About HouseSitters & PetSitters Network

It brought my family from Sudan to England and changed the course of our lives. This saved us from the worst of the fall out that occurred after the military coup in Khartoum in 1969.

That’s when Colonel Nimiery overtook the government to establish a new rule.

He began by nationalising all the businesses he could.

In the wake of the May Revolution my parents lost their home and their livelihood.

We were remarkably fortunate, however, in that we were able move to London just after this crisis. My father was offered work in the UK.

Life in London

So as a child I was thrown into a new life in London which could not have been more different from the life we had left behind. We were very thankful for the safer environment and the greater national stability, but naturally we missed the sunshine, and ready ripe Mediterranean vegetables.

The curious collection of odourless grey, cellophane-wrapped foods offered in supermarkets on London’s Edgware Road at the time were hard to recognise.

Living in London in the 1970’s would bring other new experiences. For example, we had the three-day week with no electricity or transport and 24-hour rain in August!

However, one of my abiding memories from those early days was my parents’ amazed reactions to the iconic hippies protesting at anything they could. The long hair, tie-dyed clothes and Afghan coats parading with placards up and down the West End was a big culture shock after their conservative Arab upbringing.

Pretty soon they settled into a British way of life, they cooked with grey vegetables, they worshiped the BBC, bought umbrellas for everyone and we moved to the outer suburbs.

Housesitters petsitters and housesitting..?

What does all this have to do with housesitting and running a housesitters petsitters network? Well may you ask – suffice it to say it set me on a course that meant that I embrace and enjoy travel, my early life sowed the seeds for my search for affordable travel as a student, then later as a homeowner and a house-sitter myself. It certainly was an unusual introduction to learning about housesitters and housesitting.

Also from a young age I nurtured a desire to see more of the world. This was inevitably fuelled by my family’s wanderlust and together we would explore Britain and Europe; sometimes renting sometimes house-sitting for friends of my parents while they were also off exploring. France and Italy became regular and beloved destinations. These short adventures stayed with me and continued to shape the person I was to become.

A love of travel

Even as a penniless student I was not detracted from my love of travel and I would take advantage of the newly formed budget airlines to travel as much as I could, to the US and Canada as an overseas student and as an au pair-the further the better.

My early career working with international companies helped me to develop my own professional network, both across the UK and overseas. I was soon able to share my passion with my family as we took up house-sits and swaps in some new and some more familiar cities.

House-sit Lightening bolt

Sometimes ideas take time to form and at other times they hit you a bit like a lightning bolt. The formation of the idea that would go on to become HouseSit Match was definitely one of the latter type.

The bolt came after a discussion with a friend who told me she had managed to save $50K Australian Dollars by long term house sitting living rent free for a whole year. She told me with glee that she had joined the merry band of housesitters petsitters in Perth W Australia who were doing this.

My thought was, well, if it could work for one person’s rent, surely it could work for holiday rentals and travel accommodation as well. She was one of the early housesitters petsitters who saved a great deal of money in living expenses and travel by housesitting.

There are many many people all over the world who on a regular basis find themselves muttering – I need overnight pet sitting in my home; How do I find a trusted pet sitter? So why wouldn’t it work?

And for pet owners it saves money by being an alternative to kennels using live-in housesitters petsitters instead of pet boarding.

By connecting groups of like-minded people there was no end to what we could achieve. We worked together to launch in the UK initially a using our existing connections and building organically as news spread amongst our friends, their housesitters petsitters, and our friends’ friends until we were live and with housesitting in Europe, Australasia and the Caribbean.

WHAT WE OFFER

Now we provide an easy to use secure online service for those willing to share and collaborate in order to experience a great deal of the world and all that it has to offer. And if you want to learn about housesitters and housesitting then this is the place to start.

We are responsive and will try to get to your questions as quickly as we can within a 24-hour period (to cover for global time zones).

HOME & PET OWNERS HOUSESITTERS PETSITTERS JOIN US

Make a note of our contact details, follow us on social media and most importantly join our network. Once you are a member you can learn all about housesitters and housesitting through our house sitting handbook, our house sitting travel podcast and so discover your dream life through house sitting.

Our future is bright because of the many wonderful people in our interactive housesitters petsitters network whom we enable to achieve their dreams of affordable travel through affordable home and pet care.