I live here for free in this insane five-bedroom house and I want to explain how and why because
it sounds like a scam doesn't it it sounds like I'm about to sell you something which I am not I
just want to explain because I didn't know this was possible and I think more people should know
about this so that's what we're doing today and before we sit down and talk about it let
me just give you a very brief tour because this house is insane so this is the living room the
library it's it's got so many books I'm just so happy really nice art here we've got the hallway
leading into a dining room this is the study here's the kitchen and here is the best part
of the House eh we've got the chickens and number two Tom so until very recently I lived in London
with my boyfriend and two of our friends there were four of us in a house in East London Layton
if you know the area and we were paying £650 each for rent and then on top of that you've got bills
and council tax and bills have really gone up in the past year because of the cost of living
crisis and various other factors and I thought there must be a better way and turns out I think
there is and I think I found it and I think I'm doing it right now so let me explain what I'm
actually doing in Practical terms camera number two at the end of January I moved out of my house
in Layton and won the process of moving out I sold pretty much everything I currently only have one
suitcase with four wheels it's a small carry-on size I can fit on pretty much every Airline I've
got 145 liter backpack and one small day-to-day backpack when I'm moving about I look like a
marsupial because I've got one in the back one in the front and I'm Wheeling one behind me it's
it's a lot but it's manageable and then my boyfriend who is traveling with me and living
here with me as well he has pretty much the same setup being totally honest the process of getting
rid of my stuff was hard I cried many times especially when I had to sell my books that I
just love books I love reading some of those books I had had for years and the process of getting
rid of them was genuinely gut-wrenching it made me so incredibly sad and this for example is me
caving I went on vented the other day and I just bought a bunch of clothes because I I was just
so bored of wearing the same thing over and over so it's something I'm still working on but yes I
have very very few things now step two was making sure that my partner and I could both work from
anywhere personally I'm self-employed my boyfriend has a regular job but one that he is able to be
relatively flexible with once we made all those adjustments we were ready for the next step which
was getting a trusted house sitters membership there are a lot of different websites that pretty
much do the same thing they help you connect with people that need others to look after their pets
or just their homes we chose trusted house sitters because I found a lot of good reviews online a lot
of people seem to use it and that also means that there are a lot of listings in different
areas all over the world and when we finally got to the stage of signing up for a membership we
were so hesitant because the regular membership is around 100 pounds I think I'm gonna list the
exact amounts we managed to get a discount code but it was still like close to that amount it
just seemed like a lot but now looking back that was such a silly concern because we are staying
in this house for two weeks and we have I think it's three or four houses lined up after this one
and overall we are saving thousands every single month so you do the math it's pretty easy to see
that it's worth that initial investment finally we got our [ __ ] together we logged on and slowly
we began forming a short list of places that we wanted to apply to with dates and locations that
work so here we are at this incredible house set and I thought it would be fun if I showed
you what my day looks like to get a sense of how much work it is to house it for someone you ready
good morning I'm starting off with a run not just to show off but because that's something I've been
trying to focus on this year I've been really lazy and I thought I'm sure I can do one run a day like
how hard could it be turns out it's pretty hard but I've been I've been doing okay I've missed
a few but I'm trying to do 20 minutes every day I'm not gonna lie and say I'm loving it but I'm
not hating it and I will take that I'll absolutely take that I listened to a podcast with a marathon
runner an interview and in it she said that she doesn't like running either so I figured what the
hell I'm gonna try it look how muddy it is though it makes it quite difficult oops quickly gonna do
some makeup I found that I work a lot better when I feel put together so lately I've been
dressing up instead of just my classic attire of tracksuit bottoms and like a really old disgusting
hoodie we're gonna fast this word because I'm not a beauty Guru I do not want you to make the
same mistakes that I do okay the transformation is complete also say hello to where are you here you
are yes hello Hello friends so cute always sleeps in this bed all day right in that corner because
he has 16 so he gets tired okay we're going downstairs we're gonna do some work actually
before we get too comfy I'm gonna clean the poop I'll do a cleanliness check okay some poo and two
eggs right there it's very exciting and there's enough feed in here we've got water in there I
feel like that could use a refresh we're gonna do that okay roll my sleeves up and do this scrub it
fresh and clean now the final step for this process I need to herd the chickens back
in the coop okay [Music] I sort of normally better at this I think we've got one come on
get in there okay now we close it and we go get the other one but this one this one is a
lot more stubborn come on that's a good chicken okay we're nearly there come on please please
all right we've done it because we're well not really good work was that it was pretty
embarrassing but mission complete bye have a look in the fridge this is incredibly overpriced but I
really like it so I'm gonna do a ginger shot and then I'm thinking a bit of this yogurt with banana
look how cool these glasses are okay I'm gonna do our shop cheers it burns so good
rolling off this goes in the compost bin and now I'm gonna aesthetically layer the yogurt
okay maybe not that aesthetically but I'm trying we add some oats I'm just gonna pre-pour them
it's nice A little bit of peanut butter a little bit
we got the banana I mean look at this okay we're gonna dig in
I should have used a bigger bowl on reflection but that's really nice okay let's sit [Music]
okay I've decided to have a little change of scenery Sam very kindly made me this lunch a crisp
sandwich very British and I'm pretty happy with the work that I've been doing so I'm gonna give
myself a bit of a break I'm gonna watch Brooklyn nine nine that's why I've been but why do I keep
eating this um that's why I've been watching recently and I'm really really enjoying it foreign
[Music] I wanted to finish this video when I got to my next house and here I am I'm actually in
Buenos Aires in Argentina and I am taking care of two lovely doggies this is Photon and over
here we've got Soho they're both Shiba Inu and they have been so lovely very calm very docile
super super fun to take care of the apartment as you can see is absolutely gorgeous and having
free accommodation for three weeks while you're traveling just makes it so much more feasible to
go abroad and spend a long time here so I I'm just so grateful that I discovered house sitting and I
have made a list of questions that people gave me over on my Instagram I'll go through them one by
one but if you have any other questions then leave them in a comment below and I will definitely be
doing more content about house sitting because this is now my lifestyle like this is what I
do so number one how do you get your first sit the first house set is by far the hardest one
to get because you don't have any reviews on your profile yet so I have a little trick for this is
you can actually get reviews before you ever do a house so through the platform all you have to do
is email people that you have helped in the past like if you have taken care of someone's dog if
you have a family member that you may have house sat for one of your friends in my case I was a dog
walker while I was in London I used an app called Rover which is really really cool they pay you for
walking dogs you can even have them at your house and through that I was able to get references that
I then put on my Rover profile I just emailed a bunch of people whose dogs and cats I used to
take care of and they gave me references another thing that really helped was just putting a lot of
time and effort into my profile the most important thing to bear in mind when creating your profile
is what a potential house owner might be looking for so they're probably looking for someone who's
tidy who is reliable who is good with animals who has experience taking care of them so your main
objective when creating that profile is to come across like someone who's friendly easy to get
along with responsible able and who's not going to turn their house into a squat the next question
that I was asked a lot is how do you house it as a couple instead of just as an individual What I've
Done personally is I have created a profile that already includes both myself and my boyfriend Sam
so I list both of our jobs I list most of our ages and personalities there are pictures of both of
us and I think a lot of people when looking for a house sitter actually do want couples because
you have more manpower like you're more able to take care of the animals especially if there are
multiple animals there's definitely not to say that you can be a successful house sitter if it's
just you by yourself that's absolutely fine I'm gonna include a little case study my boyfriend's
parents have actually started house sitting their books retired and they pretty much get every
single house that they apply for and my theory is that a they seem reliable and responsible they're
absolutely lovely people the fact that they're older actually probably works to their advantage
because you're not too worried about them having like spring break parties at the house and again
the fact that there are two of them their couple means more manpower more time and more ability to
take care of the animals another question I was asked a lot is about the scent duration how long
do I usually stay for personally I only look for sets that are two weeks or more for me it doesn't
really make sense to do sits that only last like two three days even a week it's a lot of moving
around and I constantly have all of my stuff with me because I don't have a permanent base there
are fewer sets that are that long in duration and they tend to be more popular because there
are some people like me and my boyfriend that do this as a permanent lifestyle and obviously those
people will predominantly be applying for longer sits but if you just want to try this out maybe
in your hometown then you can absolutely apply for a set that just lasts a couple of nights and get
a feel for whether this is something that you're gonna enjoy and that brings me to my next question
which we've already partly addressed and that is the Sid location yep absolutely bigger cities I'm
going Iris right now London Washington New York whatever they tend to be a lot more popular now
there are also locations around the world that just aren't very well represented on these house
sitting platforms and that's primarily anything outside of Europe or or America or Canada for
example I went to Kyrgyzstan a couple of months ago and I was trying to look up potential houses
and there's absolutely nothing here in Buenos Aires we got quite lucky there really aren't
that many sets going and we were lucky that we got this one because people applied for it very very
fast it's three weeks in a major Metropolis but as you can see it is possible the next question
is which animals are best and that obviously depends entirely on you and what you're looking
for because I do this as a lifestyle I'm looking for relatively low maintenance pets if someone
has 15 dogs I think that's super cool but it's not necessarily what I'm looking for because
I'm working full-time and I don't really have the time to take care of them we've seen people that
had Alpaca farms where they had horse stables and again right now that's not really something I'm
looking for the lowest maintenance pets tend to be like someone might have a tortoise or a rabbit
I have definitely seen those going again they go really fast because they're low maintenance low
effort next up I would say cats and then after that dogs but because I really really love dogs
I do look specifically for sits that have one to two dogs the bottom line is whatever animals
you're applying for make sure that you know how to take care of them and the final question I
want to address is how do you apply like what do you actually say in your application I personally
have a response that I have typed out and then I just slightly alter based on the housesit when
applying for your first few houses feel free to be super transparent super honest and mentioned
in your application that you are new to the platform and that you may not have that many
reviews but that you're really happy to set up a phone call to meet them to put their mind at
ease some like that just just be a human being about it because on the other end is just another
person that's looking for someone to take care of their home so always bear that in mind you don't
need to be overly formal you probably shouldn't be overly informal either but you know you could
you could just keep it real and I find that that's what people respond to the best so I really really
hope this helped if you are new to house sitting or you have any other questions then leave them
below otherwise make sure you subscribe I do loads of travel Vlogs I'm currently in Argentina for
three months which has been which has been unbelievable and I'll see you next week bye