Have you considered having some storage in the house that automatically follows you around the world as you move from place to place ? i.e. your belongings just turn up at the house you are currently staying in without you having to deal with shipping?
I would love to be able to travel between one of your houses in London to Bali with only a carry on luggage (e.g. a few days clothes and my laptop) - then have a box of clothes follow me within the week.
Clothes are probably a good place to start. Having a simple cupboard draw that is automatically sent would be good (cost permitting).
- Most people shouldn't have a problem with you searching through this sort of thing for illicit goods
- I think it is mainly clothes that take up the bulk of space in peoples suitcases
- Clothes can be compressed for space/cost efficiency
Something as automatic as possible would be dang neat.
If (as is likely) something 'magic' isn't feasible, the second best way would probably be to adopt the method used by some managed partial-ownership properties - everything goes into a luggage trunk that smoothly vanishes into storage upon leaving and is there and available on arriving, possibly along with some basic packing/unpacking of clothes and so on.
A mostly-painless way of dealing with insurance and the related listing of contents would best a must, as would some kind of interfacing with customs.
You guys negotiate a discount with a carrier like Fedex/UPS (or even just use EasyPost.com), and I can ship my gear ahead of me to one of the other locations. I think having a printer on site for shipping labels would be more than sufficient.
Edit: to clarify/simplify