I joined housecarers.com two years ago. Since then I have house sat twice - for the same people - once for six weeks, once for two years. I am now responding to other housesits (as this one comes to a close).
This experience has been great and I've had really nice feedback from the home owners of recent housesits I've applied to - I haven't been able to make a match yet re. dates and location but I will keep looking - even if it is just for 'holiday' house sits rather than being main place of living.
I do it for a number of reasons:
1. I was looking for ways to be able to make the time and
space to do part time study - by house sitting I could continue to work part time plus I had a lot of peace and quiet to study - it has been invaluable for that.
2. But I also did it because I have an
interest in alternative ways of living. I grew a vege garden, joined a vegie swap, took public transport or bike as often as possible, I picked and preserved the produce from the garden trees on the property I looked after... None of these I did 100%, or particularly well (re.vege garden), but the idea was to try and see what is possible - how you can approach work differently - ie. when I had dry patches of work (because I'm a casual) I put time into the property or preserving
something for the home owners. This isn't a a plug for a fantasy hippy lifestyle (it could start reading like that) - I am always aware that I wouldn't be able to do this if other people weren't working in the system fulltime with a house and a mortgage as a result - I just wanted to explore what is possible.
View Sara's house sitter profile for housesitting Melbourne VIC
