“WINNER” of the 2015 ‘New Voices’ BLOG COMPETITION

Ruth Johnson, Australian travel writer and full time housesitter travels around the world with her son Louis by housesitting, volunteering and finding new and exciting locations for travel journalism. They find that housesitting saves them money and enables them to keep traveling around the world. In this our choice for the 2015 HouseSitMatch ‘New Voices’ Blog Competition, sponsored by HouseSitMatch, Ruth shares some of her experiences and her motivations to housesit while she travels.

Long term international travel and housesitting

International travel can be really expensive, but when combining it with house-sitting we have it to be affordable and a long-term solution to our nomadic lifestyle.  Over the past three and a half years we have explored over 60 countries, and have house-sat in so many really exotic and exciting locations.  

From the hilltop of a tropical Fiji beach island paradise, to a 600 year old Tuscan farm, a variety of homes in Britain, across Europe and the Americas, house-sitting all over the world has allowed us to rest up, slow down, and have a ‘home away from home’ in so many beautiful and interesting places in the world.

Freedom to discover the world

House-sitting has also given us the freedom of not being tied down to a long-term rental, yet with the knowledge that a future house-sit is secured, we can plan where we travel to next.  Then we have the freedom between the house-sits to ‘globe-trot’ with our ‘road less traveled’ approach to our world journey.

As professional and caring house-sitters, we have loved the times we house-sat. The fact that I am a fastidious person, has allowed the home owners to leave their property and pets with peace of mind that we will be caring for their treasured possessions whilst they head off for a much needed break.

And for my son and I, it has enabled us to have time to slow down and live a ‘normal’ home life.  Cooking meals, gardening, and loving pets – all things that are missed by us when we are staying in a hotel or resort, and that are an important part of family life.

We have now returned to our home country of Australia for a while. With travel still running hot through our veins, we are looking for a few house-sits here over the coming year.  We can then venture off between house-sits if the opportunity arises.  But equally if we can secure a long-term house-sit, then we would be thrilled to stop and regroup.

Long term professional house-sitters

We have an amazing life as long-term professional house-sitters, and I can’t wait for 2016.

House-sitting enables us to travel to so many exotic worldwide locations.  And the more we travel, the more we realize there is so much more of the world to see.

For my son, this is his life as he travels the world, and he loves it. We call it worldschooling.  Recently we chose to stay at Turtle Bay Beach Club, at Watamu in Kenya Africa, and one of the reasons we selected to stay there was because this resort was so involved in the community and responsible tourism.

We certainly hope we will continue travelling for years to come – thanks to the wonderful world of house-sitting.  It gives us freedom, and enables us to travel like never before.  I wonder where we will be house-sitting next?

I wonder what delightful pets we will be able to share our love with next year?  Life is never dull as a house-sitter. Never.

Learn more about our housesitting and world travel adventures on our blog – Exploramum.com