🖋️Feature: Our family HouseSitting adventure Part I | #101
🖋️Feature: Our family HouseSitting adventure Part I | #101
We run an experiment to find out if HouseSitting can work for Nomad Families.
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🇪🇸 Edition #101 is coming from Aragón, Spain.
How are you lovely readers? This week I am busy travel planning, one of my very favourite things to do.
If you are a regular reader, I have written before about how I use the two popular accommodation booking apps, sharing some of my hacks to find the best deals.
But coming soon, a new and possibly cheaper and climate friendly solution, may get added to my toolbox for finding decent Nomad-ready family lodging.
🍅 Spoiler! Finding a test housesit happened much faster than I expected and my Part II on this HouseSitting experiment with tips will be ready next week!
If you want to follow me for regular updates, see y’all on Substack Notes.
The Rising Cost of Accommodation
As I am on sabbatical, as I needed a rest, so my income is tight and I am watching the pounds and the pence, also I have become aware of how much the prices of lodging have increased in recent years.
So I am always curious about reducing my travel costs, if I can, with the aim of then I can afford to travel more, on less money.
One sure way, is to be more long-term in perspective during my bookings, reserving for a month or longer to qualify for discounts, where and when I can.
This approach worked recently in the Pyrenees, costing less than €50 per day:
Last year in particular, the concept of House and Pet Sitting as a way of finding Nomadic friendly accommodation came up in various conversations.
On the idea of PetSitting, I was enthusiastic, I love animals, growing up with lots of dogs, cats, horses and hamsters on a small farm-type rural property in the west of Ireland.
I had heard of some Nomad’s doing this, but I did not know of any families who had done this.
An internet search, turned up a couple of blog articles, claiming that yes it was possible and that House Owners (HO’s) do often welcome families.
I was intrigued. I was motivated.
I went from piqued interest, to serious intention to explore.
Next step: Sign up to the biggest HouseSitting provider platform to get going!
This would come at a monetary cost, but anything that is worth doing, is done better with some sort of financial commitment in my experience.
Then, could I find a suitable house sit offer?
Also, I had doubts, I had NO experience, so how could I get my first gig?!
++ I am creeping nearer each day to 3k free subscribers, which is some achievement, but please remember to share or restack on Notes, to help amplify!
Creating a HouseSitting Profile, when you have NO experience
Two weeks ago I signed up to Trusted Housesitters site and on that day I spent 2-3 hours completing my profile on the platform.
To start, I emphasised that my daughter would be involved - as I wanted to make sure I could find family friendly sits that we all could enjoy.
So while completing my profile, I was also completing it on her behalf.
The profile needed to represent both of us, so I found photos of her and me with animals and pets.
All of this showed our experience and validated the story we were telling on our profile listing, that also backed up the photos we were sharing (like the one above).
However, I was very aware that we had no experience - yet.
So no true references (yet!) so I reached out to some friends that I had helped with their pets in the past, asking for testimonials.
I quickly achieved one external reference - and another one is on the way.
To supplement this, I asked made sure I had links to:
The ID Verification
Air BnB profile, which has testimonials
Linking to all of the above, as relevant (see image above from a portion of my profile listing, for illustration).
I stayed positive, I am a 51 one year old parent, educator and professional, with lots of online presence and profile - I was hopeful that my first sit commission would come soon, it was a little bit of a “fake it, until you make it” attitude.
Tip: The ID verification phase was buggy on my desktop, we ended up using the phone app to complete this step on the Trusted Housesitters platform.
Asking HouseOwners directly to trust and consider you
Once I was happy with our profile, now it was time to find some HouseSitting assignments to apply for.
I did some searches and I was very direct and straight up with those I applied to.
In my application messages I included this copy:
Also a special request to consider me, with my NEW account - as it will be my first (fingers crossed) change to prove my sitting skills!
Asking clearly to be given a chance and consideration.
Plus, this text:
I am organising references now, but if you have a Linkedin account, I have 120+ testimonials on there for my teaching work and general reliability.
I also created a template for my approaches, to help have a quick set of text on hand to send quickly with a copy and paste.
What happened next!?
Then I challenged myself to not overthink applying for the first few sits.
Simply, JUST DO IT and apply for a few.
I came up with a simple list of criteria:
within driving/reachable distance of Zaragoza (our base)
family friendly
that the dates were suitable
that the other details suited my experience
The day after my profile went live, I applied for 3 potential assignments which fit my criteria.
I also made a promise to myself not to worry, if I was rejected, I was brand new, it would take time to build my profile.
Then all there was to do, is sit back and wait…
While I was waiting for some responses, this is also what I did +
I got myself familiar with the rest of the platform, reading articles and then I joined the Community Forum, which I am lurking and surfing on every other day.
Asking for more photos and references I kept improving our profile, making ongoing tweaks.
Finally, I kept applying, setting up some smart searches on the app and getting alerts for new sits that were loaded onto the platform.
What was the result?
Stay tuned!
Qu: Have you ever housesat or used similar solutions?
Share in the Community Chat!
May the road rise to meet you,
love n light,
💚 Ro