If you are planning your cottage vacation with friends this year and haven’t set your ground rules yet, make sure you do, before you get to the cottage!
Renting a good sized, upscale cottage becomes much more manageable when you share the cost with another family and I have noticed that a lot of our larger cottage rentals are being taken by multi-family groups this year. Over the years, I have gone on camping and other self-catering vacations with friends and have leant quite a few things that lessened the chance of arguments and reduced the risk of ending the friendship permanently
The issue that can cause most friction is the different way families have of managing day-to-day activities such as meal times, childrens bedtime routines, cooking and housekeeping. If one family relaxes their hold on regular routine for holiday times, and the other doesn’t, this can create a conflict situation that will surface in the very early stages of the vacation. If you haven’t addressed some of these issues before you get into vacation mode, this will have a considerable impact on your enjoyment of the holiday you have spent months looking forward to.
Friends usually decide to vacation together based on a mutual desire for a similar style of getaway, and plans are often made in the relaxed atmosphere of a barbecue party or card game with neighbour ‘friends’. When reality sets in, it’s usually too late to change your minds as you’ve normally paid a non-refundable deposit by the time you realise that What happens in the privacy of your own home; how your family relates to each other, and any quirky habits any of you have, will be open to observation from your housemates. So, make sure you get together with your friends on several occasions before you go, and talk frankly about your expectations. If nothing else, decide on a few ground rules and follow these few pointers:
- Decide on the allocation of bedrooms before you get there. Invariably one bedroom is the ‘master’ often with an ensuite bathroom and problems start when the first one to arrive takes the best bedroom. Don’t leave it till you get there, perhaps late in the evening and after a fraught trip on a busy highway, to start negotiations as to who sleeps where.
- Discuss housekeeping rules. Do you expect the kitchen to be cleaned at the end of each day, or do you usually leave the dinner dishes to the morning? If you have teenage children, are they expected to help out with washing up or do they normally disappear from the table as soon as a meal is over?
- If your children have more relaxed bedtime schedules on vacation, and your friends kids have to stick to their home routine, it won’t take long for arguments to break out, so be open about your rules and how flexible you will be. Perhaps you can agree on some middle ground.
- Plan on how you’ll manage day to day expenditure. Who pays for what? Will you pool housekeeping money? How will you share food and drink? All these things need ironing out before the vacation starts.
- Find out what you all like to do on vacation and commit to respecting each others preferences. If you like nothing more than to relax and get lost in that bestseller you’ve been waiting to read, you won’t be too impressed with being nagged about playing games or going sightseeing.
Make this a vacation to remember and not one to look back on and say,’Never again!"
