As we travel our way around Australia, we get to camp, explore, house sit, work and enjoy all sorts of new experiences.
Living life on the road as full time travelers offers so many different opportunities and House Sitting is just one of them. It really is a fun and rewarding way to spend quality time in an area and feel at home at the same time.
We really love being able to explore an area in detail, as we generally stay in a place longer when we house sit than we do if we are camping.
We really enjoy caring for, and meeting lots of beautiful pets of all shapes and sizes as well as having the opportunity to make wonderful new friends, the home owners.
Each home we house sit becomes our home away from home and we look after all aspects of the home we are at, exactly the way the owner wants us to, and with the same care and attention that we would want our own property treated.
It is such a privilege to be allowed into someone elses home and we are always honoured to be entrusted with the care of peoples pets and property.
Each house sit varies in terms of what is required. The most important part is the care of pets. This obviously involves feeding and watering, showing love and affection, providing company, and for dogs, it generally involves daily walking, sometimes twice a day, it may also involve giving required medications to a pet. Daily cleaning up of animal poop is also a given!
Some house sits may require pot plants, gardens or vegetable patches to be watered and maintianed or even lawn mowing to be done. If there is produce grown in the garden/vege patch during the house sit owners often love to share this produce with their sitter.
At some house sits you may have chickens and in this case the owner of the home often allows you to collect and eat the fresh eggs. We love a good omelete!
When each house sit is completed, both the owner and the sitter are able to leave a review on each others profile. This provides valuable feedback of the experience from both parties and is a great way to help with the descicion of who you would like to select for your next sit or sitter. It assist in providing peace of mind and reasurance that your home and pets will be cared for the way you expect.
On the site we are registered with, Aussie House Sitters, we have a profile with our own dashboard where we can upload photos, update our profile, add reviews, manage conversations with owners, displays a reply rating which is the response rate of replies to a request by an owner or sitter, allows you to favourite or confirm sits, shows the preferred locations you would like to sit, select what type of animals you are happy to care for, attach documents such as references, shows if your ID is verified. There is also an availability calendar to block out your bookings so that home owners can see if you are available at a particular time.
Home owners can place a listing with an overview of what they would like a sitter to do during the sit, or they can contact a registered house sitter directly via their profile and communicate with them from there without having to place a listing.
House sitters can scroll through the listings of available house sits and can use filters to select various locations, dates, distance from a certain location, or see pinned locations on the sites map function. The sitter can also set up email alerts so that when a sit is listed that meets the relevant criteria requested it will send a listing direct to your inbox. This saves continual scrolling and checking for any new sits.
On the Aussie House Sitters site, House sitting is generally FREE for both parties (other than a yearly registration fee that applies to house sitters) however some house sitting sites are different and some house sitters may be paid.
We have completed many more house sits than we have shared in the above photos collages and we hope from our photos that you are able to understand more about what we do as house sitters and what it involves.
We hope that this information has explained how house sitting may work for you too!
If you feel that house sitting is something you would be interested in and would like to register as either a house sitter, or if you are a home owner requiring a house sitter, click the button below and it will take you to the site we are registered with, Aussie House Sitters.
If you have any questions about house sitting we are more than happy to answer them for you. If you would like us to house sit for you, you can Register on the Aussie House Sitters website link below and contact us via our email Livelifenowadventures@gmail.com or via one of our social channels on our ‘contact us’ page.