Our First House Sit

What is Housesitting? Imagine if you could spend the summer staying in amazing houses, exploring new places, making new friends and looking after animals…. and you can do it on a super tight budget… sounds perfect, right?! A couple of weeks ago we skeptically set off on our first ever Housesitting adventure. The concept being that you look after someones home and pets, in exchange for free accommodation whilst they are on holiday. As holidays abroad are so expensive during July and August, we had already decided we would spend these months exploring the south coast of England. With beautiful beaches and some lovely weather in the summer, we didn’t see the need to fly further afield. We thought this would be a good way to save money, until we saw the price of an airbnb or hotel during the peak summer months! £1000 for a week was an absolute no go for tight travellers like ourselves, The Travel Mum is all about finding bargains, so when we heard about Housesitting we thought “What do we have to lose?! Let’s check this out”.

The membership to the site that we use starts at £99 for the year. Wow, so expensive! (was my first thought anyway). But I came to realise that if we just consider a one week stay in the south of England, £100 was an absolute bargain (the first house we stayed in was huge with a pool, and we got to look after Alpacas!) With the first sit making up the sign up fee, any sits after this felt like free accommodation.

Such an amazing experience for Leo!

We set off for our first Housesitting experience at the start of July, assuming we would be gone for just 5 nights (spoiler alert: we didn’t return home for a month!) We couldn’t believe how fantastic a concept it is. The first family we sat for were so welcoming and kind, they made us feel right at home in their beautiful home. Looking after the animals was an absolute treat. We would feed Sheep, Rabbits, a Lizard and Alpacas twice a day, the chickens were fed three times a day. Our 3 year old son absolutely loved getting stuck in and helping. Collecting the eggs from the chickens each morning was such an exciting task for him.

Collecting the eggs in the morning

After just one day in the south we decided we wanted more, so we went onto the app to look for other sits not too far away. We were shocked to see there were many other sits available for the exact dates we needed! This is when we secured our second week long sit in Brighton, which conveniently started on the day we left our housesit in Surrey. The second family in Brighton were equally wonderful, making us feel right at home and leaving us so much information as to how to look after their two gorgeous dogs. They even left us a bottle of wine, some beers plus some toys for our son. The dogs were such sweethearts, such kind gentle souls with so much love to give. The house was just a short walk to the beach so we got to stroll down to the beach each evening, play by the sea with the doggies and our son, and then enjoy a sunset beach side drink. We could not believe we were getting so much for just £99!

Enjoying evening walkies

Many people ask “But isn’t it annoying having to look after the animals?!

Looking after the animals isn’t a hinderance if you love animals like we do, we love the fact we get to have these part time pets and give them lots of love and attention whilst their families are away. If you love animals this will be perfect for you.

Finding a new housesit is really simple. The search function on the app is really easy to use, you can search by map, filter for certain animals you want to care for or simply by the dates you want to travel – find a place you like the look of and let the owner know why you are perfect for the role. Before doing this you will have completed your own profile highlighting your selling points and uploading some pictures so that the owners can get a feel for the people who are applying. Then you just wait to hear back and see if you are chosen!

After our Brighton housesit we booked another week long sit further down the coast looking after two elderly cats in Pagham. After that we did a week long sit in Devon looking after two young dogs. It was so easy to make our way down the coast and find wonderful places to stay along the route.

Enjoying life by the sea!

We got to spend a month in the south of England, met so many great people and animals, saw lots of different areas and you can do this for just a £99 sign up fee. I highly recommend you look into Housesitting if you are considering cheaper ways to travel, if you can find just one sit during the year, it is worth the subscription.

A colleague of ours signed up and loved it so much he wrote a post about his experience!

Click here to have a read!

We will be applying to some sits further a field later in 2023! Keep an eye on The Travel Mum socials to watch us become increasingly obsessed with this website!

You can check out the housesitting website here.

The links I have shared will allow us to receive a small commission on any sales completed via them.

We embarked on this journey before becoming affiliates and only looked to join their programme once we realised how great a website it is. We have not been paid or sponsored in any way to produce this blog post.