After eight years in the same home, my family needed a change. We planned to rent while we built a new house, imagining a brief transition between the two. Instead, the rental market had other plans.
Apparently, it was a very popular time to be looking for a new place to live. With multiple families vying for each house, landlords could be choosy. Being self-employed with dogs put us near the bottom of the list. In the meantime, we were living in an extended-stay hotel. Still, I wasn’t discouraged because…well, how long could it take to find a match?
What I thought would be a two-week hotel stay stretched into nearly three months. During that time, my husband, our 1-year-old daughter, Talia, two dogs, and our cat learned what it meant to live with little space. More surprisingly, hotel living changed how I parented — and eventually, my views on home.
We took what we needed, and the rest went in storage
We moved everything we owned into two storage units, and I packed for a short stay. We took what fit in our SUV: a large suitcase, a bag for my daughter, stuffed with pajamas and outfits, a few toys and books, a box of diapers, a litter box, the travel stroller we kept in our car, and a travel wagon that would become a lifeline.
By the second week, I was making weekly trips to storage to rotate my daughter’s toys. Living in a hotel can make toddlers bored fast.
I also started feeling boxed in. I missed my home, hated walking the dogs at all hours, and dreaded the slow elevators that occasionally got stuck. Some days, I’d climb four flights of stairs or take my high-energy dog for runs. Talia and I frequented the supermarket just to keep from going crazy.
Courtesy of Tonya Russell
I rethought how I parent
I also had to rethink some parenting rules. At home, I was against both junk food and screen time. But the hotel breakfast buffet had limited vegetarian options. When Talia pointed at the plain donuts, I let her have one. She usually took one bite. She also asked for my husband’s vegan sausages, so she had one with him most mornings.
Screen time became another compromise. I still needed to work, and concentrating while sharing a hotel room with a toddler was nearly impossible. Fifteen minutes of Miss Rachel or Gracie’s Corner gave me enough time to put on my noise-canceling headphones and dump a thought onto the page before I forgot it.
When a storm ruined our beach plans, a friend suggested we use the hotel’s conference room for a change of pace. It became part of our routine, with Talia playing peekaboo around the tables with the sales manager.
I enjoyed getting to know our ‘neighbors’
Not everyone in an extended-stay hotel is a long-term guest. There were vacationers, business travelers, military members waiting for traditional housing, truck drivers, and people whose employers maintained corporate accounts.
Then there were families who simply had nowhere to go.
I met veterans and families navigating the housing system. Agencies sometimes place families in hotels until they find housing. Extended-stay hotels can accommodate entire families — including the dogs and cats that can make rental searching even harder.
I also bonded with the staff. One woman spoke only Spanish, yet somehow, I started picking up on what she was saying, which allowed me to help translate for other guests. I chatted with second-shift front-desk workers, who shared their aspirations with me and looked the other way when I snuck into the kitchen for cornflakes. Talia earned the nickname “spicy water baby” because she and I shared seltzer from the bar.
We’ve found a rental, and I was surprised to miss the hotel
I spent weeks worrying about what she was missing by not being home and what bad habits would stick. Now that we’ve moved, she still asks for “Pad,” but only needs a few minutes before wandering off to color or read. And every day feels like 15 minutes of Christmas as she rediscovers another toy from storage.
When we finally left the hotel, I expected relief. Instead, I felt a strange tug of homesickness.
In those nearly three months, my daughter had gone from saying a random word or two to speaking full-on toddler gibberish. She stopped face-planting in the hallways and learned to run.
Talia was living her life, enjoying playing in the conference room, splashing in the pool, and making friends with the people who knew her name. Maybe that was what I hadn’t understood when we checked in with one carload of belongings and a two-week plan: Home is wherever your family is.
