House Sitting – A World of Opportunities

Posted on February 21, 2018

House Sitting – A World of Opportunities, by Vanessa Anderson. She and her partner, Ian Usher, travel the world as digital nomads, working remotely and looking after other people’s properties and pets. Having sold most of their possessions, they prefer the freedom to explore the world, living as locals for extended periods in different countries.

Words and photos by Vanessa Anderson, a full-time international house sitter and publisher of House Sitting – The ultimate lifestyle magazine.

When I first discovered international house sitting, I couldn’t quite believe this would be my ticket to a freedom lifestyle.

I’d started the process of breaking ties by selling my house at the end of a long-term relationship. Then I gave up my job to go and live with my new partner Ian, on a small island in Panama. I hadn’t thought much beyond living on the proceeds of my property sale, and had pushed into the background the reality that this money wouldn’t sustain me indefinitely.

It seemed I had escaped one trap but put myself in a new one. The only difference being, it was a much nicer environment- a small island in the Panamanian archipelago of Bocas del Toro. I still needed to find a way to create an income, or to learn how to travel inexpensively.

This became more of a necessity after Ian and I decided we really wanted to travel the world while we were still young and fit enough to actually enjoy the experience.

House sitting enabled this to happen.

We’d used house sitters to look after the island home when we left on visa renewal runs, so the concept wasn’t new to us. It just took a while for us to realize the amazing opportunity it could offer us too, if we used it as a way to travel less expensively.

Cutting out accommodation costs can really have a very positive effect on your travel budget! And it’s not just the lodgings, it’s the gas, electric, and WIFI. I was surprised to discover that sometimes even a car is provided!

At this point, it’s important to say that the primary purpose of house sitting isn’t to get free accommodation!

We’d used house sitters to look after our home and our jungle dog, Campesino – who, while being Head of Island Security, in reality, wouldn’t have been very effective at all! So we knew the benefits of using house sitters to oversee the property and pet care.

So we knew that house sitting came with responsibilities and we were prepared for that part of the exchange. We considered it a very fair swap, and understood the win-win-win nature of this trust-based agreement. Great for the homeowners, ideal for us, and the best ever result for the pets!

We also thought it would be a wonderful way to help other homeowners unable to leave their homes and pets for long periods of time. It would allow them to go off on their own travel adventures, while we got to live in their homes, with their pets (we needed our cuddles), experiencing the area like a local.

So that’s how we started out. We became full-time international house sitters, and worked out ways to minimize our travel costs by staying in one continent, or area for a substantial length of time. In Central America for instance, we were able to visit 5 different countries, and house sit in 3 of them, travelling inexpensively between locations by bus.

Our money now goes much further, and we’ve had the time and space to work on other ways of supplementing our income, like teaching English online.

In four years we’ve travelled to the USA, China, India, Australia, Abu Dhabi, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and Botswana. We experienced our first extreme weather event, a devastating Cyclone in Fiji; we hiked back and forth across the Grand Canyon; and spent a month travelling around Cuba. We’ve dived with sharks, climbed numerous mountains, been to the Victoria Falls and experienced a once-in-a-lifetime mobile safari in the Okavango Delta.

At the moment we are house sitting for three months in Barbados. We have a beautiful home with a lovely pool – a necessity in this tropical climate. We are looking after Heidi, a lovely undemanding semi-feral cat. At the other end of the scale, we’ve looked after six cats on one sit (plus a couple of strays), a mix of dogs and cats, and even a small paddock of sheep back in the UK. But you can pick the house sitting assignments that you’re comfortable with, from thousands that get advertised every year.

Our lives are full of travel opportunities and experiences, and we don’t expect that to stop anytime soon. That’s because international house sitting is becoming more and more popular, with more homeowners in new and interesting locations, recognizing the benefits of using house and pet sitters to look after their homes.

We’re so passionate about the concept, we now produce a free monthly publication – House Sitting – The ultimate lifestyle magazine (https://HouseSittingMagazine.com). It’s full of community stories, getting started tips and even a helpful house sitting platform comparison guides.

House sitting truly does open a world of possibility and opportunity. I would never have expected that for three months this year, we’d be house sitting on the edge of a river in Botswana, watching hippos just a few meters away for our evening entertainment.

We would never have been able to afford to travel to Botswana, the luxury safari capital of the world. But house sitting made it possible!

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This article appears in the December 2017 issue of Globerovers Magazine.