Housesitting. Most people haven’t heard of it.
Well, get excited because you’re going to learn how housesitting is an amazing secret world that few people know about.
As I wrote in the last post, I’m sharing the how, what, when, where, why about being a Digital Nomad Family.
My big message is that you can do this, too! YES!
As I share everything we’re doing, you’ll see that, it’s possible to start planning your own trip abroad (or even just around North America). The point is that it’s possible to be location independent and design the life you want.
Let’s begin with Housesitting.
I won’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it. Anyone I mention it to never has.
The important idea to know is that this is one of the keys to our living abroad.
It’s not the only way to live frugally around the world, but it’s a HUGE one, and it’s how we’re doing things right now.
Housesitting has made our travel-the-world dreams come true.
As a Digital Nomad Family, it’s been a way for our family to live “rent-free” while traveling the world. Let me say that again, we’re living rent-free! I think you can see how amazing this is.
Housesitting has saved us thousands of dollars!
We’ve been housesitting for over a year (on and off in 2017 in the United States before we moved abroad and consistently for the whole time we’ve been living in Europe and the UK for 2018).
Now, we are housesitting experts, and we wrote a book teaching you how to be one, too.
Here’s a sample from my latest book, How to Win at House Sitting. Get it NOW so you can live this travel dream, too!
The first time I applied for a housesit via one of the housesitting websites was in April of 2017.
It was for a great-looking home in the hills in northern California. If selected, we would be watching one elderly dog for two weeks in May. In exchange for watching the house and dog, we would be staying rent-free. This made the long drive from our home in Arizona reasonable. Arizona is hot by May and it would be nice to get away.
We had rented people’s homes or apartments for a few days, many times, via Airbnb, but housesitting was completely new to us. We had watched homes and pets for family and friends before, but never for total strangers we met online. I discussed it with my husband, including the implications for working remotely. We decided to pull the trigger and apply.
I paid for a membership to the housesitting site, created my profile, and sent an application to the California homeowner. Then, I waited.
A couple of days later, the homeowner wrote back. She and her husband liked our profile and wanted to chat more.
We exchanged a few emails back and forth over the next few days, eventually talking on the phone. We hit it off great and both agreed that we would do the housesit.
By the time May arrived, two interesting things had happened. First, we managed to line up a second housesit near the ocean, just 45 minutes away from the house in the hills, for the preceding week. It
would end literally the same day the next housesit would begin, meaning our “working vacation” would be a total of three weeks, plus a few days’ driving cross-country.
Second, the original homeowners’ travel plans solidified and, as it happened, they would not be able to meet us in person. They literally left the house key under a rock and a bunch of written instructions. All homeowners leave instructions, but usually there’s also at least a quick walk-through in-person, if not spending a day or more with the homeowners before they leave. To make matters extra interesting, these homeowners would be out of the country and difficult to reach. We were pretty much on our own. Fortunately, they’d had many housesits, so their worry level was very low.
The housesit went amazingly well. Beautiful home, beautiful weather, a laid-back, low maintenance dog, and a quiet study where my husband co-authored an entire children’s book. We actually left in the morning, before the owners came home. So, we never did meet them in person. Now, that’s faith. I felt honored to be trusted so much by them.
And all this was following a fun week at our other housesit near the ocean, where we watched two cats: One that wanted her face scratched 12 hours a day, and one that I only caught a glimpse of twice in a week.
Three months later, we did our third housesit, in a beautiful, custom adobe-style home in the desert near Tucson. Chickens, coyotes, tarantulas, and cats that howl at 4:00 a.m. (More about these later.)
We were hooked.
We had proven to ourselves that housesitting would be a viable way to live, rent-free, for a year or more in Europe, or elsewhere in the world. And that’s exactly what we did.
As I write this, I’m sitting in a charming apartment on the outskirts of Paris, as two kitties glance lazily in my direction from their perch in the sunlight. There’s a bakery downstairs where we get warm baguettes and jam every morning. Yesterday, we took our homeschooling daughter into Paris to see a parade at the Arc de Triomphe. The cats’ owners, already fast friends of ours, are currently on a grand adventure of their own, driving across America’s historic Route 66 for three weeks, from Chicago to Los Angeles. It’s a win-win.
Most people think traveling the world for a year (or more) is for rich people. They’re wrong. With housesitting, anyone who can work remotely can do long-term travel abroad. Or in the U.S., for that matter.
This book tells you how we’re doing it, and everything you need to know to do it yourself.
Living a digital nomad family dream life is a real thing. You can do it, too.
We’re doing it, and we’re able to because we’re being frugal and planning well. It’s the most exciting life – moving to different countries, exploring, taking trains, planes, buses, etc. And, one of the key ways to make it happen so you can save tons of money is housesitting.
Whether you want to travel only a couple of times a year and want to save money on accommodations, or you want to go big and live around the world, housesitting is the answer!
In How to Win at House Sitting, you’ll learn:
- WHAT housesitting is and 12 reasons WHY you should do it whether you’re single, married, have kids, or a senior
- HOW to find housesits all over the world: United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Latin America, South Africa, and more!
- HOW to get the BEST housesits
- How to beat the competition when you apply for your dream housesit
- How to build your profile and reputation if you’re just beginning
- Real-life housesitting stories that teach and entertain
- Learn how to line up back-to-back housesits to travel the world full-time!
Buy my book, How to Win at House Sitting, TODAY, so you can save money and travel without paying for accommodations, too!