t want to come to my house and found somewhere better to visit… I didn’t know. Naturally, I was racking my brain for all the things I might have been at fault for. Disappointed and skeptical of the reason for the cancellation, I kept my response short and wished her a quick recovery back to health. There wasn’t much communication after that, and I noticed that her name stopped popping up in the comments of the group chats, offering her helpful advice. I remember hoping that she was okay.

The date we had originally planned to exchange had come and gone, and about a week after we were supposed to exchange homes, I came across a post on Facebook… It was Lena’s obituary. She had just passed away from an aggressive form of cancer. I was stunned and in shock. I was just talking to her a few months earlier about her future hopes and dreams. How could this have happened so quickly? It brings tears to my eyes as I write this because all I can think about is the travel plans she was making and how excited she was to finally retire and seize the opportunity to do exactly what she’d always wanted. She was unknowingly unaware that her time on earth was coming to an abrupt and premature end before she’d get to experience any of that. I was overwhelmed with sadness. This tragic turn of events serves as a powerful reminder of life's unpredictable nature and the urgency of pursuing our dreams. It compels us to reflect on the importance of living authentically and with intention, seizing each moment with the understanding that tomorrow is never guaranteed. In honouring Lena’s memory, we must embrace our own aspirations and passions, ensuring that we don’t postpone the experiences that bring us joy and fulfillment, for they are the threads that weave the fabric of a meaningful life.

This chapter was a hard one to write and I know it’s been a difficult one to read. It’s been an emotional journey to come to terms with my own impermanence and mortality, but it’s through learning about detachment and the concept of loving people and using things that we can truly appreciate every single moment and align our lives authentically. The price we pay for the experience of life is death. Lena taught me that while we can plan for the future, the future might not be in our plans.

Life doesn’t wait for our retirement;

It doesn't wait for us to take our next vacation.

It quite literally doesn’t wait for anything.

It’s here, and then it isn’t.

We’re here, and then we’re gone.

We’re alive, and then we’re dead.

Life won’t wait, and neither should we—

It’s time to live fully, fiercely, and free."

How was your experience connecting with your guest or host?

Fabulous experiences all around!

How do you prep your home for guests?

I clean it as if it was a hotel. Leave some treats for their arrival and a booklet of rules and suggestions for the area.

Also read: Mastering Luxury Hosting: How to Elevate Guest Experiences in Your High-End Home

Any advice for someone considering joining HomeExchange or HomeExchange Collection?

It's the best experience, highly recommend!