Hello @JustynaW and welcome to TrustedHousesitters and to the Community Forum 
How exciting! You will find many great THS adventures for your family I’m sure and there are many who do this currently. Whereabouts are you hoping to travel to? 
Welcome. We have had families sit at our home.
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Hello @JustynaW
Your question has been asked before several times on the forum. As you posted this question I think some links would have come up that are similar to save you repeating it. However, here’s one of those I found when I did a search:
Thank you very much. 
I ma really happy to read that. 
First I would like to travel around Canada. We are living here just two years so we have planty places to visit 
And then… Rest of the world 
It nice to meet you.
Thank you for your words. 
I hope it will be.
First we would like to travel around Canada a little bit, and then we will see. We love traveling so we are open for whole world.
Oh. Sorry for replying this topic then. Maybe I searched too less. Thank you for this information. 
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Hello, we’re newer to this platform. My family of 5 has been full-time travelling for the last 2 years while remotely working and doing homeschool. We’ve used airbnb and our motorhome. I signed up for TrustedHouseSitters but am finding difficulty finding sits. Even the ones that say family friendly don’t offer enough beds or rooms. Are there any suggestions or is this platform meant more for singles or couples to housesit?
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Hi @IHeartAnimals
A big welcome to the forum community. It’s so nice to have you here.
Please do add your profile link here >> https://forum.trustedhousesitters.com/t/how-to-add-a-listing-or-profile-link-to-your-forum-profile
as we can then meet the whole family and looking forward to hearing about all your travels and interests.
I really do believe you will find the right sit as a family. There naturally will not be as many, but there are many PP/owners on the website who do welcome families.
They will naturally be the bigger homes with probably more animals, and this will be a fantastic experience for your kids.
Best wishes
Therese
Hi @IHeartAnimals ,
We are a family of 4 based in the UK and we housesit during every school holiday. There are definitely bigger houses out there that would be suitable for your family, but there are also lots of smaller properties, or homeowners who prefer singles or couples.
Getting your first sit can be hard, and many sitters have to send large numbers of applications before securing their first sit. In order to get started, and get that all important first review, it helps to be flexible. Maybe look for local sits, short sits or those that start very shortly.
So far we have only done sits in the UK, and we are very flexible as to where we will go. We rarely start searching with a particular destination in mind. This has taken us to places we’d never have thought of taking a holiday that were wonderful and we would definitely return. On the rare occasion that we have a particular location in mind, it has been harder to find a suitable sit.
Sits in cities are harder to secure as they are popular with sitters who use public transport. We really like more rural sits and find these tend to be easier to secure.
Next week is our school half term holiday, and we are doing 2 short housesits, each in a property that would have enough rooms and beds to accommodate your family.
It can sometimes be tricky to work out if a property has enough rooms or beds to accommodate a family, as not all homeowners provide this information.
Keep trying and I hope to hear that you have accepted your first housesit soon!
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Welcome, @IHeartAnimals!
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FYI, your profile link has the wrong url, so I asked a mod to fix it for you.
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You’re in Dallas and your husband is a coder? I am just east and my hobby is making iPhone apps. =)
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@Debbie’s detailed advice is great. I don’t have a family, so I’ll defer to her.
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However, I want to clarify expecations of “family friendly.” From the PP view, it’s literally answering this question:
- Now that I think about it, I would say “yes” though I live in a tiny home. That’s because I know some sitters are a “family” of a single mom and her teenage son.
- Another way to think of it is some PPs will think, “Is my sit suitable for all families?” vs “The “average” family?” vs “At least some families?”
- Because you don’t know how the PP was thinking about the question when they answered it, my suggestion is to not worry about that flag.
- If you want to use it for an initial search, okay, but don’t expect every sit to be suitable for a family of 5. And it depends on their ages, right? If you have 3 kids who are teens they might be fine in a home with lots of stairs, but 1 toddler might be a no-no.
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And if you’re searching only for houses, I would consider also apartments. Some may be as big as your motorhome, right?
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There’s not a great way to search listings for what you want. There’s no filter for X bedrooms, Y sq ft, or Z guests like you might find on Airbnb. You can suggest that by contact Membership Services.
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However, TH is meant for anyone/everyone who loves pets. I’m a solo male 40s sitter who especially likes cats, so I could bemoan when PPs seem to expect a female/couple/retired/dog-experienced/etc. But it’s fine, really. Now that I’ve got a couple sits under my belt, I feel I could find a sit almost anywhere, except maybe super popular places like NYC or London.
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So my suggestion is to be patient, diligent, flexible, positive. For example, if you have a motorhome, how many bedrooms do you really need? You could have fun rotating family members between the motorhome and the apartment/house.
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Oh, search these forums for similar topics. Like “family.” You’ll see lots of tips, ups, downs, and memorable stories!
Best of luck!
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Hi, I have a question hopefully someone can answer. Before I buy membership I wanted to check whether it’s possible to be a sitter if you need to bring children with you? I have 2 sons (aged 17 and 12) They are both wonderful with animals. Would that be off-putting for owners choosing a sitter? Thanks in advance for any help
Hi @Alice22 A Warm Welcome.
I moved your original question to this thread. There is already advice here and I am sure many of our members will also give you further advice.
Lots of threads with help for families @Alice22 - here’s one to start you off 
Welcome @Alice22 there are lots of families who house-sit together and share their experiences on this forum.
@IHeartAnimals and @Debbie come to mind .
Hi @Alice22 we sit as a family of five and started applying for sits about 13 months ago. We are to start our 19th sit this Friday. My kids are 15, 15, and 16. Look for family friendly petsits and apply apply apply until you get one accepted. I was surprised how many we got selected for even in some areas where there are a lot of competition. Good luck
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Hi @Alice22 I sit with my two sons aged 15 and 13 and sometimes my husband joins us. We have been house and pet sitting through TrustedHousesitters since 2019 when the boys were 10 and 8. We mostly sit in school holidays and have done over 20 sits.
I started out applying for “Family Friendly” sits only, but now the boys are older (bigger than me) and genuinely helpful I do also apply to sits not tagged as family friendly too. Most of our sits are for families, often with children of similar ages, but we have also done sits for couples without children.
We started out applying to families and looking for sits that were fairly last minute and in more ordinary homes. It took a little while to get those first sits. Now we have lots of reviews, we tend to be accepted quite quickly for most of the sits we apply for. We do still get turned down for some.
It’s not always easy to work out from every listing whether the home could accommodate a family. Fortunately some listings mention the number of bedrooms or even details of the rooms and bed types available.
We love exploring different places through housesitting, and now we do a sit every school holiday and some weekends.
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