If you are a housesitter, whether a recent pursuit or you have a few years already invested in housesitting and petsitting, what do you do on a housesit? What house sitting activities do you prefer? Some people take their work with them as digital nomads. Others are retired or semi retired treating housesitting as an active holiday. Some simply like travelling either in their own country or around the world by moving from housesit to housesit staying in people’s homes. Whichever best describes you have a look at these activities for pass times while you are housesitting.

House Sitting Activities

House sitting is a great way to travel and sometimes to earn extra money,. However, you may find yourself sitting around, bored with not much to do if the house sitting duties are light. There may be a cleaner, a gardener and a dog walker which means you are simple a presence in the home.

Consider it an opportunity! This might be a time to consider a wider range of house sitting activities to keep you entertained. After all, once you’ve taken care of the daily chores and pet duties, you may find yourself with hours of free time. Instead of just watching television or wasting your time on the phone, there are lots of productive things you can do. We will now look at a few ideas that can make your time house sitting more interesting and even enable you to make an extra income.

House sit abroad

If you happen to be housesitting abroad then you have a real opportunity to visit your location. If you are an English speaker and your assignment makes you one of the adventurous house sitters travelling internationally you could teach English conversation. Or alternatively spend time developing an online business.

The housesitter – Resident

If as the housesitter you are based in the home, perhaps as a dog and home sitter you may have time on your hand.  Consider the following activities, and relish in the luxury of time to invest in them.

Pet sitters

If you are petsitting in your housesit assignment then depending on the pets you may have regular chores. These could range from dog walking, to cat grooming and managing a hen house. In housesits with several pets these duties can take up a few hours each day.

Reading

If you’re like most people, then you probably have dozens of books on your bookshelf. They sit there waiting to be read. Knowledge is power and reading is a great way to spend your time while house sitting. It will also make the time go faster since you’ll be immersed in another world and not even be aware that time is going by. You should read both fiction and non-fiction books which will greatly enhance your creativity, imagination and even improve your life in ways you’ve never imagined.

Cooking

We often hear about the popular house sitting activities. If you love cooking, then this is a great time to cook and explore recipes and local ingredients. You can use the extra time to plan out and cook meals that you’ve never tried before. Of course, when doing so be sure to clean the kitchen before and after cooking to ensure it remains in good condition.

House sitters international food exploration

The joy and advantage of a visiting a new country is the opportunity to sample the culture. Shopping in local markets and food stores, sampling local dishes is a huge adventure. And of course having the time to experiment with local produce and recipes is a luxury house sitting affords you.

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to bake, then this is also a great time to learn. You can teach yourself how to do so through YouTube tutorials and give your friends and family samples of what you’ve baked or cooked. However, be careful that the pets don’t get their paws on your food, especially if they have special diets!

Cleaning Up Your Life

Even though you won’t be staying in your own home, you can still do things to tidy your own life. While this may not be top of your house sitting activities, consider that you finally have time to organize your email inbox.  Get rid of emails you don’t want and organize the important ones into folders for easy access. You will also likely have your car with you, so you can take some time to clean that as well and make it look its best.

Working Online for Digital Nomads

Even though house sitting is a job in itself, you have a lot of free time. You could potentially boost your income. While you may not be able to leave the house for long to take on a job, work online! There are numerous opportunities to work online and make a decent hourly wage. Even if you don’t have any special skills you can still do this. One popular job is being a virtual assistant. All that you need to know is how to use the Microsoft suite and follow instructions. Many virtual assistants regularly make $15+ per hour. But you will need to be organised to do this.

Alternatively, if you have transferable skills you can easily earn a living. Skills like graphic design, programming, web development, SEO, social media management etc are much sought after. You can get contract work or an online job in any of those fields. Either find your own clients through platforms such as Guru.com, Fiverr and Upwork or you can approach companies for part time work. You can easily house sit and do these jobs at the same time and increase your overall income significantly.

Popular House sitting activities

Building Your Own Online Business

If you’re not interested in working online for other people, then you can look into building your own online business. There are many different online business models to consider. Some you can do while you are on the road. So you can easily run your business while house sitting. For one, you can use an ecommerce platform to set up a drop shipping business where you sell physical items. For example, you could create an e-commerce store to sell accessories for men. Then you can easily use Oberlo to source inventory and post them on your store. Once someone buys a product from your store, Oberlo fulfils the entire transaction without you having to get involved. The trick with drop shipping is being able to generate enough high quality traffic through SEO, paid ads or social media to convert into customers.

Digital nomads can make a good living

Another option is to build niche or authority websites where you make money through your own digital products, affiliate products or display advertising. You will need to build a high quality website around a specific niche where you get traffic through SEO or paid traffic. SEO is highly recommended since it is more cost effective and easy for beginners to get into. It may be best to start off selling affiliate products and use display ads before creating your own digital product. However, once your website starts generating income, you can then have your own products developed to increase your income and overall profit margin.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, we have just looked at 5 things you can do while you house sit. Be sure to put at least one of these ideas into action. You can do this while house sitting. It will make much better use of your time and improve your quality of your life.

If you haven’t yet tried housesitting and want to be a house sitter to exchange your pet and home care skills for free accommodation around the world register as a house sitter on our HouseSitMatch network. We ID check you as part of your membership package and help you to build an awesome profile online.

Useful references about and for housesitters

At Housesitmatch.com we like to share useful blogs and practical advice about housesitters, housesitting and pet sitting. We hope you find this small selection of our blogs on house sitters useful.

International housesitters talk pets and bucket lists

Long term house sitters in France

Housesitters keep pets safe at home and save money

What a housesitter does – Top 10 responsibilities

Preparing a home for a house or pet sitter