How to travel the world for free
Yes that’s right, it is now possible to travel the world for free!
We were in China in 2016 when we met a family who were slowly travelling the world by looking after other peoples houses and pets. “Slow travel” sounded appealing to us, as we’d spent the last few months hopping from place to place. All in all we spent two years travelling quickly, working out how much time we could spend in each place by looking at our ever shrinking bank balance.
The family we met told us all about something called “Housesitting”. At the time, 6 years ago now, this was a foreign concept to us and something we’d never even heard of. We had a rough plan in place for our travels but we had always planned to come home to the UK at the end of it (or when we ran out of money). We were still young then, returning home in 2018 after two years away and being just 23 years old. We settled down in our home town, got “proper” jobs and bought our first home in 2019.
However, our feet were always itching to go away and explore new places. We knew that although we had family and friends here, deep down we both had a longing for travel. We only felt truly at home when we were on the road. We realised it would take us quite some time to save up travel funds again and we had plans to visit India and South Africa in 2020 but then Coronavirus hit and we ended up cancelling our plans.
The covid-induced lockdowns that then struck us throughout 2020 and restrictions that lasted long into 2021 meant we put most of our travel plans on a halt. We had also gotten engaged in 2020 and planned our wedding for September 2021, which kept us very busy with planning and honeymooning until early 2022. Yes, we had two honeymoons - do you know us at all?! - We went to Malta for a week in October 2021 and Italy for 3 weeks in December 2021.
Over the two year enforced break from real travel, we kept fuelling the fire that we had inside us to travel and we added a gazillion places to our “we need to go here” list. We started saving again after the big spend for the wedding and we decided that it was now or never. We wanted to get moving again. No, we needed to get moving again. Our spirits had been damaged by corporate workplaces and the inflexibility of life - it just gets in the way!
Tom started looking for a fully remote job which he secured in July 2022 and I decided to be brave and quit my job completely in order to focus on our travels and hopefully start to write. It seemed as though the stars were aligning and so we rented out our house and booked in several house sits.
Let me tell you more about house sitting…
The family we met in China all those years ago had inspired us to look into housesitting as a way of moving around the world. We signed up to Trusted Housesitters and created a profile. Trusted Housesitters is a network of people looking for reliable house and pet sitters, and those looking to do the “looking after”. We both love animals and new places, so this seemed like a great thing for us to do. We immediately started house and pet sitting in our local area in order to build up reviews.
Once we had started getting reviews (all 5* thank you very much!) and realised how much we enjoyed the process, we agreed this was the way to kick start our new form of “slow travel”. We also quickly found that the longer the sit the better, as you could really relax into the space, form bonds with the pets and get to know new areas and neighbours.
We started being picky about the locations and lengths of the house sit we would apply for, and also started looking in advance. House sits go onto the site as much as a year in advance, and can be as long as the host needs. We have seen house sits in Australia for as long as 4 months, with only a pond of fish to look after. The best thing about Trusted Housesitters is that it is something you can do worldwide; you can house sit for a parrot in Panama or a cat in Canada.
So, here we are, about to embark on 5 house sits in the UK that will take us forward 6 months. Most of the house sits are around month long in duration and we have a variety of pets to look after. Best of all, our mortgage is covered by our rent payments, and we don’t have to pay any utility bills. We simply need to feed ourselves and enjoy life, exploring new places as we go!
Wish us luck…
Mrs H x