Adapting to living month or longer at an AirBNB or Vrbo: Our observations and tips after a year of living a nomadic lifestyle…

 

Toby enjoying the views of Pittsburgh downtown

Theodore Roosevelt:  “There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.”

Now that my wife and I (and our Pomeranian dog Toby) have lived over a year living a nomadic lifestyle since our early retirement in August 2020, we can proudly say we’ve adapted to it well.  Gone are the early days of our traveling when we were unsure how we were going to live in a small place with a small bathroom.

Gone are the days when we weren’t sure where we were going to store all our belongings once we arrived at a month long (or longer) stay.  We just couldn’t be sure how the three of us were going to live in a small confined space for a month…

In this post, I’d like to discuss our observations of living month to month at an AirBNB or Vrbo rental.

Our first month-long rental was in Ocean City, Maryland.  The rental was a one bedroom unit with a full kitchen and a tiny bathroom.  Its square footage was around 350 or so.  

Just about a month prior to Ocean City, we were living in a 1,700 square feet townhome with a finished walkout basement.  We had room to spare and we each had our own private area to enjoy.  That was either basement or living room for me, while that was master bedroom for my wife.

Frankly, when we first checked in to this rental, we were disappointed.  We did book the unit based on photos available on AirBNB listing, and we knew we weren’t getting the best unit at our price point of $865.  Still, we were hoping for slightly bigger space and in better condition than what the photos led us to believe…Somehow, the photos made the listing seem bigger and nicer than it actually was in this case…

We walked into the unit and noticed two things immediately:  the strong smell of smoke and the tiny space with a tinier bathroom.

Toby wasn’t happy we were staying at a small place, and he showed his displeasure by staring at us for good few minutes. If Toby could talk, he would’ve said, “Mom, dad, did we all of a sudden go broke?  Do we have to live in this tiny place now???”

We unpacked and tried to enjoy the rental, but it was hard.  The living room/kitchen combo area was barely big enough for Toby to run around in.  For us, it was a struggle to move around as well…

We got up the next morning and took showers.  Both of us kept hitting the shower walls as it was literally about 2 feet by 2 feet!  The toilet bowl was oddly angled where guys would have a hard time hitting the bowl when going #1.  Hint:  You’d have to stand at an angle to pee if you’re a guy as there was no way to stand directly in front of the toilet bowl.

Because of this oddly angled toilet, we could smell pee in around the toilet bowl…Yikes…We were despondent for a day or two…

It wasn’t until we did a full bathroom and apartment cleaning, and airing out the place by opening both the front door and the deck door to ventilate, that we felt much better about the rental.  It finally felt like our ‘home’!  Walking over to enjoy the Ocean City Boardwalk and the beach certainly helped as well.

After few days, we started to feel like the place wasn’t that bad.  We started to use the deck with a view of the area from the 3rd floor.  We were the only renters during the month of October, so we had the deck all to ourselves.  

We spent many hours staring out into the night sky, the many buildings, and the many sea birds roaming the sky, calling out each other…

We had a routine going where we would get up, get ready, then take a long walk on the boardwalk for morning exercise.  We would walk from one end of the boardwalk to the other end.  We would walk on the    beach shoreline, enjoying birds doing their morning walks, watching waves churn and crash onto the shore, and noticing the ever changing clouds taking shape…

After our exercise, we would come back to our rental to eat lunch, then do whatever we wanted.  My wife would paint, while I would take a nap or browse the web.  During early evenings, we would walk Toby to the fishing pier to watch the beautiful sunsets coloring the sky crimson…

We felt like we were living our dream retirement finally!  We finally realized we were actually enjoying the rental we had not liked initially.  As days turned into weeks, we actually grew fond of our little tiny rental with an even tinier bathroom.

We learned to enjoy and to adapt to our surroundings that were less than ideal.  We made it our own by cleaning and venting out the place.  We utilized every attribute to our advantage, like the aforementioned deck, and the proximity to the beach/boardwalk.

We learned to like a place no matter how undesirable it may be.  After awhile, the size of the unit wasn’t much of an issue.   We learned to live with it, and made the best out of that unit.  When our stay ended on November 1st, we were already getting fond of the place, and dare I say, nostalgic?

The moral of the story is that no matter how small or smelly the place is, we can always make it our own.  We can clean, air out the place, and use available attributes of a rental to fully enjoy the place.  We realized every rental has its positives and negatives.  Even our huge townhome had its positives and negatives.

Nothing in this world will ever be perfect.  We just need to look at the positives to make the best of it.

In Claysburg, Pennsylvania, our rental was a studio unit for the month of April 2021.  It was even smaller than the Ocean City rental, and the staircase also reeked of smoke.  

Claysburg unit didn’t have any storage.  We did best we could by utilizing one corner of the studio to put away our belongings.  It wasn’t pretty, but again we managed.   We tried to see the positives of that place rather than the negatives.

What were the positives with the Claysburg rental unit?

• Proximity to beautiful mountains and magnificent drives.  
• Attractions within 30 mile radius:  Johnstown, several state parks, local parks 
• Blue Knob Resort:  we could walk around the resort area without driving
• Rental had a window in the bedroom area for nice views and had a sliding door bringing in natural light
• Rental had nice decorations 

Were there negatives?

• Absolutely!  The noise issue from our upstairs neighbor was unbearable.  We had to cancel the trip prematurely by about a week.
• Many neighbors smoked, so we got to smell smoke often when opening window/sliding door
• Location:  To go grocery shop or to buy takeout food, we had to drive at least 5-8 miles from the top of the ski resort to get there.

Despite our canceling this trip short, we still managed the best we could.  We still traveled often and we actually enjoyed the tiny studio, minus the upstairs neighbor.  If it wasn’t for the noisy neighbor upstairs, we would’ve been fine staying there the entire month…

Space wasn’t an issue, nor was lack of storage an issue for us.  We took the rental as it was, then made it our own by utilizing one corner of the studio for storage, and enjoying the huge sliding door to view outside.

We were presented with some challenges but we adapted to the situation at hand.  This attitude is what made staying at these less than ideal rentals manageable.

Here are some tips and observations on adapting to your new environment (this can be a long term rental or a hotel room):

• Clean and air out the place when you arrive

Rental will feel like yours once you clean.  Air out the place soon as you get there.  I could take our smells and our dog’s smell, but I can’t take other people’s or other dog’s smell.

• Use your own pillowcases and bedsheets

We feel better using our own at a new place.  This may not be necessary at a hotel, but it’s certainly so in a long term stay.

• Unpack, stow away your belongings

Rental will feel like your home once you know where everything is.  This includes clothes, kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, etc.

• Acclimate yourself to the neighborhood by walking around your rental

See and explore the neighborhood so you’ll feel more at home.  This is exactly what dogs do at a new place.  They roam, smell everything, then take mental notes on where everything is.  Don’t underestimate the importance of getting to know your surroundings.

• Get to know the neighborhood (shops, restaurants, gas stations, etc. and the roads)

This is something I like to do so I’ll know where everything is.  I like to know which direction is east and west so I can figure out which way the sun rises or sets.  Why?  It’s another way for me to be acclimated to my surroundings…

I like to study Google Maps so I can study up on different roads near my rental.  I don’t want to depend on the GPS all the time.  I want to be able to go somewhere without the navigation just in case navigation doesn’t work (happened in western New York as signal was completely lost).  

• Explore attractions nearby and sometimes as far as 3 hours away…

We like exploring attractions so we’ll feel at home.  It’s always more fun when you’re making memories at a new location.  Every new thing you do today will become a memory tomorrow.  

Make memories!  Life is a collection of memories anyway.

• Utilize everything the rental has to your advantage 

If the rental has huge windows/sliding door/French door, use them to your advantage and really enjoy them.  If rental has a deck, use that too.  The more you use, the more you’ll feel at home.

If the rental is located in a great location for attractions (like Ellicottville, Ocean City for example), use that to your advantage.

• Understand every place will have positives and negatives 

No place will ever be perfect.  Learn to deal with the negatives so you can focus on the positives.  

Believe it or not, even the worst place we’ve stayed at, turned out to be a good experience/good memory for us now.  We still talk about the nights we chatted out on the deck overlooking the Ocean City downtown.

In conclusion:

Adapting to a new situation or an environment requires a certain change in your mindset to try to make the best situation out of a bad situation.  

It’s often frustrating when a hotel or a long term rental isn’t what you thought it was, or something isn’t up to your standards.  Instead of getting angry about the situation, force yourself to see the good in that situation.  The more good you see out of a bad situation, the faster you’ll be able to enjoy your situation.

Practicing gratitude and realizing there are people lot worse off than you, will allow you to see your situation in a better light.  

Just because we had previously lived in a huge townhome, doesn’t mean we should compare that to our new reality, where rentals are much smaller and in most cases, in worse condition, than that townhome.

We had to turn the page on that chapter in our lives, to realize and adapt to our current situation.  We hope you do the same to adapt to your situation, whatever that may be.

Thank you all for reading!

Jake

Wandering Money Pig 

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