In The Beginning...

Why and how I decided to give up my home and stuff to start house sitting...

I began my nomadic journey in 2014. At the time I lived alone in a rented apartment in Surrey, England, but was happily involved in a long-term relationship with the woman who would ultimately become my wife. However, it wasn’t just long-term it was also long-distance. She lived in New York. Our plan was that I would eventually move to the US at some future point. In the meantime, with these plans in mind, I had decided to quit the web design agency I worked for and start myself off as a freelance web designer. With the reduced income that this would result in, I began looking for a way to live more economically.

It was my future wife who suggested house sitting. I had never heard of such a thing. It was a trend still in its infancy back then, but growing in popularity. As soon as I learned about it I was hooked and sold. The idea that you could live rent-free by looking after other peoples’ homes and pets while they are away seemed like simple genius to me. A more mutually beneficial arrangement I defy you to show me. Free security and pet-care for free accommodation. They dovetail beautifully.

So, unusually for me, I went all in. I gave myself a month to prepare, a month's notice on the property rental and a month’s notice on my job. That's some kind of deadline, let me tell you. I then began the Herculean task of reducing my worldly belongings down to that which I could travel with (and that which could be stored at a family member's house without completely overwhelming their space).

Thus began my first lesson in starting your nomadic life.

Lesson number one - you have no idea how much stuff you own. You may think you know how much accumulated paraphernalia you have in your house, tucked away in drawers or cupboards, but take that estimation and double it (watch out for future posts where I tackle this lesson, and others, in more detail). In short, I had a one bedroom apartment but it seemed to contain enough crap to fill a four bedroom house.

While I was busy shrinking my worldly possessions down to a few bags, I had to actually enter the house sitting market. I joined the few sites available back then that catered to house sitters and home owners, including Trusted Housesitters which has been around for a long time and, even today, has more sits available than anyone else.

This very quickly brought me to my next lesson.

Lesson number two - it is really hard to get that first house sit. In any service, you live and die by your reviews, or your lack of them. House sitting is no different. Finding someone who will entrust you with their home and pet based on nothing but your well-written description and stunningly attractive profile picture is not easy. In fact, by the end of the month, the time at which I was leaving both my job and my home, I still didn't have any house sits lined up. I had to go and stay with my mother and stepfather for a few weeks (a sometimes tense start to my roaming adventure). Eventually I managed to land a couple of house sits.

Incidentally, I will always be grateful to those people who took a chance on me and got me started. It's a cliche because it's true. They had no reason to take my proclamations of animal care and responsibility on faith, but they did it anyway. Without them I wouldn’t have even got off the ground. Ask yourself, would you do it?

That, in a nutshell, is how I transitioned from a 9 to 5 office job and rented apartment to being essentially homeless and self-employed. Was it an easy transition? Hell, no. Was it difficult to give up all my stuff and what had been my home for 13 years? Hell, yes. And, boy, did I have some stuff. I'm a huge movie fanatic and had an impressive collection of DVDs and memorabilia. These things were the hardest to get rid of and I confess there are a few surviving trinkets in my brother's attic. Was I ever going to part with my Indiana Jones model kit, painstakingly glued together, hand-painted and adorned with a homemade whip? Hell, no. One day, Indy, you will see the light again.

Were there a few people in my life that thought I was out of my mind? To be honest, I think they all did except my partner. We are conditioned to live a certain way and I was breaking that tradition with gusto. I was invited to consider all the potential disasters that could befall me in my foolish quest to live atypically. The house sit could fall through, the animal might be dangerous, you could fall grievously ill while stuck on your own. And, of course, the question I hear the most, why would you look after someone’s house and pet for free?

Lesson number three - people may think you’re mad. There are a lot of people, I have discovered, who simply think the idea of house sitting is eccentric and way beyond their comfort zone. I get it. Some people need their castle. My father was one of them. I used to think I was, too. Experience has taught me otherwise.

Despite the resistance, I pressed ahead anyway. I was certain this was going to be for me and it was going to work. And if you know me you'll know how rarely I feel that way. In fact, I can count three times in my life I have felt so sure:

1) ‘I want to be an artist and designer’.
2) ‘I want to start house sitting’.
3) ‘I want to marry her’.

That's about it.

Was it worth it? Hell, yes. I never regretted it for a second, even in those moments where I felt I'd had enough. For three years solid, that is how I lived. I wasn't just vacationing before returning home. I had no home. I just moved from house to house like, yes, a hermit crab. And I loved it. Sometimes the sit was for a week, sometimes for a month. The longest sit I did was seven weeks. And the more I did, the more reviews I got. The more reviews I got, the more I had the pick of the house sits. Eventually I would be offered 9 out of 10 sits I applied for. Not only that, people started to approach me with their house sits before they posted them.

Lesson number four - home is where you make it.

I was a house sitting rock star! And that was just the beginning. What followed has been 10 years of house sitting, relocating and road-tripping. It’s been a wonderful adventure and I would love to tell you all about it.

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