Scott recently turned our vacation rental business over to a highly-rated property management company. Why, you ask? Well, Scott's done a fabulous job of managing our homes for 12 1/2 years, but with more vacation rental competition in the area, our recent occupancy hasn't been as high as Scott would like. This property management company runs on a much larger scale (I believe they currently handle over 70 properties as opposed to our mere five) which means they can reduce rents a bit to increase occupancy and still turn a profit for both the owners and themselves. They have great reviews from other owners, and we are expecting good results.
But the main reason for the change is that Scott really wants and needs to focus more on Take the Challenge - mentoring national leaders, planning for the future, and managing the ministry well for expansion and growth - than on Roberts Vacation Rentals.
This transition is somewhat like placing your baby for adoption. The new managers will never have quite the love and concern for our houses that Scott has had. They also don't have the emotional connections and specific memories we have, but since they are true pros at what they do, they've been going through each house and removing and/or replacing some of the furniture and decor we'd had put into it.
End result: Scott's brought home PILES of stuff for us to figure out what to do with. Some of it will be given to charity, some will be sold, and a small portion of it we will keep for our own house. Emphasis on "small." Sweet Georgia Peaches! I'm always trying to declutter and get RID of stuff, not bring more in.
This afternoon's project was to sort sheets. Our pool table was piled high with miscellaneous "decorative" pillows (some of which were great, others of which were ugly) and a wide assortment of sheets in varying shades of grey.
Scott brought the sheets in stages to the dining room table, where we worked together to figure out what size each one was, put them in sets, and LABEL them with good ole' masking tape and Sharpie markers. Once we got that all figured out, we had to decide which of them, if any, we'd want to keep here at 8053; that required agreement on the parts of two spousal units. Oh, and there were also six quilts of varying sizes, excluding the one we already snagged and are using in the camper. = )
We do have a lot of beds here. Our current tally includes two twin beds in the Zoom room (one a trundle under the other), two full beds (one in the attic in Andrew's room and one in our first floor guest room), one queen bed in the queen room, and one king bed in our room, PLUS one twin XL bed that isn't currently set up. For those keeping score at home, that would make six ready-to-sleep-in beds that could conceivably accommodate six individuals or two individuals and up to four couples.
All that math will come in handy when Jess' family from Hong Kong arrives this summer(!!!), and our three other kids, Scott's mom, and my dad come to see them - though probably not all at once.
We now have two sets of sheets for all the beds of all sizes at our home (T, TXL, F, Q, K) because one size definitely does not fit all!
