How to be green in someone else’s home

This blog post is going to be about how to be green in someone else’s home whilst housesitting.

When we made the decision to start housesitting full time, I knew that I’d have to work hard if I wanted to keep my lifestyle and habits as green as possible. I’d spend a lot of time putting green initiatives in place in our own home over the four years we’d owned it – for example any vegetable or fruit waste went into the food bin, we’d rarely waste food as I used leftovers in inventive ways and had a lot of good quality Tupperware to enable us to keep them fresh in the fridge, and I’d started shopping for meat for Tom at butcher’s and buying fresh produce as locally as possible to lower our food miles.

We recycled so much that we barely had any waste for the black rubbish bin. We bought better quality brands that promoted green and sustainable ethics and had 100% recycled packaging. We’d switched toiletries brands to eco-friendly products such as Ecover and had reusable cases and refillable deodorant from brands like Wild.

It's quite hard work keeping your mindset and actions green. It takes a long time to put all of these procedures in place – weeks, months and years. So when it came to us hitting the road once more on our full time housesitting adventure, I knew that I’d have to work hard to be able to prioritise my eco lifestyle and greener ways of living.

It can be hard work, but it’s absolutely worth it.

So here are some of the things I’ve learnt about how to keep your lifestyle more eco whilst you’re on the road, and how to be green in someone else’s home.

Thinking about your food waste is probably the quickest way to immediately up your green credentials whilst on the road. If you’re going to do a sit where the homeowner doesn’t have a food bin or compost food waste, that doesn’t mean you’re essentially off the hook and you can live exactly how they have been living. It means you need to think outside the box and create your own system. For example, we did a housesit in Vienna where the homeowner didn’t separate food waste, but I decided I’d do this for the duration of our sit and take it down to the “biomass” bins which were located at the end of the street.

The same thing goes with recycling – no matter what the homeowner says they do, that doesn’t mean you have to do the same if there is an easy system for recycling products in that area. Research this on council websites, ask neighbours or try looking up Facebook groups for that area and search for what other people do.

Something which has been interesting has been what homeowner’s instruct us to do with their animal waste. If their procedure for discarding animal waste isn’t quite as green as it should be, you can decide to deal with it in the way that you know is more environmentally friendly for the duration of your stay.

Another thing that we make sure we do whilst at housesits to boost our green credentials is to spend some of the money we’ve saved on accommodation on organic and locally produced food, reducing our food miles and supporting small businesses. We also support other businesses in the area such as local cafes and shops by staying local and spending some money during our stay. This doesn’t have to be a lot – as Tesco says, every little helps!

Looking for sits that already have green initiatives in place will remove some of the hard work for you. We’ve seen sits advertised showing that homeowners have solar panels, grey water irrigation systems, grow their own vegetables and have chickens which produce eggs, and they may even be off grid completely. We did a housesit in 2022 for a family who had a well on their land and used the water for all the toilet flushes and to irrigate the garden and vegetable patch. If the homeowners are doing their bit for the environment, they’ll be shouting about it on their profile, and if you write about your green ideals in your application you’ll be sure to land the sit.

It's long been our ethos that we mainly buy clothes and shoes in charity shops – with the exception of sportswear – as most of the stuff you can get second hand is great quality, better for the planet than buying new and much cheaper too! Win’s all round. We also donate any clothes that we no longer need (due to changes in season or items that aren’t getting enough wear) to charity shops to help them keep going. The fashion industry is responsible for a huge amount of carbon emissions due to the sourcing of materials, use of water in the production process and the mileage that clothing travels before it is sold in a shop.

Consideration around your use of energy whilst in someone else’s home is very important – just because the homeowner is paying the bills doesn’t mean you should have the heating on all the time or have a bath every day and use an excessive amount of water. Use your head here – if it’s cold, turn the heating on, if you need to use water, do so. But don’t go to extremes with energy resources whilst at a housesit. There are some easy things you can do to reduce your water consumption every day such as turning the tap off whilst brushing your teeth, and placing watering cans outside to catch any rainfall which you can then use to water the indoor plants.

Try walking instead of driving a vehicle to explore the area near to the sit and when walking dogs try to walk them from the front door of the property. This will decrease your carbon emissions massively.

My last tip for being green in someone else’s home is related to departing a housesit. We always have leftover food when it comes to leaving a sit, and the best thing we’ve found to do with it is to either have Tupperware in the car so we can take it to our next sit or location, or to make a meal from the ingredients and leave it as a “welcome home” meal for the homeowner. This reduces waste and will increase your chances of getting a good review.

I hope this blog post has enlightened you to some ways in which we endeavour to be eco-friendly whilst in someone else’s home. Most of our top tips are simple enough to be implemented by anyone, so give some of them a try whether you’re on a housesit or in your own home.