One good question outworks a hundred readings. In Paris 15, the deepest pool of households in the capital, publishing a housing for services offer — steady help in exchange for a room — draws a small tide of messages — Vaugirard students, young workers around Commerce, applicants from much further out. This page keeps to three moves: arm your text with a filter question, read each candidate's stated priorities, then date the duty annex.
What does a well-set filter question sort?
It splits, within one reply, those who read your need from those who write in bursts. Slip a precise instruction into your text — state your fixed slot, journeys counted — and open only the messages that comply: the sorting happens by itself, and nobody gets offended along the way.
The neighbourhood knows what rigorous method is worth: on rue du Docteur-Roux, the Institut Pasteur, opened on 14 November 1888 by President Sadi Carnot, built its name on famously demanding protocols. Without aiming that high, your question follows the same hygiene — one clear criterion, applied to everyone, results you can read at a glance.
How should you read stated priorities?
Look for the order rather than the length: someone writing “finish my thesis first, then help in the evenings” governs himself better than someone promising everything at once. Spot what sits at the top, check your household can live with it, and set aside requests showing no hierarchy at all.
Paris 15 requests tend to rank very concrete things: walking a schoolboy to the library, sorting the photo archive of a host tidying his albums, keeping the balcony in shape once spring comes. Such details beat a long plea — they say what the candidate can actually sustain and, between the lines, what he will not improvise.
What does the dated duty annex freeze?
Four lines, never fewer: the entrusted duties, listed one at a time; the weekly hours, ceiling included; the stay's length, held between its two dates; the exit terms, notice given and keys returned. The date at the head of the page says which version counts.
Date every version: the first at signature, the next at each adjustment — a shifted slot, a swapped duty. The annex lives at the stay's own pace; its timeline protects host and lodger alike, far better than the memory of kitchen conversations ever will.
Getting around, line 12 serves Vaugirard and Convention, line 8 runs towards Commerce, the tramway skirts the south and Montparnasse opens the long-distance lines. The sieve: colocationsparis.com. Before settling your choice, leaf through the fifteenth's offers to see how other households frame the same exchange, then the fourteenth's requests and the seventh's for contrast.
Frequently asked questions
Which tone keeps the filter question from scaring candidates off?
As a favour, not an exam: “so I can answer you quickly, state your fixed slot” reads as consideration. One single question, placed at the end of your text, worded plainly. Serious candidates see time saved for both sides; the others quietly move along to easier pages.
A housing-for-services candidate dodges the filter question: follow up?
Once, not twice. Send the question back word for word, with no comment — an honest oversight gets fixed in ten minutes. If the second reply still sidesteps it, treat that silence as information: someone deaf to a written instruction will rarely hear the unspoken customs of a household.
Should stated priorities be taken at face value?
Trust their existence more than their content: in Paris 15, a housing for services candidate able to rank his weeks has already weighed studies, work and the promised help against each other. You will verify the substance later, references and a meeting in hand; at this stage, the shape of the message is enough.
When should the dated duty annex be brought up to date?
At every lasting change, however small: a slot sliding to Thursday, an errand replacing the ironing. Add one line, write in the new date, have both copies initialled. Three minutes of writing spare weeks of “that was never agreed” on either side of the kitchen table.
