au pair bedroom

Your Au Pair’s Bedroom: What to provide to make your Au Pair comfortable and welcome

by cv harquail October 11, 2016

Picture yourself in this room.  Imagine that you’ve just spent 8 hours with energetic kids, talking in your second language, driving on unfamiliar streets on the wrong side of the road. Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could walk upstairs, open the door, and step into a room like this?   It doesn’t have to […]

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Au Pair’s Room Is Also the Playroom. The Laundry Room. And the …

by cv harquail October 7, 2016
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Here’s another email that indirectly points out how important it is that US Au Pairs and Host Families have State Department Regulations that make certain conditions mandatory. This Au Pair, writing from Europe, has discovered that her Host Family family expects the Au Pair bedroom to also be the “playroom”. US Au Pair regulations require that an […]

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Au Pair Asks: How can I tell my Host Family that they’re so noisy they wake me up?

by cv harquail October 22, 2014
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If the shoe were on the other foot, we wouldn’t hesitate to tell our au pairs that their early morning or late night behavior was so rowdy that it interrupted our sleep. But when you’re the au pair, and it’s your host family just doing their thing in the kitchen, what can you do? Au […]

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Which bedroom to choose for your Au Pair?

by cv harquail September 26, 2012
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Lucky you- you’re not only getting an au pair, but also you have a choice of rooms for his or her bedroom!   But which bedroom should you choose– the one near the baby? The big one where s/he’d share the kids’ bathroom or the smaller one where she’d have her own bathroom? Or the […]

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Your Au Pair’s Bedroom– Minumum Standards

by cv harquail September 22, 2012

An au pair doesn’t need her own separate apartment, an entire wing to herself, or even a bathroom en suite. But there are some minimum standards, and the email (far below) from an au pair suggests that not everyone is paring attention. At minimum, your au pair’s bedroom needs: A bed, lamp, place to store […]

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Damage to the Au Pair Room: Should we have a security deposit?

by cv harquail November 2, 2011
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We’ve had some funny and not so funny stories about damage to our homes by au pairs who were clueless (at best), careless (most often) and intentionally destructive (nightmare). Everything from soaked ceilings under the au pair bathroom, to hair dye on the bathroom walls, to nail polish on the fancy sheets. We have a decent handle on what to expect […]

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When Au Pairs Overlap, who gets the room? (Poll)

by cv harquail May 11, 2011
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Sometimes, the right thing to do as your family transitions from one au pair to another is to have your au pairs overlap in your home. As we know, overlapping au pairs can create some emotional difficulty for the incoming au pair, the outgoing au pair, your kids and you. And, it can also create […]

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What Size Bed for Your Au Pair (Poll)

by cv harquail March 11, 2010
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A host mom writes: Do we need to get a bigger bed for our next au pair? Our current au pair has a queen-size bed in her room, which used to be our guest room. We are moving to a larger home in a few months. The new house will have a guest room, and […]

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Your Au Pair’s Room: How much mess can you take?

by cv harquail December 14, 2009
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A host mom sent me a few photos of her au pair’s bedroom (taken with the au pair’s permission). The host mom was agonizing, because the room was a freaking mess. This family’s au pair was following the two most important bedroom-related rules: No dirty dishes and no candles/incense. But otherwise the place was a […]

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