We’ve been full-time nomads on a sailboat for 8 years and with THS for 7 months. My family is asking whether we’ll ever settle down…not yet, not yet, we love the freedom and adventure.
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That’s awesome to hear Peter.
I don’t think it is expensive either when you think about the opportunities to save money from accommodation.
On the Aussie/kiwi house sitters site, there’s a ‘families welcome’ option in the search filter. Easy peasy 
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I’ve been looking at those sites. You’ve no idea how many other people have applied and many of the owners haven’t uploaded photos
Not every hs site’s like TH.
Also, if there aren’t any pics or just a few sentences, I don’t apply. Simple.
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I only know one new site: Pawbutlers. It’s in German and is for free for early birds. But will it succeed? There used to be another site in German which failed (the platform was already up and working for a few years). It’s sad to hear that you had a bad experience with your listing. I think it’s fine to click apply without writing a personalized message, but at the very least you should read the listing carefully and write a message as soon as you can.
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I’ve just joined housesitterscanada.
Quite disappointing. Most of the sits are already listed on THS and none in the wild blue (or should that be white in winter?) yonder.
I’m looking for a winter adventure……
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We’ve had some great sits through Housesitterscanada. They obviously don’t have the volume of THS but not the price either. I would keep checking them :-). Our next sit after this one, in fact, is with housesitterscanada.
I just did a check, Elsie, of both sites for sits starting Dec 1 and although I may have missed one or two, as it was only cursory, I couldn’t see any duplicates? I chose Dec 1 as you specified winter 
I used them once as a HO several years ago when we had a little hobby farm, and the sitters we had were amazing! They came to our place in Ontario from BC and took such good care of our menagerie - at the time we had a dog, chickens, Guinea fowl and pigs so it was quite a lot of work. I haven’t looked at it in a while but would like to do some more short sits in Canada so might need to take another look!
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definitely check them out again. They are not as sophisticated a site but I like them. Another plus is that they are affiliated with housesittiersamerica, housesittersuk, aussihousesitters, kiwihousesitters and a couple of others. So your references from one platform can be seen on the others if you wish
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@Pawtastic The sitters applying with one sentence aren’t following up with a more detailed note?? I played the game the other day by simply typing “Hello” then clicking Apply to submit quickly to beat the clock. Then I immediately typed a real, detailed application, as usual.
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That’s interesting. I did a “just touching base but will send my proper application in the next hour” message to a fantastic looking sit. Thank goodness I did as it had reached the five limit when I was ready to send my application. Of course I could as I’d already contacted them.
Strange that people don’t follow up. Can you discard them and wait for more?
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There are plenty of house/pet sitting groups on Facebook. Practically there is a group for every larger town. They are also free of charge.
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@Pawtastic if they haven’t written a proper application within an hour, I would be inclined to decline them.
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I beg to differ about spots in the winter that would be isolated. I discovered at least a dozen on the Canadian site and they aren’t duplicated on THS. Remote, isolated, quiet, isolated - I live in Canada and appreciate the unique sits the site offers. Perhaps use the filters on the site to your searching advantage.
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On 3-4 occasions recently, I had to ‘get in quick’. So my first contact message says “Dear whoever, my full application will follow in the next message” and then I write a second message containing a detailed application immediately thereafter. This is good manners. On the other hand, if I see a cool listing right at bedtime, I might not want to switch my brain on to write a nice application then and there, I might wait till morning.
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We had very good results with the 2 Aussie specific websites, in fact, much better than THS. So I would definitely recommend these when on a tour of Australia (aussiehousesitters, mindahome)
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I’m off to New Zealand (South island) for 6 months at the end of October. I joined kiwihousesitters to give me more options and have to say I’ve 4 housesits through that site so far. The other 2 sits I’ve got are for a lady I sat for in the North island before the pandemic which was through THS. Hardly any South Island sits pop up on THS.
The Kiwihousesitters’ website is pretty awful and the owners (who don’t pay a fee, just sitters…which I find bizarre) generally put very few pics on and brief information. They’ve a long way to go to match THS in those areas!
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As a busy sitter, who might not normally apply for isolated locations, the offer of a car, bicycle, train/bus schedules could sway me.
It’s always best to offer as much as you’re comfortable offering in terms of attracting unpaid sitters and detailed pictures of where the sitters will actually be staying (inside and out) and the facilities they’ll be using are greatly appreciated while only one photo per pet is necessary.
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