How it all started – House and Pet Sitting: Saving Money While Traveling with Trusted House Sitters

Hello reader(s?)!

Are you tired of expensive travel options that leave you feeling like you’ve missed out on quality experiences? So were we! That’s why we decided to try house and pet sitting through Trusted House Sitters. In this blog post, I’ll share our motivations for trying house and pet sitting, the limitations we faced with conventional travel options, and how a chance conversation with a friend led us to the perfect solution for us.

Our Motivation

Last spring, as usual, we had just finished what felt like six months of trudging through snow and ice, just to get outside, take some photos, and get the minimum amount of exercise required so as not to chew our own limbs off out of boredom and insanity. We knew then that if we could help it, we wanted that to be the last time we suffered a long Canadian winter. We wanted to have an extended vacation this time around, and we wanted to find a way to make our vacation as affordable as possible without compromising on quality or experiences. We started saving last spring, not a ton, but each month we made sure to put aside a set amount so that by winter, we had a good stash of cash.With the Canadian dollar being at a low value, we wanted to stretch those loonies to the limit and spend as much time in the not-snow as we could.

Conventional Travel Options Didn’t Cut It

As summer started winding down, we knew we had to figure out a plan for our winter getaway. We were very open to pretty much anywhere that had hiking and photography opportunities & wasn’t covered in snow. We strongly considered flying to Chile as a friend had been there and recommended we check out Iquique. The drawback was that flights were super-expensive and accommodations weren’t as cheap as one might suspect either, then add on car rentals and excursions plus food and our trip length was dwindling quickly due to cost. There was also going to be the added cost of a cat sitter for our two (best ever in the entire world) kitties, which usually runs about $20/day and that’s just for someone to stop in to feed them once. We weren’t super-stoked to leave them all alone for such extended periods. They are a couple of stage 5 clingers, so this would not have gone over well at all.

Random Conversations Can Make All The Difference

At this point we were starting to wonder if our dream of a month or more away over the winter was just too far out of reach. We decided to look a bit closer to home since we could then drive and save hundreds on car rentals. We thought maybe we would go somewhere in the PNW since we love rugged coastlines, rainforests, and the beach, even in winter. We started looking at AirBNBs along the coast from Washington to Oregon and even further south, thinking that surely there would be some deals during the slower winter season. Yeah, not so much. One day, with little expectation, Damien decided to hit up a coworker who lives in Portland (my now least favourite city, sorry Portland. More on that in a future post!) They travel a ton so he thought maybe they’d have some tips to stretch the budget in their area. After a bit of back and forth, they offhandedly mentioned Trusted House Sitters. Jackpot!

We had heard about this website many years ago but had completely dismissed it. This was pre AirBNB etc. and the idea of staying in a stranger’s home without knowing their cleaning standards icked me out so completely that it was a hard pass back then. Now the idea is a bit less ick as I have some experience to draw upon. We decided to check it out and obviously we are so glad we did!

In Conclusion

Trusted House Sitters was a game-changer for us. It allowed us to have an extended vacation, stay in beautiful homes, take care of some adorable pets, and save a lot of money in the process. We highly recommend it to any animal lover looking to travel on a budget and experience new destinations like a local. If you’re open to taking care of some furry friends, you might find it to be the perfect solution for your next vacation. If you want to learn more about our experiences, p[lease follow along. We’ll be getting into all the details from our travels.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, I’d love to hear from you. Have you tried house or pet sitting? What was your experience like? Please feel free to post a comment and I hope to catch you in the next one!