Staying Sane: Hosting people in your home
I recently connected with a friend I hadn’t talked to in years. She reached out over Instagram:
“I’d love to hear about your experience hosting students in your home. My husband and I have had both good and really hard experiences.”
I’ve been there.
Hosting family, friends, students, anyone really can be an amazing experience. Extending hospitality to those who need a place to stay for a night, weekend, or even longer is a great way to bless and serve others. But it can go wrong and be really hard and stressful. The worst case scenario is friendships and relationships can be damaged.
Thankfully we haven’t had horrible home experiences with hosting, but we’ve learned a lot along the way.
We have hosted:
Family for a single night or weekend
Family for several months at a time (4 months to be exact)
Friends for a single night
Exchange students ranging from 1 month to 6+ months
Friends in emergency circumstances who need a safe place to land
After a few years of hosting a wide variety of people in our home here are some things my husband and I have learned.
Hosting vs. Renting
If you are “hosting” someone in your home it usually means you are providing accommodation, food, care, relational connecting, support, etc. There may be an exchange of money, but not always. To “host” someone usually offers you more authority over your home and space. They aren’t “sharing” your home, but living within your home.
A “renter” is someone who is paying to live in your home and is more independent and free. They come and go as they wish, including providing their own meals and doing their own cooking. A great way to think of having a “renter” is like having an adult roommate. You share a common space but you have equal say over what happens in that space.
Personally in the home I own with my husband I don’t feel comfortable with having someone “rent” a room. I prefer to “host” whereby the person is under my care and authority as someone staying in my home. This is more work! I usually provide meals (they often eat dinner with us), and access to whatever food they need.
By “hosting” I also have more say over what happens in the home, which helps me feel comfortable and safe. This is definitely easier with friends or students, than parents who have a different history of relationship or hierarchy of authority. Just to keep in mind it will vary from guest to guest.
What guests really need
When we think of hosting or hospitality it’s easy to think up beautiful magazine pictures of designed spaces, or all the pretty stuff Homesense sells. Actually Homesense is super helpful and a lot of what I bought for our guest rooms was found there (and Ikea)!
What guests really need varies on who they are and the situations they are entering your house in. Especially if it’s a last minute emergency situation when they are fleeing for safety or need a place to recover.
In general here’s what most guests really need:
Clarity on what to expect in your home (more on this below!)
A clean, warm place to sleep
Physical space for their belongings
Emotional space to think and breathe
Relational connection at various levels
Access to food
A desk or table to work
Access to a washroom
You don’t need a fully designed room from Homesense to provide these things. We’ve offered all of them in our small apartment with a single shared bathroom (it did have a second room with a bed for them to sleep in).
Practical set-up
In our house we have two designated rooms for guests/family/students in our basement. There is also a full bathroom downstairs these rooms share. The rest of our basement is laundry and storage.
Our main floor is our shared family space with our kitchen, dining, and living room. This is a space everyone can enjoy and spend time in.
Our upstairs space with our bedrooms, bathroom, and office is considered “private”. In our office upstairs we do have space to accommodate a single air mattress but we usually only host people there if our other rooms are full and if it’s for a single night. Since they would share access to our main bathroom, it would not be comfortable for our guest (or us) to share that close space for too long.
Having our guest rooms in our basement offers a great balance of separate space and proximity. They are close enough to care for, and far enough away for everyone to feel like they have their “own space”.
I also had full control over designing the rooms and making sure they had everything guests needed. Both rooms have a double bed, wardrobe, desk, lamps, drying rack for clothes, laundry basket, and sitting chair. They each have their own bedding, bath towels, and blankets. We often also provide slippers.
Having a furnished room ready for someone helps me feel ready to say “YES!” when a need comes up.
Even when we lived in an apartment, we had an extra bed in our second room. It doubled as an extra work space during the pandemic, and offered a ready-place for someone to stay. Even if all you have is an air mattress in an office, having bedding ready to pull, extra towels, etc can help you feel ready at a moment’s notice.
Consider your home and space when it comes to hosting:
What space would someone stay in? A private room? A pull-out couch? A bed in an office?
How long could you accommodate someone comfortably (for them and you)?
Do they have their own washroom?
Is there space for their clothes/belongings?
Is it quiet to help them rest?
Can you meet their “needs” with your space?
What are your unique needs in your season of life?
How much privacy and space do you need to thrive right now?
Who else lives in your home? What are their needs?
Do you have the financial margin to take in someone for a short or long stay?
Establish “home rules”
For guests who stay for a night or two, mostly what they need clarity on is how to use the shower, access to towels, and the schedule of your plans.
For guests who stay longer, or in an emergency move-in and it’s an indeterminate amount of time, offer them a prepared package of “house rules” to know what you expect and how they can best thrive in your space.
If someone is coming into your home in an “emergency” you don’t need to have this conversation on night one, but within the first 48 hours it’s good to recap and talk through the timeline of how long they may need to stay.
This may seem awkward or strange, but as someone who has personally stayed in many other homes from a month to a year, a guest will LOVE this. Guests want to know what is expected of them and what not to do. It’s seriously not obvious. There’s nothing more awkward for a guest than when they have crossed a “line” and you have to debrief. It could have been avoided by a simple conversation or package.
Here’s a simple example of the house rules we share with international students who come to live with us. It offers some basics about how to care for their room, when we eat, how to use our space, and how to engage with our dog.
The language may seem really basic and obvious but remember it’s geared toward an international student, and we also have it translated line by line in their first language when they arrive. This really helps them know what to expect and transition well!
Here is another example from Canada Homestay Network for hosts sharing similar house expectations with their students.
Communicate at the start, middle, and end
This may seem obvious but starting a hosting/guest relationship well and ending it well requires a lot of work. Starting it off could involve sharing house rules or talking about expectations/desires/nerves. It could also include getting clarity on how long they think they may need to stay with you, or you sharing how long you can host them.
When conflict arises, it’s so helpful to have a check in. Or check in conversations periodically to give space for processing. When we hosted our family for 4 months, we would usually have a check in chat at each month mark, to give space for processing and work through any tensions. We would say, “on Saturday night we’re going to have a check in after dinner”, and this gave everytime time to think and prepare if they had something to share.
When it’s time for your guest to leave it’s also really helpful to ask them how their experience was. Perhaps there was conflict along the way you both learned from. These aren’t easy conversations but they can help both parties grow and know how to engage better the next time.
Connect with an organization for support
My husband and I routinely host international students through Canada Homestay Network. We have had a fabulous experience working with them! We are thankful we live in a city with a university so we usually host university students coming to learn English. But CHN also facilitates a lot of international students who are in highschool. So regardless where you live, there may be opportunities to host with them.
Working with an organization like CHN is amazing for several reasons:
Students stay with you for various lengths (1 month - 8 months usually)
You can decide when you are able to take a student
Their “relationship managers” help mediate any issues and provide support
If a student breaks a “rule” of CHN they are removed from the program
If a student is not working our in your home CHN can find them another place to stay (you’re never “stuck” in a situation)
You receive a monthly host reimbursement/stipend for student expenses, which usually is a bit more than you actually spend
You can host during certain months and take breaks during other parts of the year
There are different expectations and requirements of hosts for highschool students compared to university but either can be a great fit.
If you are curious about whether hosting people in your home on a semi-regular basis could work, try hosting with CHN!
Hosting friends, family, or students in your home can be an incredible opportunity to showcase hospitality, friendship, and care. But doing it while staying sane requires a bit of prep, hopefully this post was helpful to get you thinking. Let me know if you host, and if any of these thoughts were helpful!
One of the guest rooms in our basement.