House sitting 101

The time where I can talk about housesitting as an experience expert has arrived. Well, maybe not an expert yet, but I have just finished my first official housesit and I thought it might be worth sharing the highs, the lows and the hows of this experience.

Meet Jilly 😻

If you’ve never heard of housesitting, the concept is quite simple. Whenever people with (or even without) pets go on holidays, they need to find someone to look after their pets, house, plants, you name it. Rather than bringing the pet to a shelter, pet hotel or a relative or asking the neighbors to water the plants and make sure the house doesn’t look deserted, there are platforms where you can find a house sitter these days. It’s an exchange of favors, as there is no money exchange involved. It’s just a convenient way for the house owners to go on vacation leaving their pets and/or house in good hands and the house sitter to have a place to stay without having to pay rent, which is perfect for traveling low budget.

Before I dove into the “using house sitting platforms to support my travels” game, I was already looking after friends’ and family members’ pets while they were away. I love pets and as a true nomad I adapt extremely easily to new environments, but there is no way for me to adopt my own pet (yet). With the travel bug still happily floating around in my blood, this settlement always worked out perfectly for both parties. I would live in someone’s house, where I could just have my routines, look after the house, the animals and the plants and didn’t have to cut back in the luxuries like a private bathroom, kitchen (with the basic supplies), clean and soft towels (instead of the awkward micro fiber ones) and comfortable beds.

While I was looking after Roger, my good friend’s cat, for the Xth time in July last year, I was thinking how good of a deal it would be to do this while traveling too. And with that thought in the back of my mind, I took the first steps to change my life drastically the next year.

After buying a ticket and taking care of all the necessary paperwork and vaccinations and stuff, I started looking into the housesitting thing a bit more and discovered there are plenty of platforms catering this. I chose to apply for Trusted House Sitters first (which is a worldwide platform) and discovered Kiwi House Sitters and Aussie House Sitters right after. I’ll list the pros and cons I’ve experienced of every platform so far at the end of this blog ;). I use these specifically for the areas I’m traveling in. Please let me know which platforms I should try for other areas!

After applying to Trusted House Sitters, I confirmed my first housesit pretty much straight away, which I think was just a very lucky shot. Since most house owners are going to want to see reviews of previous sits and/or meet up through Zoom of Facetime, I guess my first address was a very trusting family with a house so remote, it probably wasn’t very appealing to other house sitters. Well, enter Domi.

My friends, in whose house I stayed for the first few days after my arrival, live in Craigieburn. Craigieburn is a Melbournian suburb about 45 minutes from the city center by car or train. It’s not very “backpackery”, which was great, because that doesn’t appeal to me so much anymore. Right next to Craigieburn (about a 15-minute drive further from the city center), there’s a place called Mickelham, which is a suburb with massive properties, huge houses and lots of flat land. I found a place to sit right in the middle of it. In a huge house and lots of land around it. They accepted my offer to sit within one day of being on the platform.

It’s a nice feeling when everything kind of falls into place like that. My friends could drive me there and pick me up whenever I needed something from the shops. There was a bus stop relatively nearby and I got my friend’s bike to cruise around.

Still, very remote.

Anyways, I went up to the house in Mickelham on a Sunday and the sit was going to be 9 days. I was responsible for looking after a lovely border collie, Paddy, a 4-month-old kitten, Rosie, an older cat called Holly and 5 ponies. Since Holly, the cat, didn’t really show much of herself and the ponies only needed fresh water every day, I spent most of my time with Paddy and Rosie.

Paddy is a great well-trained good doggo. He’s awesome. Rosie on the other hand, is a young and oftentimes naughty kitten, trying to break every rule. And to make matters even more challenging: her stool was so thin and stinky; it was necessary to clean her litter box every single day. Which I would have been fine with if the smell wasn’t so damn penetrating.

On the first official day, after the first night on which I came in quite late, I noticed the litter boxes were still empty, but there was a faint smell of yukkiness coming from somewhere in the house. Turns out Rosie used her owner’s bathtub as a bathroom replacement. I’m still not sure why she did it, but it gave me the absolute ICK to clean up that mess. That feeling of “ick” didn’t go away all the other times I cleaned up the litter boxes by the way. At least she didn’t poop in the bathtub anymore, so lucky me.

Other than feeding the animals, giving them water, and cleaning up after them, there wasn’t much to do. The only thing is, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the house for a long period of time, because the kitten could break out of the kitty door and she would not be able to go back into the house by herself (like I said; naughty kitten). Of course, she wasn’t going do that while I was gone, but I still felt a little uneasy leaving the house, knowing there are foxes around at nighttime who would enjoy a nice juicy kitten for a snack. So, I ended up not leaving the house too often and especially not after it got dark.

Speaking of nighttime, I tend to get scared in the dark and of course, I thought about it beforehand, but I didn’t take into consideration it would feel THAT deserted and scary once the sun set. Which meant I just went to bed right after sunset and woke up at sunrise. Great for my routine, to be fair.

I spent most of my days chilling in the garden, often half naked (which luckily, I wasn’t that one time the owners’ daughter stopped by unannounced), swimming in the pool, and basically enjoying Australian summertime.

Paddy gave me no troubles at all, until he decided to chase a flock of sheep (yeah, I was in the countryside alright), which was chilling in the horse’s meadow, illegally apparently. He chased it so far; he disappeared in one of the neighbors’ gardens. I tried to find him, but as soon as I wanted to climb over the fence, there were 2 massive male kangaroos looking at me (yeah, I was in Australia alright), so I slowly turned around, hopped on my bike and rode around in the neighborhood. Paddy came back 45 minutes later, cheerful as always and then he took a very long nap after that.

So, to sum up: feed, water, clean, chase, worry, but mostly enjoying my time in a lovely home with lots of food they told me I could just eat from the fridge and the shelves. And you really don’t have to tell me that twice.

After all, I am grateful this lovely family accepted my offer to housesit without any references or introduction beforehand. I had a great time 80% of the time. The other 20% were kinda hellish, BUT that is still a pretty good balance. It’s the balance I like to live by when it comes to most things in live (shoutout to my mom for raising me like that :)).

And to finish this episode of Domi's talks: the pros and con list of the housesitting platforms I use, like I promised you:

Trusted House Sitters	Kiwi House Sitters	Aussie House Sitters
+ – Worldwide house-sitting – They have a phone friendly app – Confirmed sits are visible for both owners and sitters	+ – House owners can approach anyone they are interested in so it’s a two-way street – Relatively cheap ($80/€50/year) – Lots of offersFree registration for home owners looking for a sitter	+ – House owners can approach anyone they are interested in so it’s a two-way street – Relatively cheap ($80/€50/year) – Lots of offers – Free registration for home owners looking for a sitter
– – Pricier than other platforms (€149/year) – The only emergency line to speak to a vet is a local English phone number which costs a lot of money to call from a foreign phone – Offers are quite limited in Australia and New Zealand, they’re more concentrated in the UK and US	– – Limited to New Zealand – Additional payment for the ID verification process – No app – Although partnered up with Aussie House Sitters, there is no direct link between accounts so everything is double and you can’t see reviews from Aussie housesits	– – Limited to Australia – Additional payment for the ID verification process – No app – Although partnered up with Kiwi House Sitters, there is no direct link between accounts so everything is double and you can’t see reviews from Kiwi housesits

These are all the things I learnt so far, I’m sure there is plenty more to discover. I will keep you posted on my house-sitting adventures!

Bye bye

Xoxo Domi