Our Year of Living in Airbnbs

"...You're doing what?"

Yep, we've heard that one before.

A little about ourselves. We both grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but we met at college in Southern California. A few years later, we began dating and got engaged. While planning our wedding, we moved back to the Bay Area, and lived with our parents temporarily. We ended up moving into an apartment complex in San Jose, about 10 miles from both of our offices. We enjoyed our time there, and met some wonderful friends, but when our lease was up for the second time, we started to ask ourselves whether or not we should stay at the apartment complex. The commute that we had was a stereotypcial commute in the Bay Area, right around an hour for a 10 mile commute. It is something that you somewhat have to get used to (just like the cost of living...). Naturally, we started thinking of moving. But, what if the new commute is a reenactment of the opening scene of La La Land? (OK, who are we kidding, that would be awesome.) Or what if the new neighborhood smells like Dowisetrepla?

So, the way we saw it, our options were:

a) Renew our lease and pay an increased rent to stay in our current apartment
b) Stay in the complex, but try to find a cheaper unit to move into
c) Find a new home

Two of three options required us to pack our stuff and move for the fifth time in six years. (Yes, we are THOSE people.) Alas, one day, Sean came home with a genius idea. And for those who know us, Sean's "genius ideas" are usually pretty out there, and take quite a lot of convincing on his part. And so the convincing began...

S: "Why don't we Airbnb for a year?"
K: "Haha... No."
S: "I'm serious."
K: "Absolutely not."
S: "Honestly though, what are the cons?"
K: "The cons are... well, uh, what if... there are no cons?"

It took a little bit more than that to get Katelyn's type A/planner personality really onboard with the idea, but as Sean continued talking about it, and proved there are very few cons, the more we got excited about what this year might entail.

We knew nothing would be "cheap," and that no commute would be "great," but we also knew that there are tons of adventures waiting to be had. Since we both grew up in the Bay Area, we felt like we knew the area very well. However, after living in San Jose, we realized that we both knew a lot about our hometowns, but there are a lot of other parts of the Bay Area to experience.

And so the organized chaos of packing began, and so did the frantic search for our new homes.

After countless packs of bubble wrap, rolls of tape, and approximately 83 boxes labeled FRAGILE (which is super helpful when all of the boxes are labeled fragile, Katelyn), the majority of our life went into storage. Throughout the next year, we will be traveling and living in cities throughout the San Jose area, in the mountains, at the beaches, and maybe a few surprises along the way. We started to create a "game plan," and we are going off the following guidelines.

Here's How it Works

Stay in each place for a month
Fit all of our stuff into two compact cars, eventually
Remember that this is a fun adventure! :)

For each place that we stay at, we will be rating our stay based on our commutes, how much we enjoy the overall area and the home itself, how easy it is to get around to stores/restaurants/activities, whether or not our family and friends actually come to visit us, and essentially, if we can see ourselves living in the neighborhood.

Since we are booking a wide variety of places, there will be too many factors to simply say "we love this place," or "this place is the worst!" and since there is a potential (or should we say a guarantee) for more than a few "memorable" scenarios, we wanted to blog about our adventure. So, follow along with us and enjoy!