Things we didn't expect about house-sitting

We enjoyed our daily routine of feeding chickens and collecting their eggs in Australia.

It’s not a vacation. We did know this to a certain extent, but house-sitting and its attendant responsibilities are much more like real life than like being on holiday. Even without animals, you’ll most often be living in residential as opposed to tourist areas, and conducting your daily life among the shops and services and public transport that the home owners themselves use. If you’re working and/or taking care of a child/ren (as we were), it’s even more like real life!

Their neighbors became your neighbors, for better or worse. As city dwellers for many years, we only knew a handful of the people who lived on our street in Boston and Philadelphia. But when we began housesitting in smaller towns and neighborhoods, we really relished the experience of having kind neighbors looking out for us and helping us learn the ropes in a new place. This can go the other way too—if neighbors are unfriendly, nosy, or somehow disgruntled. Luckily we had much more of the former.

It’s very bonding. After living in someone’s home for more than a month, you feel you know them really well. It’s an intimate experience to live among their family photos and books and plants and artwork, to get to know the food they keep in their cupboards, the music and TV they enjoy.  And especially to love their animals. The whole relationship between house sitter and host is based on a huge amount of trust, and that seems to breed a certain kinship. It’s quite refreshing--including because no money changes hands.

It’s fun to try out different lifestyles. After living in quirky old houses all our lives, it was surprising and interesting to us how much we loved the new construction home we lived in in Oregon. Everything worked as it was supposed to, the doors fit into their frames, the floors were even...what a dream. Since we knew we’d be looking for a new house when we returned, we took notes on things we liked as we went (even specific refrigerators, washer/dryers, and cookware, as well as interior design choices) and the things we did not. When else would we have the opportunity to try out other people’s organizational systems, furniture, etc.?

Humans are extremely adaptable. It normally took us about two weeks to feel at home in a place. The first day or two were always very disorienting. But once we found our regular routes, got to the grocery store, and instituted a few routines, we quickly began to feel at home. I think this was a good thing to recognize and cultivate in ourselves and in our son. It makes us feel as though we can go anywhere we want to--and adapt accordingly.

Humans don’t need a lot of stuff. Though we occasionally missed some of the conveniences of our life at home (window screens in particular), we didn’t miss our stuff at all. Even the items of clothing and toddler equipment I agonized over leaving behind. We surprised ourselves by needing different things than we brought and had to buy them in a few cases (such as more warm clothing in Oregon). There was one toy that Luca pined for a bit in the beginning--his toy trumpet--but that was eventually forgotten. By the end, I felt as though we could have gotten by with even less.