Housesitting for Free Accommodation

My Experience Housesitting Pets for 3 Weeks

One of the most expensive parts of travel, and living in general, is how much we spend on accommodation.

Housesitting can be a great way to deflect some of those costs and get to visit beautiful locations at the same time.

I was lucky enough to score a dreamy first sit in a beautiful two story home for 3 weeks in Norwich, England. My responsibilities included watching over the house, helping the hosts by eating all the food in the fridge that would have gone bad during their trip, and caring for a sweet old dog named Bertie.

Every sit is different, but I had a great feeling about my hosts from the get-go. They asked me to arrive a day early so we could get to know each other and go over the expectations for Bertie. They picked me up from the train station, made me a delicious lamb dinner, and even took me for a gorgeous morning hike the day that they left for their vacation. 

They encouraged me to eat any and all of the food in the kitchen and even took me for a grocery run to make sure I had everything I needed. They would’ve let me borrow their car as well, but I was a little too nervous to try driving on the left side of the road.

I found this housesitting opportunity on the app Trusted Housesitters. Part of what had appealed to me about their listing was all the walking trails near their home. I had goals to train for the Camino so an active dog who would walk long, meandering trails with me sounded perfect.

The house had so many beautiful trails nearby, and my hosts pulled out so many maps for me to explore the town myself, but Bertie had arthritis and couldn’t walk much further than around the block. 

I have heard some horror stories about long lists of expectations for sitters, but my duties were really just feeding Bertie once a day and giving him his arthritis medication on an oat cookie. I didn’t even really have to let him out to use the bathroom because he had a doggy door in the utility room where he slept. We also did a lot of snuggling and napping together. It’s safe to say we fell in love.

Since my goal for housesitting was to save money, taking full advantage of the free accommodation, I really didn’t do much exploring of the town. But I did attend weekly trapeze classes at a local circus school and picked blackberries and crab apples on my daily walks. 

It was honestly a dream come true. I came down with a parasite from the tap water in Morocco shortly before arriving in Norwich, so it was the perfect time to be alone in a house with 3 different bathrooms. After weeks of cramped hostel rooms, the privacy was addicting. 

I texted the home owners about once every 2 days to send a pic and let them know that everything was going great, but otherwise, there wasn’t much for me to do! 

My 3 weeks in Norwich were the perfect reset for my trip. I spent a lot of the time writing and working on my travel posts. I had a fully-equipped kitchen to cook in every day. I had great wifi and access to a great sound system to play Spotify throughout the house. They even had a washer and dryer! And best of all, I had a companion in sweet old Bertie. 

Trusted Housesitters has 3 separate plans, starting at an annual fee of $129. But with this link you can get 25% off!

Spending 3 weeks without paying for accommodation made even just my one sit well worth the cost and I didn’t hesitate to renew my membership the following year.

I can’t wait til my next sit!

Have you tried housesitting before? How did it go?

Look out for another post where I break down the process of finding a housesit step by step.