Roaming About

A Life Less Ordinary

Tag: house sitting (page 1 of 4)

Completed House Sits – San Diego, CA (December 7th to December 28th, 2018)

Last winter, Mark and I did a 3.5-month house sit in San Diego, California with Italian Greyhounds Elvis and Frida. During that time, we met up frequently with our friend Amy, as she was a graduating zoologist/environmentalist. “You guys are so awesome with dogs,” she said. “If I ever need someone to take care of Skylos, I’ll get in touch.”

In the summer, Amy secured a six-month position in Peru. Her best friend Cara moved in with her cat Casper to keep an eye on the place and care for the dog as well. At some point during our summer travels in Zesty, Cara and Amy inquired whether we could come to Ocean Beach (a funky neighborhood in San Diego) in December to take over Cara’s “duties” as she visited with friends and family over the holidays. She’d be gone for a long weekend early in the month and a week over Christmas later. The timing was perfect. We happily obliged, as long as we could stay the full three weeks. Continue reading

The Desperate House Sitter

July 2018, Newburyport, Massachusetts

“When I come back in six months, it will be winter again,” Mark says, as we pack up in order to take the Amtrak train back from Boston to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“I’m not coming with you next time,” I reply, “I hate being here in the cold.”

“I don’t blame you,“ Mark responds. “We will make sure to get a house sit by then, so you can stay out west.”

November 2018, Ojai, California

“We really need to find a house sit for January soon. You have to book your plane tickets before they get too pricey,” I say to Mark. We’ve been keeping an eye on sits in Southern California and Arizona on Mind My House and House Sitters America, the two websites we are members of. Nothing decent showed up.

“As long as we don’t know where you and I will be the second week of January, I can’t book any flights,” he says. I know. We need to do something soon, or risk a decision about his departure city. For days I research alternatives. I could boondock in Zesty, but Mark doesn’t like the idea of me being alone in the middle of nowhere without services. Not having unlimited electricity and internet would make it impossible to accept translation projects and work on my book.

We consider a pay campground for twelve days or so. Incredible how expensive those are. I might as well fly back with Mark. It’s cheaper and I’m guaranteed hot showers, WiFi, and electricity. How about staying with friends? Not really an option for that long; we wouldn’t feel good about it. House sitting makes most sense. We reach out everywhere: bulletin boards in Ojai, Facebook groups and personal pages, friends… We even post an ad on Craig’s List. The two reactions we receive from that are “You guys are freeloaders, not wanting to pay for utilities,” and “You won’t find anything in Arizona, it’s the high season.” Continue reading

Expense Report 2018

Expenses - image

Every month, I post a report of our expenses to show that it is possible to live a comfortable, exciting, and relatively adventurous life without breaking the bank. "The less money you spend, the less you need to make" is my motto. 🙂 Our first yearly expense report (2016) can be found here and the report of 2017 here. In 2018, Mark and I house and pet sat for seven months, lived and traveled in our camper van Zesty for four months, and visited our families back east for one month. What follows is the break-down of how we spent our money in 2018.

This report includes ALL of our expenses, in US$, for the two of us. Under groceries we incorporate all the food, produce, and non-alcoholic drinks predominantly bought in supermarkets. Toiletries belong in that category as well. Dining out means eating at a restaurant/event or purchasing take-out food. The health category covers non-prescription medicines and Mark's vitamins and supplements; medical contains prescription drugs and doctor's visits.

Continue reading

Guest Post on Global Housesitter X2 – Housesitting in America

Thank you to Suzanne, who interviewed me about house and pet sitting on her informative and entertaining blog, which has now been closed down.

Housesitting in America – Liesbet & Mark

In my series “Interviews with Housesitters”, I will be introducing you to various people who live life differently via slow travel and housesitting.

Liesbet and I have been following each other for a while now, well, since I started getting involved with the Blogging Community.  I have thoroughly enjoyed our interactions and have found Liesbet very informative, fun and a straight talker, a personality trait I find a breath of fresh air.  Then if you are like me you start reading more about her travelling life you too will be inspired at what these two have achieved and enjoyed as a team.

Meet Liesbet and Mark

Mark and Liesbet in Tahiti

Liesbet was born and raised in Belgium but calls herself a world citizen.

Since being a teenager, her two passions have been travel and writing. That’s mainly what she has been doing since her graduation as a teacher, many years ago. Her explorations backpacking and camping led her to many parts of the world and into the arms of her American husband Mark.

With him, she continued her adventures by truck camper, sailboat, and camper van. The closest they’ve ever come to settling down is choosing a lifestyle of house and pet sitting in North America. She is in the process of writing a memoir about the last decade of her unconventional life. Her blog Roaming About – A Life Less Ordinary reports on her writing journey, travels, housesits and expense reports.

What made you choose housesitting as a way of life?

After my husband, Mark, and I sailed full-time on our 35ft catamaran for eight years, while maintaining an income, we were pretty exhausted. We decided to sell the boat in Tahiti and return to the United States, we but didn’t want to settle. A friend had told us about house and pet sitting when we visited him in New Zealand six months earlier, so we decided to give that a try in the US. It turned out to be the perfect lifestyle for us. We enjoy and appreciate living all over the country, rent-free, while taking care of dogs, sightseeing during the weekends, and being able to do our work in comfort.

Abacos, Bahamas with our dogs Kali and Darwin

What was the process you went through to become a housesitter?

I signed up for three house sitting sites, created an attractive profile with dog-loving photos, collected a few “character references” from friends and family, started the first sit close by to gain experience, a 5-star review and a “real” reference, and launched into full-time house and pet sitting, first in New England, then out west.

With Herk at Lake Tahoe

How long have you been housesitting?

Almost three years.

For yourself, what are the positives and negatives to housesitting?

Positives: being able to love, cuddle, walk, and spoil dogs without owning one, work and live in a comfortable and convenient environment, not spending money on accommodation, meeting interesting people, exploring new areas every time we move, having the ability to get to know places in-depth.

Negatives: for us, there is only one negative: we don’t have a social life. While living and traveling by sailboat and camper creates like-minded communities to be a part of, our current social life happens mostly online. Unless one of our friends travels through the area where we have a sit, which has happened on a few occasions. We would like to house sit internationally one day, but the big negative then will be the high cost for plane tickets and possibly car rentals.

With Tui on Cape Cod, MA

What do you look for when choosing your next housesit?

Since we both work from home, decent and reliable internet is our main requirement. The area has to be somewhat attractive, and we avoid “Trump territory”. We also ignore listings that require a lot of extra work (more than the usual pet care, cleanup, watering of the plants and normal yard work), because we are busy enough with our own jobs. Since my husband is allergic to cats, we don’t apply to sits with indoor cats. We try to get to know the home owners a bit via email and a video Skype call before we commit, to make sure there are no red flags.

Do you prefer long term or short term sits? The pros and cons are?

Long-term sits. After a decade+ of traveling, we were pretty burnt out when it came to moving frequently. Once settled in a place, we like to be able to enjoy the area, the dogs, and the home for a while. Plus, once our electronics are installed, and we know the lay of the land, it’s comfortable and enjoyable to just be in the same place for a while. I don’t see any cons about long-term sitting, unless you pick this lifestyle to travel a lot and desire to see many places in a short amount of time.

In the past, when we still had our Toyota Prius, we sometimes took short-term sits to fill gaps between house sits. We never stayed in a hotel or paid for accommodation those first eighteen months.

What website do you use? Or have you developed your own?

I have a “sitting” section on my blog that showcases our profile, reviews, and posts about our house-sitting experiences. The same profile and photos are listed on a few websites as well. We started with House Sitters America, Mind My House and Trusted House Sitters. Then, when seeing an attractive sit on House Carers, we signed up for that service as well. Last year, we canceled our membership with THS and more recently with House Carers. As we plan to combine travel and house sitting in the near future, the two remaining sites we belong to offer enough choice.

When not housesitting, what sort of accommodation do you mainly use? Or do you have your own home or motorhome to go back to, in between housesits?

When we started our house and pet sitting lifestyle in 2015, all our belongings fit in the back of our car. We managed to string house sits together, with only a few small gaps. Those days, we either prolonged the last house sit a bit, stayed with family on the East Coast, or crashed with friends.

One year ago, Mark and I bought a camper van, which gives us security in between house sits and a permanent roof above our heads. During the weekends, we have taken it camping in the areas of our sits, and soon it will be our “official” home on wheels.

Free camping in the Sonoran Desert, AZ

What’s one piece of advice you would share with someone who was contemplating their first housesit?

House and pet sitting is based on trust, respect and common sense. If you are a responsible, caring, and attentive person interested in this exchange, you can do it. Communication skills, honesty, and a love for animals are a must as well. Once you create an attractive profile and gather some experience (represented in positive reviews), you’re off to a good start. Before you commit to any sits, I highly recommend you have a video Skype call (or at least a phone call) in addition to email exchanges, to make sure you’re on the right page with the home owners. Have fun!

With Lola along the CA coast

Our summer update:

Mark and I are currently wrapping up our last week of being with family in Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA. On Monday, we go on  a three day/two night Amtrak train ride back to Zesty in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Once there, after a deserving shower and a good night sleep, we will be ready for new adventures!

Completed House Sits – Santa Fe, New Mexico (March 28th to May 26th, 2018)

This is the second time that Mark and I did a “repeat sit”, the only other time being in Sebastopol, CA with one of our favorite dogs, Lola. We are often asked back by owners to take care of their homes and pets again, but it rarely fits in our plans or weather tolerance, or we’d rather explore new areas of the country.

Since we house sat (no pets) at this location in Eldorado, Santa Fe from mid-August to mid-September 2017, it felt like coming home. Continue reading

Then and Now – Friends

A few years ago, I would have never thought to dedicate a blog post to friendship. After all, we had many friends we stayed in touch with over email, fellow cruisers we ran into again, and new people we met in different harbors. As I have alluded to in previous blogs, the one fallback about house and pet sitting – and being on the move from one more or less isolated home to the next – is that Mark and I lack social interaction. It was an important fact I pointed out in my recent interview with Kristin of Wayward Home. Sure, we sometimes meet neighbors and might nod our heads at one another. Recently, we were even invited to dinner at the house across the street in Albuquerque. A first! It was a nice surprise and evening. But, all our current friendships are treasured via the internet. Outlook, Facebook, blog comments, Skype calls; that’s where my social life happens. Mark, who isn’t on social media, has even less interactions.

BFFs on my bachelorette party in SXM

Luckily, most of our friends are travelers. This means they might find themselves in the same area where we secured a house sit. When that happens, good times are had. New life directions are exchanged in person and wonderful memories are shared! Those are the best times, and I’m grateful for them. Continue reading

Couple sails world, gets a van, now house sitting the U.S.

A little while ago, Kristin from The Wayward Home (Home is where you sail it, park it, or build it. I love that tagline!) sent me an email. She was curious about how long-term house sitting worked, and asked whether I’d be interested in answering a few questions about the topic. I replied “Yes!” This past weekend, she posted the complete interview on her popular website.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for the opportunity of sharing our lifestyle with the world, Kristin!

Why did you and Mark decide to start house sitting full-time?

When Mark and I decided to abandon our previous lifestyle – which involved eight years of sailing, working and traveling on our 35ft catamaran Irie in the Caribbean and the South Pacific – we knew we didn’t want to settle. After selling our boat in Tahiti, we took a little break visiting with family and friends in the U.S. and Belgium, before creating a new plan. Continue reading

Completed House Sits – Albuquerque, NM (February 18th, 2018 to March 28th, 2018)

Every house sit is different – the house, the owners, the area, the pets, the tasks, the climate – and provides us with new experiences and routines. I always enjoy arriving at the next place and settling in.

Cuddles with Beck and Gunner

As mentioned in an earlier post, our most recent house sit was a last-minute decision. Mark and I had nothing lined up after our 3.5-month house sit in San Diego, CA (with a three-week visit back East), because we wanted to be flexible. We faced six weeks in Zesty, until our current 2-month house sit in Santa Fe started. Without jobs, the prospect of exploring the American West in our camper van and soaking up the sun in Arizona (with the idea of meeting up with my brother on a business trip in Phoenix, and RV blogging friends in that area) sounds perfect. But, since we need decent internet and two offices, our preference goes out to more comfortable and reliable quarters. So, when this house sit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, appeared, we jumped on it.

Continue reading

House Sitting: A Healthy Mix of Comfort and Discovery – Guest Post on Retirement Reflections

This weekend, I am a guest of Donna at Retirement Reflections, where I explain a bit more about the house sitting process and lifestyle. Would it be something you consider?

Thank you, Donna, for inviting me back to the stage of Retirement Reflections. I enjoyed my performance last time, and today is no different.

Far from retired

My husband, Mark, and I are not settled and not retired. And, we never will be. At least not in the conventional way of owning a house debt-free, concluding a 40+ year career, having a home full of stuff, and receiving a reliable social security check. Why? Well, for starters, we are ‘only’ in our forties. Also, we don’t have a house, haven’t held a ‘normal’ job for 15 years (me) and 13 years (Mark), have no rooms, closets, attics or basements to store anything, and, even though we file taxes in the US (Mark and I) and Belgium (me), we barely make more than minimum wage. We do put some money aside for the future, but expect we will have to keep generating an income, creatively, for many years to come.

Sailing adventure with Darwin and Kali in Annapolis, MD

Part of the retirement environment

All that being said, we have found ourselves surrounded by 60-plussers everywhere we roamed, no matter the lifestyle we adopted this past decade. Retirees are becoming more adventurous. They enjoy being mobile and switching up their surroundings. Some full-time, once the house is sold or rented out, others in stints. We met many matured RVers when we lived in a truck camper and traveled throughout North and Central America, made plenty of retired friends during our eight years of cruising aboard Irie, our 35’catamaran, in the Caribbean and South Pacific, and are in touch with retirees who house and pet sit just like us. The only difference between them and us is that we differentiate between workdays and weekends.

Liesbet and Mark San Blas Islands, Panama

Ever considered house sitting?

While my first two examples might be a tad too adventurous and risky of a lifestyle for many, the idea of house and pet sitting does have a lot of sensible merits. Continue reading here…

(If you would like to leave a comment, please do so at Donna’s site. Thank you!)

Roaming About in 2017 – Our Year in Review

The end of the year is a good time for reflection. In the past, Mark and I would do so by recalling the islands visited, the people met, or the countries explored. The last two years, we look back at the house sits we fulfilled; new places we discovered in the US and animals we took care of. To give this review of 2017 a bit more depth, I am combining Donna’s and Peta’s idea of breaking the post down in months and Janis’ end-of-the-year focus by incorporating what I am grateful for.

January 2017 – Hospitality of others

In the beginning of the year, Mark and I finished a three-month dog sit with Herk in the Sacramento area, California. After that, we faced a short gap between house sits. Thanks to the home owner, who let us stay a few extra days, and a blogging friend offering up her guest room, we did not become homeless. Friends happily hosted us at other times during the month as well, keeping our accommodation free. During our 2+ years of house and pet sitting, Mark and I never paid for a hotel room.

February 2017 – The warmth of Southern California Continue reading

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