Veronica is taking the lead this week…
Veronica: Once you’ve gotten past the searching the profiles, emails, IM’s, phone chats, nervous 1st dinner, farewell grope in the parking lot and are up to planning the all important sex date, a big question comes into mind: Where will we play? Hubman and I are fortunate that the layout of our home allows for playtime and we’re in the midst of re-arranging our basement, primarily because it doubles (triples?) as the kids playroom, home office, and adult playspace for when we have friends over.
The kids bedrooms are on the first floor and at one end of the house. The playspace is downstairs and at the other end of the house. Between that, creaky floors and our less-than-stealthy kids, we’re comfortable having playmates come over after the kids are asleep.
Not everyone is that lucky. This leads to people booking hotel rooms and paying for a whole night, when you really only need the room for a few hours. (Something I am sure the hotel people love as they can send housekeeping in at the crack of dawn to get the room ready for the next night). We have noticed that with the couples we have played with, most of them have not been able to host, due mostly to having teen-aged children. (Baby-that means we have four years to find a house with a mother-in-law apartment)
Yes dear, I know. Let’s not forget that the demands of my profession will likely have us moving sometime in 2012, so we’ll have an opportunity to find a place that is conducive to swinging AND having almost-teenaged kids!
Veronica: So since it seems that we’re often the hosts, it’s up to us to make the playspace welcoming and hospitable for our guests. Our first concern is making the space welcoming and sexy. Since the basement is also the kid’s playroom, the home office and a guestroom when we have overnight company (4th bedroom, how we miss thee) the challenge is arranging the space so our guests do not have to look at tons of kid crap or lots of personal filing. Now a bookcase filled with books can be an interesting conversation starter. Looking at a month of bills and other assorted paperwork sitting on the desk, not so much. Hubman and I are working on that problem by replacing our behemoth desk with a smaller secretary desk which can be closed up to hide the office items.
Our desk really is a behemoth. When I was a doctoral student and we had that 4th bedroom that Veronica mentioned, it was perfect. That bedroom was my home office and having lots of desk space for books, files, journal articles, my computer, etc, was great. But we’re both at a point in our lives that we work at work and don’t bring anything home, so this desk has outlived it’s usefulness. Anyone in the Boston area want to buy a desk? It’s on Craigslist!
Veronica: The kids crap is taken care of by a curtain we strung up to divide the room. We looked into using some bookcases to accomplish the same thing, but then it blocks out a bunch of light, and when you are working with a basement, the 1st thing you have to deal with is the lack of natural light.
Most of our HNT pictures taken against a black backdrop are actually taken in front of the divider curtain. Veronica bought a black sheet, we put holes in it using grommets then I strung some 1/8″ airplace cable using eye-screws. It actually looks pretty good!
Veronica: Moving on to the floor, that is where a lot of the action can happen. We have good quality Berber carpet, but it still leaves rug burn with the least amount of friction. For now, I throw down some blankets from the blanket box, but I think at some time we are going to need an area rug. The lights are on a dimmer and we have a fireplace, but I think its time to move some candles to the basement to have some nicely scented mood lighting.
I don’t think that we need an area rug for downstairs. One thing she hasn’t mentioned is that we have a futon, which is currently on the “kids” side of the basement but once we’re done rearranging, it’ll be on the “play” side. So we won’t have to have sex with our friends on the floor anymore. Unless we want to 
Veronica: And then music. Hubman and I really need to do something to have music down there. We do not usually have sex to music, but some of our guests do and we take our hosting responsibilities seriously.
All we need to do is get some stuff on iTunes, create a playlist and have the laptop out.
I’m also thinking I need a discreet bin for some towels to wipe up sweat and other messes that comes from sex and have a nice place to keep the condoms and lube.
We have a sex swing and liberator pillows but never are sure when to bring them out. It seems a little much for a first encounter, and due to the fact that we have the kids with a sitter before the company comes, we can’t exactly leave them out in the basement during the evening although the kids would be beyond thrilled that we put a swing in the basement!
Since the room is multi-purpose we can’t have it be sexy all the time, but need to be able to convert it into a sexy love lounge very quickly. I would like to have items in the room that can easily be converted to play items, but do not look out of place in a multi-use room.
I wonder if the Design on a Dime team or any of the people from the HGTV or DIY network would want to take this on as a project?
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For some couples, there are other options besides homes or hotel rooms. There are always hotel parties and on-premise swinger clubs, and house parties. But those settings often involve larger groups, multiple partners in one night and lots of being watched, none of which particularly appeal to us. We prefer to connect with a couple and play in private.
So does our arrangement sound inviting? Once we’re done rearranging, I’ll take some pictures to share. For our swinging friends with kids, how do you approach hosting friends at your house, if at all? How to you feel about playing at a house where the hosts kids are asleep upstairs? How much does the kids age matter in your comfort level?
As always, comments and questions are most welcome, as are suggestions for future volumes of Swing Shift.
