Sometimes it is quite a lot of work when you own a house with some land around it. Our plot isn’t excessively large, about 1800m2, but still quite a bit of work goes into it, especially in the spring and summer. Mowing the lawn, of course, and especially a lot of weeding is required. Bine works full-time and I work part-time, but due to my bad knees and back, I cannot kneel or squat, nor can I bent over for a longer time. So unfortunately, I can do very little in terms of gardening work. And because Bine already has a lot of other work to do, such as providing firewood for the winter, performing general maintenance on our house, and also regularly helping out at my parents or a neighbor, it is sometimes impossible to keep up. A few years ago, an American friend told me about the website Workaway, and that turned out to be a great option for us. On this website, you can create a profile as a “host” or as a “worker”. As a host, you provide workers a place to stay and food. The worker, or workers, must then work for the host for 4 to 5 hours a day from Monday to Friday, or by mutual agreement. This can be anything, from small chores in and around the house to larger construction projects, from babysitting and pet sitting to keeping the elderly company. As a host, you write down what kind of work you need help with, and as a worker, you write down the areas in which you have experience and what you are looking for. That way, both parties can find a suitable “match.” Additionally, the goal is for the workers to become part of the family during their time with the host and to get to know the local way of life.

After consulting with Bine, we decided to give this a try since the children had moved out and we therefore have two bedrooms to spare. I created a profile in which I indicated that we were mainly looking for help with garden work and smaller jobs such as sanding and painting. We had wanted to repaint the fencing on our terrace for a while already, but since it is a 12×5 meter terrace, so quite a substantial job, we (Bine) just couldn’t seem to get around to it ourselves. Our first couple of workawayers came from Germany. They were in their late twenties and generally nice, friendly people. They started sanding the terrace railing in good spirits, but we soon noticed that they weren’t really used to manual labor, so to speak. Bine, in particular, wasn’t impressed; since he is a hard worker himself, he could see that things weren’t progressing very quickly. The couple stayed for three weeks, during which we took them on outings on weekends to show them some of Slovenia. In the end, they sanded everything and painted part of the fence in those three weeks. After they left, Bine finished painting the rest and then painted the entire fence a second time… in just two days. Anyway, the job was finally done, and we are very happy with how it looks now.

I wanted to give the Workaway method a second chance, and sometime later we hosted an older couple in their early sixties from New Zealand. This experience was immediately very different. They were hard workers, and you could tell they had much more experience. They were also very interested in life here and the history of the area, so we took this couple to nearby sights on the weekends as well. They loved that!

The third couple came from England, were in their mid-thirties, and that went well too. In the meantime, we had decided that we wanted to host Workawayers for a maximum of two weeks, because after that, we are ready for some privacy again. These people stay in our house, of course, where they have our kids’ two bedrooms upstairs at their disposal and a private bathroom. During that time, we only use the bathroom downstairs. However, the kitchen is shared. And naturally, I have to cook for them during that period as well. So, for us, two weeks is a good amount of time during which they can get quite a bit of work done and we don’t have to sit in the house with people for too long.

Last month we hosted our fourth couple, he from France, she from Brazil, and at the end of this month, for the first time, we will host a young single Frenchman, who will hopefully take care of the garden. We’ll see how that goes. For us, it is a good way to have relatively cheap help, and who knows, maybe there is someone reading this to whom I have given a good tip 😊.