We spent the whole of covid on an estate in Portugal. Somebody had to.
We spent the whole of covid on a big estate in Portugal. We didn't own it, we didn't rent it, and we didn't pay for it. We were looking after it.
That is house sitting, and it is the simplest arrangement in travel. Someone is going away and doesn't want to leave their home empty. You want somewhere to be. Nobody pays anybody.
We've done it for three days and we've done it for months. There have been dogs, cats, horses and a pair of donkeys. There have been greenhouses that needed watering and nothing else at all. And once or twice there was simply a house, and the job was to live in it. When we've flown out to see our son in Australia we've strung sits together and seen the country properly on the way — which is the part nobody tells you about. You don't visit a place. You live in it for a while, on a street where people learn your name.
We had a look this morning, out of curiosity rather than intent. Eight months in Hawaii. Three months in Costa Rica. A hundred days on a small island in Tonga. And underneath those, hundreds of ordinary ones — a fortnight in a French village, a long weekend in a city flat, a winter in a Spanish town where the rent alone would have been a few thousand euros.
None of them charge rent. That is the part that takes a while to believe, and a while longer to stop grinning about.
A whole place to yourself. Sometimes a house with a garden, sometimes a flat three streets from the old town, sometimes a farmhouse at the end of a track with a car left in the drive because the owners know perfectly well how far out they live. A kitchen you can cook in properly. A sofa that's yours for a month. Sheets on the bed and no rent to pay.
And the thing that doesn't fit on a listing: time. A hotel gives you a week and a checkout. A sit gives you a month, a neighbourhood, and the woman in the bakery who starts putting one aside for you. You stop being a visitor somewhere around day four, and everything after that is the good part.
One membership, once a year, and that's it. The big global sites are in the low-to-mid hundreds; several of the smaller and regional ones are under fifty, and one is under thirty. It covers as many sits as you can do, so the more you travel the less each one costs.
After that, food you'd have bought anyway and your own way there and back. No accommodation. On a long trip that one missing line usually decides whether the trip happens at all.
This is the only genuinely hard part, and it's hard for about a month.
Owners choose sitters on reviews, and you start with none. So don't start with July in Tuscany, where two hundred people are ahead of you. Start where nobody's looking — February in a quiet part of Wales, a week in a town no one has heard of, the sit with four applicants instead of two hundred. Do two of those, come away with two reviews, and the doors that were shut start opening — including, in time, the ones with the sea outside.
Write to owners like a person, not an application. Say what you noticed about their house. Offer a video call. And take a short one close to home first. It's only a weekend, you find out whether you actually like the arrangement — and you come back with the review that opens everything else.
Owners come back to you. The ones who liked you message in January asking which weeks you want next year. No applications, no competition, no platform involved — it introduced you once and then quietly dropped out. People build whole years this way: the same house in Portugal every winter, the same cat in Scotland every August, and it's a lovely way to live.
But that's only half of it, and honestly it isn't the half we'd pick.
The real pleasure is the place you'd never have chosen. A town you couldn't have found on a map, because a sit came up there and you said yes. A month somewhere you'd never have booked a holiday — doing the shopping, taking the same walk every evening, learning which day the market is. You're not seeing the country. You're living in it, briefly, as somebody who belongs on that street.
That's what this gives you that money can't really buy, and it's why we're still doing it.
You've saved what a month of accommodation would have cost. Spend a little of it, or the whole thing turns into a very cheap month of staying in.
Take nights at either end. Arrive the day before the handover, stay on a few days after. → Find a hotel
Have people out to join you. A whole place for the week before the sit starts, when there are more of you than a spare room holds. → Find a house or apartment
Get a car if the house is rural. Half the loveliest sits are gloriously inconvenient. → Compare car hire
Book the thing you'd normally talk yourself out of. → Find something to do
Come and go the interesting way. Nothing ties you to the same route twice. → Compare flights and trains
And read up before you land. A sit can come up anywhere, so start where the country is still a surprise. → Find your destination
We earn nothing from any of these. One membership on a small board costs less than a night in a hotel, so there's no reason not to start.
None of these are reasons not to do it. They're the things that separate a good sit from an awkward one, and they all take five minutes to check.
So have a look. It costs nothing to read the listings, and one evening of browsing is how almost everyone we know started. Somewhere out there is a house with your name on the calendar and a cat who has no idea you're coming.
If you book one of these, or try one, or talk yourself out of one — we would like to hear about it. Drop us a line.
— Birgitta & Anders
Some links here earn us a small commission. It never changes what we include — and when something is here for another reason, we say so.
One new way to travel. Every Thursday.
Not deals or destinations — methods. House sitting, night trains, repositioning cruises, and what each one really costs.
More ways to travel
Campervan Relocations
Rental companies need their vans driven back. Four berths, a kitchen and a shower for about a euro a night — and a country you would never have picked.
Read article →Work Exchange
A few hours a day at a hostel, a guesthouse or a family home, and the bed is yours — in a town with a metro at the end of the street. Our son did it in South America and stayed ten years.
Read article →Caretaking
House sitting’s long version: a lodge, an estate or a ranch that needs someone for a whole season, and sometimes pays for it. The job is the place, not the cat.
Read article →
👇 Tap one, or just type
