The life we live involves traveling around the United States (and Canada) from place to place house sitting in each place we visit.  In order to sustain this life of back-to-back-to-back house sitting assignments, we find we have to spend time each day looking for new house sitting opportunities.  The place we look is the same place all of us now look for the things we’re looking for — the internet.

There are at least a dozen websites on which homeowners, who are planning to travel and need someone to look after their home and pets while they’re away, will post or list the house sitting opportunity they’re offering.  In response, house sitters like us will apply for the assignments that fit their needs and plans.  These are like dating websites.  The homeowners present themselves in a flattering light, and the house sitters respond by sending applications in which they make themselves look as desirable as possible.

Everyone who’s used a dating website, or knows someone who has, has a story — or a number of stories — about dates that ended in a steaming pile of regret and unfulfilled expectations.  The person you expected to meet based on their dating-website profile and photo was nothing like the train wreck you actually met on the date.  House sitting websites are not dissimilar.  And both homeowners and house sitters have their share of stories of disappointments and dashed hopes.

We’ve made our share of mistakes.  Particularly in the beginning, when we first started house sitting, we applied for, accepted, and did house sitting gigs that we regretted.  Sits where we counted the days until they ended, and drove away at the end feeling relieved to have survived and escaped.  But over time, we’ve learned how to separate the good sits from the bad, and only pursue the good ones.

There are four elements of every house sit:  (1) The people, (2) their pets, (3) their home, and (4) the location of their home.  For a house sit to go well, all four of these elements need to be great.  The last of the four is the easy one for us.  We know the difference between a house sit in Vancouver, Washington and one in Vancouver, British Columbia.  We know to take a house sit on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina but not in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  The other three elements are where we can go — and have gone — wrong.

Most people offering house sitting opportunities turn out to be very nice, and we’ve enjoyed meeting them, becoming friends, staying in touch, and house sitting for them again and again.  But there are some nasty exceptions.  You can tell some things about a homeowner by what and how they write in their listing on the house sitting websites.  But we’ve learned to use a phone call or a video call to try to get a better sense of the people before accepting a house sitting gig.  If a homeowner accepts our application to sit, we’ll ask to speak with them on the phone or via a video service like Zoom.  The phone call almost always goes well.  But we’ve had phone and video calls during which we’ve been put off by the homeowner and then turned down the sit.  Nevertheless, we’ve done house sits we’ve regretted because the homeowner seemed nice in their listing and nice on the phone, but turned out to be — just like on a dating website — unpleasant or insane during the house sit.  Often when we’ve had to put up with unpleasant homeowners, we’ve been able to look back and realize that we were given a clue about their nature early in the process, but failed to heed the warning sign.  Our practice now is to trust our instincts, and, if we sense the slightest thing off about the homeowner from their listing or the phone or video call, we avoid the sit.

Everyone loves their dog, and thinks theirs is the best dog in the world.  And that often comes through in homeowner posts on the house sitting websites.  But sometimes this love hides a problem animal.  We’ve done house sits where the homeowner assured us their dog was well behaved or even a “chill dog”.  “He finished first in his class at obedience school.”  You liar.  In 75 house sits over three and a half years, no homeowner has ever misrepresented to us their cat, fish, parrot, chicken, rabbit, horse, goat, or pig.  But we’ve had a number of house sits with dogs who were not at all as easy to deal with or as well behaved as their owner had promised us they would be.  When people are telling you about their dogs, switch on your crap detector.

(I should say this:  It’s possible that these dogs who barked at us, destroyed our belongings, bit us, and pulled us over are actually true sweethearts with their owners or with others when their owners are around, but, having been left with strangers — us — by their owners, they became unhappy and acted up.  These dogs may behave with us in ways their owners have never seen because their owners have abruptly left them in the care of house sitters whom they don’t know.)

The remaining element of any house sit is the house.  Although we are a great country made up of great people, it’s a fact that most houses in America are dirty, run-down messes.  Tens of millions of our fellow Americans are living in houses you wouldn’t want to spend 10 minutes in, let alone 10 days in during a house sitting assignment.  The trick, of course, is to avoid taking house sitting gigs in these houses and take house sits only in the relatively few nice homes in the country.  Many homeowners recognize that their houses are undesirable and try to hide that from potential house sitters in their listings on house sitting websites.  The websites enable and encourage homeowners to include pictures of their homes in their listings.  While house rental sites like Airbnb and Vrbo require homeowners to put in their listings pictures of nearly everything in the house being offered to rent, the house sitting websites have no such rules.  So some homeowners post few or no pictures at all.  Some will post six pictures of their dog but none of their house.  Come on.  It’s call “house” sitting.  We need to see the house.  We’ve seen listings with pictures of cars, weddings, parks, lakes, nearby sights, a town, and sunsets, but no photos of the house.  Ninety-eight percent of the time when the homeowners don’t include pictures of their home, it’s because their home is a mess no one would choose to stay in and look after.  We’ve learned the hard way:  If we apply for a house sit and get accepted by the homeowner, during the telephone call we ask the homeowner to send us 10 interior photos of their home — including the kitchen, living room, family room, bedrooms, and bathrooms.  A bunch of times, once we’ve seen the photos, we’ve turned down the house sit.

In the house sitting world, the homeowner is asking the house sitter to live in their house for a few days, a few weeks, sometimes a few months.  That home becomes the house sitters’ home for that time.  We house sitters should be able to know what conditions we’re going to be living in.  Homeowners who live in filth and clutter can’t expect house sitters to be willing to do the same.  If you want us to live in your home, make it a home people would enjoy living in.

“The reasons people live in filthy, messy homes lie behind their broken souls.”