Hey guys! I’m just dipping my toe into the house sitting world on behalf of my family. We’re thinking of travelling at the end of 2022, and would love to settle into a place for a few months. I’ve got four sons, who will be aged 6-14 by the end of next year. We’re homeowners, and our kids are well behaved, have a healthy respect for others’ property and animals.
My question is, has anyone had experience as a sitter with your family? Do you find it harder to get sits because of this? Are there any tips on being favoured over other sitters that may appear less risky than a family with four boys (I get it, I really do!!)
Hi Rowan we would like to welcome you and your family to our community forum and to TrustedHousesitters, it’s great that you are planning far ahead with focus on the end of 2022 giving yourselves time to really research and prepare.
There are many families who are successfully enjoying a pet and house sitting lifestyle, some full time others who enjoy opportunities during school breaks and vacations. We have one family of five, Jessica & William Swenson, they have a website and have written many blogs about their adventures, this one was featured on our website blog
I’m sure you will have lots of help, advice and suggestions from members here on the forum and there are lots of really helpful and informative articles on the website blog.
Welcome again and enjoy the conversations and connecting with other members from around the world. We look forward to sharing in your THS journey.
We are a family who housesit - myself, my husband and 2 boys aged 12 and 10,. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years, but only in school holidays, and so far mainly shorter sits of a week or less.
We started by applying for shorter sits, often at fairly short notice, as we figured we’d stand more chance of being accepted. Most of the sits we’ve done have been tagged as “family friendly” and you can set up a search using this as a filter. It’s probably worth doing a few short sits to get some reviews on your profile before applying for longer sits.
As a larger family, it may not always be clear whether a certain sit would be able to accommodate all of you as home owners don’t always say how many bedrooms are available. Sometimes we can tell from the pictures that there are 2 bedrooms shown, sometimes they tell you how many children they have, so you can work it out!
Most of our sits have been for other families who might identify with us if we have things in common. We have sat for a couple with no children (of the human kind at least!) too. If pets are used to being n a busy environment with children to play with, they may want sitters who are similar. Recently we have been invited directly to a couple of sits, both for families, so we must be doing something right.
You’d need to make it clear on your profile how many of you are in the family, and include photos of the boys with animals, or even get someone to write a reference for the children.