House Sitting Maintenance Tasks: What Homeowners Expect and How to Handle Everything

One of the most common questions new sitters ask before accepting their first sit is: what exactly am I signing up for? The pet care makes sense — feeding schedules, walks, vet contacts. But the house itself can feel less clear. How much maintenance is expected? What happens if something breaks? What does a typical homeowner actually want done while they’re away?

After 60+ sits across 15 countries, we’ve looked after everything from a city apartment with one cat to a lifestyle block in France with a swimming pool, seven cats, and a full vegetable garden. Here is everything we’ve learned about what house sitting maintenance actually involves — and how to handle it without stress.

House Sitting Is Not a Holiday — But It’s Not a Full-Time Job Either

This is the most important framing to understand before you accept any sit. Homeowners are not hiring a caretaker or a housekeeper. They are looking for a responsible person to look after their home the way they would themselves — to keep it safe, clean, functional, and exactly as they left it.

That means the maintenance expectation is generally: keep things ticking over, not transform the property. The difference between a good sitter and an average one is not how much they do — it’s how reliably and proactively they communicate when something needs attention.

According to our survey of 125,000+ active homeowners and sitters, 40% of homeowners said their biggest challenge was finding a sitter with the right skills for their property. Understanding what’s expected — and being honest about your capabilities before you accept — is the single most effective way to avoid a mismatch.

The Core Maintenance Tasks Most Sits Involve

Pet Care

This is the heart of almost every sit. Virtually all listings on major platforms involve at least one animal, and the pet care routine is usually the most detailed and time-sensitive part of the handover.

Standard pet care responsibilities include:

• Feeding on the homeowner’s schedule — portion sizes, food types, any dietary restrictions
• Walking dogs — frequency, duration, any behavioural notes about other dogs or strangers
• Cleaning litter boxes — cats generally need this done daily
• Administering medication if required — always confirm this upfront and ask for a full demonstration before the homeowner leaves
• Monitoring health and behaviour — knowing what’s normal for each animal and when to call the vet
• Basic grooming if requested — brushing, wiping paws after walks

Before every sit, we ask the homeowner for a complete daily pet routine in writing. The TrustedHouseSitters welcome guide system is excellent for this — homeowners document everything before you arrive and it’s accessible on the app throughout the sit. Our printable pet sitter instructions template is a useful tool for any sit where the homeowner hasn’t provided a detailed written handover.

General Cleaning and Tidying

The baseline expectation across every sit we have done is simple: leave the home in the condition you found it. This means:

• Keeping communal areas clean and tidy throughout the sit
• Washing dishes and keeping the kitchen clean
• Vacuuming and mopping as needed — particularly with shedding dogs
• Taking out bins on the correct days
• Cleaning up after pets immediately — accidents happen, how quickly you deal with them matters

Some homeowners provide a more detailed cleaning checklist for longer sits. For sits of a month or more, a light deep clean of bathrooms and kitchen partway through is reasonable and appreciated. If a homeowner asks for specific cleaning tasks beyond the basics, make sure these are clearly agreed before you confirm the sit.

Garden and Outdoor Maintenance

This varies significantly depending on the property. A city apartment might have one or two indoor plants. A rural property in France might have a full vegetable garden, fruit trees, a pool, and an acre of lawn.

Common garden tasks include:

• Watering indoor and outdoor plants on the homeowner’s schedule — always ask for a written plant care list, especially in summer
• Lawn mowing if there is no scheduled gardening service — confirm which mower to use and where it’s stored
• Harvesting vegetables or fruit that ripen during the sit — homeowners often specify what to do with excess produce
• Pool maintenance — skimming leaves, checking chemical levels, running the pump on the correct schedule. If you have no pool experience, say so before confirming a sit that has one
• Collecting mail and parcels

We have sat at properties where the garden was as time-consuming as the pets — a lifestyle block in the Bergerac region of France where we were watering over 50 plants every morning during a summer heatwave. Always clarify the full scope of garden tasks before confirming, particularly for longer sits.

Security and Property Monitoring

Homeowners entrust you with their most valuable asset. Security responsibilities are not always spelled out explicitly but are always expected:

• Keeping doors and windows locked when you leave the property
• Activating the alarm correctly — ask for a full demonstration, not just the code
• Checking that outbuildings, garages, and gates are secured each night
• Reporting any unusual activity to the homeowner or a designated local contact
• Not posting details of the sit on social media while the homeowner is away — this is standard practice in the house sitting community and most homeowners appreciate discretion

Appliance and Household System Monitoring

You do not need to be a tradesperson to house sit — but you do need to be observant and willing to escalate when something needs professional attention.

Common appliance responsibilities:

• Running the dishwasher and washing machine correctly — ask about specific settings or quirks
• Emptying the dryer lint filter after every use — this is a fire safety issue, not just a maintenance one
• Monitoring heating and cooling systems — some homeowners have specific settings they want maintained
• Checking that the hot water system is functioning normally
• Reporting anything unusual immediately — a strange noise from the boiler, a leak under the sink, a circuit breaker that keeps tripping

The most important rule we follow across every sit: if something breaks or malfunctions, tell the homeowner immediately and calmly. Do not attempt to fix anything you are not qualified to fix. Most homeowners have a local contact — a neighbour, a handyman, a property manager — for exactly these situations. Your job is to identify the problem and escalate it, not solve it.

What House Sitters Should Never Be Expected to Do

Being clear about boundaries before you accept a sit is just as important as understanding what’s expected. Tasks that fall outside the scope of a standard house sit:

• Major structural repairs or plumbing work
• Electrical work of any kind
• Looking after animals with complex medical needs you have not been trained for
• Managing contractors or overseeing building work
• Anything not discussed and agreed before the sit begins

If a homeowner’s listing or welcome guide includes tasks that feel beyond what you’re comfortable with, discuss it before you confirm. The right sit for you is one where the expectations feel manageable and fair — not overwhelming.

The Single Most Important Thing: Communication Before You Arrive

In our experience, the difference between a smooth sit and a stressful one almost always comes down to the quality of the pre-sit conversation. The more thoroughly you discuss expectations before the homeowner leaves, the more confident you’ll both feel.

We use a detailed pre-sit checklist for every assignment. Key questions to cover before any sit:

• What is the full daily routine for the pets — feeding times, walk times, any appointments?
• Are there any maintenance tasks on a specific schedule — pool cleaning, lawn mowing, garden watering?
• Who is the local emergency contact for the property?
• Where are the fuse box, stopcock, and any other essential household systems?
• Are there any appliances with specific quirks or instructions?
• What is the preferred communication schedule while you’re away?

Make sure everything is confirmed in writing via the platform’s messaging system. This protects both parties and gives you a reference point throughout the sit.

For a complete breakdown of everything worth asking and documenting before a sit begins, our free printable template covering everything a sitter needs to know is a good starting point for both sitters and homeowners.

For Sitters With Specific Maintenance Skills: Use Them

One thing we’ve noticed consistently across our sits is that homeowners genuinely value sitters who bring practical skills to an assignment. If you have a background in property management, gardening, pool care, or general maintenance, mention it explicitly in your profile and applications.

For retired couples especially — people who have owned and maintained homes for decades — this is one of the strongest differentiators available. The ability to notice a slow drain, correctly identify a pool chemistry issue, or confidently manage a heating system is exactly what homeowners with complex properties are looking for. If you want to understand how to position homeownership experience as a competitive advantage when applying, our guide to house sitting for retirees covers this in detail.

If you’re aiming for premium or luxury properties with more complex maintenance expectations, we’ve also put together a guide to landing high-end assignments that covers what those homeowners look for.

Ready to Start?

The real reward of house sitting isn’t just the experience — it’s what it does to your cost of living. We’ve written a full step-by-step breakdown of how to use house sitting to stop paying rent entirely. Before you commit to a membership, it’s worth knowing exactly what you’re paying for — we’ve compared every platform’s annual fee side by side so you can make the right call for your situation.

👉 Start your house sitting journey here