"Ideas" y "de casa"

Question

In both cases, I was hesitant about whether to include the definite articles and I erred on the side of including them - which was wrong.

#1 - I put "vamos a intercambiar las ideas" instead of just "ideas". I've found that in English we use the definite articles much less than in Spanish, so I think I need a refresher of when to use them and when to leave them out! Can you point me in the right direction?

#2 - And with "voy a salir de casa temprano" , I actually had put this correct answer first but then doubted myself and put "voy a salir temprano de la casa". Can you explain why this is wrong? Thanks!

Answer

Hola Melissa
The presence and omission of the definite article is one topic that generates lots of questions. There is no clear-cut rule for when using them or dropping them. There is a general rule that says that in Spanish, generally, we use the articles when we want to refer to something more specific, something that is known by the speakers. If we drop them, we generally talk about very "general" things".
In those two sentences you wrote:
1. Vamos a intercambiar ideas - there's no article used here because we are talking "generally" about ideas. If we had expressed those ideas before in a previous conversation, the article would have been more justified as in for example: "Vamos a compartir de nuevo las ideas de las que hablamos el otro día." (Let's share again the ideas we mentioned the other day.)
2. Voy a salir de casa temprano. - here we drop the article because in Spanish we normally use "salir de casa", "llegar a casa", "estar en casa"... as fixed expressions (without the article) referring to your own house. If we were referring to somebody else's house or a house that is completely detached from the speaker then we may have said for example (depending on the actual expression): "Cuando llegamos a la casa del pueblo que habíamos alquilado para una semana..." or "Estoy en la casa grande que está en la esquina." 
In Kwiziq we only have one lesson that tests the presence or omission of the article. Have a look here. 
Un saludo cordial
Inma