House sitting, to some it’s is a new and quite strange concept.
More often or not it’s a stranger staying in your house, looking after all of your things and on most occasions your most prized possessions, your pets.
It’s an idea that is rapidly gaining momentum and is becoming the preferred method of having pets looked after.
There are a lot of reasons why we love house sitting and our favourite platform to use in Australia is Mindahome
Below we have broken down the top 5 reasons why we love house sitting and how it has allowed us to travel long term and stay around the world for free.
Table of Contents
Why We Love House Sitting
Staying In Great Locations
While travelling long term it can get stressful trying to figure out your next destination or trying to decide between places. We often use house sitting as a way to decide for us. Using websites such as Happy House Sitters we check for house sits in specific areas of interest to us. More often than not there is a house sit where we would like to go so we apply. If we successfully land a house sit, that is our next destination.
We love the spontaneous nature of this lifestyle. We are currently in Greece caring for two gorgeous dogs and a fluff little Persian cat. Not only are the animals amazing, but the home also overlooks the seas and gorgeous little seaside village! As we are sorting out all the details about this house sit, we receive an email enquiring if we would be interested in looking after a cute little ginger cat in Melbourne!
We love that with house sitting we get the opportunity to house sit in areas that we otherwise would not be able to stay in long term. For us Rome is somewhere that we could go on a sneaky weekend away, however, that would be quite expensive and it just would not be an option to stay any longer. Being big fans of Italian wine, cheese and of course pizza this is an amazing opportunity for us.
Meeting Interesting People
Over the past couple of years sitting we have met some interesting people. Some of which we are still in contact with and plan to meet up with again in the future.
Our favourite to date is a lady we sat for in Dublin, Ireland. Her home was a beautiful 80’s inspired villa she had personally decked out with funky artwork and furniture. She had 2 Chihuahuas, 1 Chinese Crested and 1 Whippet. We became best friends with the dogs within minutes.
We ended up staying on after the house sit for a further week with the home owner and ended up becoming such good friends we were invited back for her birthday a month later! We are still in contact now and consider her to be one of our good friends.
Saving Money While Travelling
Saving money is one of the main reasons why we love house sitting. Traveling long term can get very expensive if you are constantly paying for Airbnb, hotels and hostels. House sitting has given us the freedom to travel, work and live completely nomadically. We love camping and the idea of living in a van, however house sitting has allowed us to live a similar lifestyle while still enjoying the comforts of living in a normal house. If not a house that we could not afford to live in.
Not only does house sitting allow you to save money on accommodation, it also saves money on bills. Electricity, water, gas, wifi, council taxes and general household items add up over the months. Not having to pay for these costs month to month has allowed us to pay for more flights and get to more locations around the world. Not only doe sit help us save money, we also found out how to make money while traveling, but this also allowed us to house sit full time for 4 years around the world.
While living and house sitting in London & Ireland we managed to sneak in trips to 21 countries throughout Europe and Africa. Without saving money on accommodation in these expensive cities we would not have managed to achieve this.
Exploring Local Areas and Getting A Real Feel For The Area
If you follow us on Instagram you will know that it is no secret we love food. One of our favourite past times is exploring a new town and hunting down the best street food, cafes and restaurants.
When visiting a new town for a day or a long weekend you don’t get to experience the place like a local. House sitting allows us to stay in an area for weeks (or months) at a time. This gives us time to work and really explore the town and find the hidden gems.
We love getting deep into a town and finding the best local markets, wine bars, cheese shops and ice cream shops! Thats what we really enjoy about travelling the most.
Spending Time With Animals While Travelling
House sitting is also very important to us because of the interaction that we get with animals. While travelling long term it is almost impossible to have your own pets. This was a bit of a shock to the system for the first few months that we were travelling. We had both grown up with family pets and had pets until the day that we both decided to travel.
Having the opportunity to look after cats and dogs again has changed the way that we think about long term travel. We are now happy and content being away from home full time without.
Are you a house/ pet sitter? We would love to hear from you! We are always looking to swap ideas and chat with like minded people. Leave us a message below or get in touch through one of our social media channels!
Does House Sitting Sound Interesting to You?
Amazing post…Thanks for sharing…
Thanks, have you done any house sitting before? We love it!
Great post. We dipped our toe into house sitting and spent five months in Australia. Our daughter has settled there and it was a great opportunity to spend some time with her and other family around Sydney. We managed 10 weeks of sits and 10 weeks of family/friends/abnb. Enjoyed all of it; meeting new people/being out of our comfort zone/looking after lovely pets/chilling and destressing. Back to the U.K. and plan to downsize and hopefully do six months of the year repeating this. Are you guys retired and house sitting full time?
Thank you! Sydney is such a cool place, thats somewhere that we would love to house sit! 10 weeks of sitting sounds like a good time. Thats plenty long enough to see everything! We are currently just lining up around 3 – 4 months in Melbourne we can’t wait! We miss the UK, we need to get back over that part of the world. I wish we where retired, we have a business working online together and house sit our way around the world while working. We absolutely love it
We looooove house sitting too! We’ve been hooked since early 2016 when we landed a three month house sit in a building with a hot tub on the roof! Haha, but luxuries aside, we love it for the same reasons you do, getting the local feel for a place, meeting interesting people (we have visited past pet owners too and have returned for repeat sits in some), saving money, and staying longer in a place. It’s really the best way to travel in our opinion!
Yesss!! A 3-month house sit sounds awesome! Where abouts was that one located? We are currently in Melbourne, Australia and have the next 4 months lined up here. We can’t wait to dive deep in the food scene here! Do you still house sit? Its amazing the people that you can meet along the way right?