using my room . . .

Having guests and where to put them (a reprint of a comment I left on a blog today)

Years ago we started having all our house guests (and their children if they had them) take OUR room as a guest room. Since the Master was bigger than the rest of the bedrooms, it was large enough for everyone to fit. We put the children on the floor with air beds. The family stayed together. It was really easy for Ildi and I to find a place to sleep since it was our house, and we knew where everything was.

The advantage of having guests in YOUR room is that it is usually prettier than normal (makes it like a hotel stay), there is usually a bathroom attached (people who are staying hate to be in public until they are dressed and ready to be seen), and it makes a quiet place they can retreat to if they want to be away from the common area. For example, if they are sleeping on a sofa bed and others want to watch TV in the same room, it makes them wait to retire for the night.

It seems to be a shift from housing people in guest rooms, to letting people use your room, but once you do it, the benefits outweigh the costs. And besides, when they leave your home, they feel like you have treated them like KINGS AND QUEENS. I still have people tell me they can't believe I let them use MY room.

We have had countless great experiences with people staying with us, and as an example experience I'll briefly tell you one. A friend just visited me a few weeks ago and I showed him to his room. He asked if it was my room and I told him that it was the guest room. He probably did not want to make me or Ildi feel "put out". After he returned home, in a phone conversation, he asked if I had let him sleep in my room. I told him all the benefits of doing what I did, and he agreed that it was a good thing. All this to say, tell them it's the "guest room". Even though it is YOUR room all the other times. :) He was another one that felt "honored" when staying with us.