Sharing the Comforts of home

Maret Paetznick

While vacationing in Barcelona, Spain during August of 2011, I met a friend who lived in a beautiful and spacious two-bedroom flat near the beach. I wondered how she afforded such a fabulous apartment on a waiter’s salary, but soon learned that she rented her spare room to travelers through a website called Airbnb. Upon returning to Providence, I decided that living alone in my East Side three-and-a-half bedroom house was a luxury I was willing to relinquish – in exchange for extra pocket money and a little bit of excitement.

Since I’d converted the half bed to a walk-in closet, I listed my two full bedrooms only, using nearby properties as guidelines when setting daily, weekly and monthly prices. The next matter of business was furnishing and decorating the rooms, which for a shop-a-holic such as myself – was a joy. Once the new comforters were properly fluffed and the curtains steamed to my liking, I snapped a few snazzy Instagram photos and uploaded them to the site, hoping to attract some bites on the line.

Almost instantly, I received an inquiry from two Brown grads, back in town to work on their startup company. On the same day that I accepted their month-to-month request, I received a phone call from a close female friend who desperately needed a place to crash. True to my nature, I couldn’t turn her away; in a heartbeat, I went from living alone to sleeping on a mattress on the floor of my walk-in closet while my three new roommates slumbered atop bedding from Pottery Barn. Life can be funny like that.

My friend and I began lovingly referring to the young 20-something worker bees as “the boys.” Never have I seen two young males toil quite as laboriously; these guys had their eyes on the prize. After living with me for three months, they got the news they’d been waiting for. They were accepted to Y Combinator, a California-based organization that funds and grooms digital entrepreneurs. “It’s like the Harvard for startups!” one roommate exclaimed while jumping around the living room like a hopped up kangaroo. When the boys moved to Silicon Valley to start the next chapter in their lives, I updated my availability calendar… and finally came out of the closet.

One misconception with renting rooms out to strangers on the Internet (as creepy as it sounds) is that all the guests are young and broke. In fact, the majority of my houseguests were just the opposite. Next up was a gentleman in his 50s who wore suits to work and drove a Mercedes. Like the boys, he was renting a room on a monthly basis, although he only slept in it for a few days each week. He had taken a new job in Rhode Island, and was forced to leave his family behind as they attempted to sell their Florida home in a down market. After exhausting his company’s relocation package - and his mental capacity for living in a hotel - renting from me made sense. “Your place is so cozy!” he said. “I feel so comfortable here.”

Eventually, both he and my friend moved on and moved out. Over the course of the next year-and-a-half, I housed guests from places including Los Angeles, Manhattan, Australia, Holland, South Africa, Ireland, Germany, Slovakia and Slovenia. Some stayed for a month, and others just for the night. I’d always offer them coffee or a beer, and we’d sit and talk for hours in the kitchen, sharing stories of our oddly similar lives. It’s amazing how much you can have in common with someone who lives halfway across the world. I learned something from each of them and have kept in touch with a few. In fact, I plan on staying with one former house guest in Berlin, Germany next month. I only hope he gives me as good of a daily rate as I gave to him.