When a Hotel is Home

Sometimes, I enjoy the simplicity of staying in a tiny place, whether it’s a guest room in a family home while on R&R, a calling a hotel home while traveling, or a temporary lodging facility (TLF) on an installation during the transition of a PCS. Maybe it’s even a cramped apartment while stationed overseas. Sure, it can be a challenge as family members trip over each other while getting ready in the morning, or figuring out sleeping arrangements, or having six family members share one bathroom.

But, I also appreciate how small spaces can actually tend to alleviate a little stress.

Have you ever noticed, when you have less things, you have that much less to account for, less to worry about, or less things that must be organized and cleaned? Likewise, when you have a smaller space, it’s obviously a smaller space to clean, a smaller space to organize, and a smaller space to care for or repair. There is less work and less stress in all of this.

I’ve had friends completely gut out their houses, donating or throwing away a good majority of their excess household items, and then mentioning how good it felt. I have watched Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up regarding her method of only keeping items that give us joy. It’s only in the past few years that this has started to make sense to me.

Two moves ago, when we were a five-member family, we stayed in a one-bedroom apartment for six weeks while waiting to close on our house. It was difficult at first, but our new routine was wonderful, and I grew to love the experience. We had everything we needed for homeschool, for cooking, and we even had a little washer/dryer combo for laundry. This apartment provided us a simple life. We didn’t have much with us, so there wasn’t much to keep organized. It was a small space, so it was easy to clean. Most of all, I (surprisingly) appreciated sharing a room so we could all be together, allowing the kids to feel safe while we became accustomed to our new area.

And now this move has been similar.

We just completed a 6.5-week stay at the installation hotel waiting for our new rental to become vacant. A few things have changed, as we are now a six-member family who shared one bathroom, we had to go down the hall and up a floor or two for laundry services, and we only had a microwave and small refrigerator, so we started our day in the breakfast lounge and ended our day with creative meals from commissary groceries or take-out.

As our time came to an end in both situations, I started feeling stressed. It was now go-time. I had to leave the simple life and move into a large space full of boxes to unpack and more than one bedroom and bathroom to clean. Between homeschooling and unpacking, it takes a long time to feel fully settled. I work constantly, there is always something to do, and life isn’t quite as relaxing.

But truly that is life. We all have to take care of our homes, whether we rent or buy, we have extracurricular activities to run to, we have commitments to fulfill.

When we’re new to an area and we don’t have many friends at first, we don’t have as many activities or commitments. We can just be. We can explore our new area, we can reevaluate our goals, we can become tighter as a family. Even in the awfully difficult transitions of these seasons, I absolutely love this fleeting period of time.

So, how do you make a hotel your home? What do you do to make an unfamiliar temporary place feel like home? How do you make the best of these situations, and cherish this season of life?

Here’s a few things we did this time around:

We bought fun smelling foam soap from the PX and used that for washing hands in the bathroom. This was way better than the slippery, waxy bar soap the hotel provides that my kids always seemed to destroy.

We attended the installation’s fall festival where the kids painted pumpkins. We proudly displayed those pumpkins in their “bedroom window.”

For fresh air and exercise, we took balls and bubbles to our “backyard” on the hotel grounds or ran around the outdoor museums filled with tanks, Humvees, and helicopters. The kids collected leaves, flowers, acorns, and such, adding them to their science journals, and writing about them.

We displayed the pottery the kids painted from the post Arts and Crafts center on the dresser/TV stand.

One child celebrated a birthday while in the hotel, and we didn’t hold back on our family traditions. Our little one woke up to streamers on the headboard and hanging from the bedroom doorway to run through. We had a fantastic family party in our “living room,” where we sat on the wood laminate floor aside the bed eating take-out spaghetti and meatballs.

Though the installation library has not yet gone back to story time, we checked out some books, including a very cute one about the season of fall, and grabbed take-home packets filled with song sheets, activities, and a fall craft. We hung the kids’ crafts on our “front door.”

The kids learned how to do laundry, as they took turns pushing the elevator buttons to get to the floors where the laundry services were provided. They helped pour detergent into the machines and transfer clothes into the dryers. It was also a great place for them to collect lost coins!

One of the best parts of making our hotel our home was getting to know our “neighbors.” The staff saw us day in and day out, and we got to know them well.

The front desk staff helped us often, as key cards would need to get reactivated, or when it got cold and our heat wouldn’t work, or when a treasured stuffed animal got stuck in the sheets and went to laundry, the staff went on a hunt and brought him back to us.

We learned what day and time every week Miss L would thoroughly clean our room and we would leave to get out of her way. I grew to enjoy our drives during this hour to explore the area while the kids napped in the van. Other days, I’d have the trash and used towels ready to hand over to Miss L, and gratefully accept the clean towels she’d always provide me in return. She was so sweet and helpful!

As we passed the front desk and the hotel manager’s office on our way to the breakfast lounge every morning, I would try to keep my kids from squealing and running down the hallways. But Miss S, the manager, would hear that, and the kids’ cute conversations anyway, as she later told me. We stopped by her office before we moved out and asked if she would give us a hotel tour/field trip of the innerworkings of the facility. She kindly agreed, and we’re excited to go back for that.

Our most favorite neighbors were the ladies who served breakfast. Most in particular was Miss M. She was a sweet-hearted lady who greeted us with joy every day she was on shift. She often helped me carry things to our table while I balanced the toddler in one arm and food or drinks in the other. She’d ask the kids how they were doing, and they’d always have lots to tell her. We all grew to love her, and the little ones would shout her name at the first sight of her. The kids counted down the days with Miss M, for when we would have to move out of the hotel. We were all sad to say farewell to this very special neighbor. We did warn her that our crew would be back to say hi to her every now and then!

And here we are.

Another special season of making a hotel a home has come to an end. It’s go-time again, where we have been digging ourselves out of boxes the past several days, we’ll get on a better school schedule, and extracurricular activities will become more demanding. It’ll be far from the simple life that a small place welcomes.

I don’t love the idea of staying in TLF for weeks on end, and it is very hard to have a family so unsettled for so long. But I truly am grateful for these seasons that teach me so much. Maybe you still think I’m crazy! However, as my friend recently commented, I hope you, too, can “hunt the good stuff.”

Then, as my friend reminded me, “May you look back on these seasons of your life and think, ‘That really was a special time.'”

You may also enjoy 4 Ways to Cope with Temporary Lodging and Schwartz Family Travel Essentials.