Save THOUSANDS when you Travel – The ‘How to’ on Housesitting

If you like pets and travel, this is a fantastic way to save money. Evereything you need to know about pet and house sitting is here.

Hello friends and a big welcome back to laptop seniors we’re always thrilled to have you back with us today we’re going to talk to you about what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks which is house sitting can you imagine that’s a little bit different for us but really thought this was cool and enjoyed it and we’ll share some information about that we were in Boke in Panama was we went across the country looking at a whole bunch of different places as you probably know we met a bunch of expats from there it was super easy to do and there was one sort of younger couple they look like they’re like early 30s and they had been living there for 2 years and all they did was house set they you know they were talking about maybe we should buy a place I think we’re going to go look for some rental or whatever but they had been going house to house to house two two months at a time four months at a time 6 three that kind of thing for 2 years over two years actually a little bit and I thought man you know what we should do that we should try that out because I don’t know six seven years ago I bought a a one-year subscription to I want to say it was like house sitters International or something like that never used it and then a couple years ago I bought another one year one year one year subscription to trusted house sitters which is what we are in at the moment and for the first two years never used it you know wasted money you know just you we’ll get around to it you know how it is when you’re retired we’ll get around to it and never do then we met the couple and I was like okay we got to try this we have to do this thing and so that’s what this particular video is going to be all about it’s what’s entailed in it and how to save money during it when you’re doing it because you can save a lot of money because you’re providing a service to a homeowner almost always with a pet you’re taking care of their pet taking care of the house looking after it nobody will break in and all that sort of stuff so it’s great for them and it’s great for you because you save money and we’re out on the road so much I thought you know what everything is getting more and more expensive any way to save money would be great and certainly we have a history of you know having pets before we started to go out on the road you know I had a dog and a whole bunch of different cats at different times and Vivy she had a whole bunch of dogs and a couple cats so very versed on it thought it would be easy so we’re going to take you through what’s involved um and you know what’s it like to to do this for real but before we do that I want to give a big shout out to our very loyal followers in Florida Frankie and Pam yes you we know you’re watching Frankie and Pam have not only watched every single video that we have done they have liked it and subscribed subribe to our Channel and even though they’re not Avid Travelers they’ve done some traveling but they’re more enjoying the places that we’re going and learning about them as armchair Travelers so that’s super cool yes very important to point that out so back to the house sitting and pet sitting there’s certain things and I’m going to go through the website just to show you exactly what’s entailed if you want to try to do it and obviously you would have to have some sort of experience with pets that would definitely help we found some certain things along the way because this was the first one that we did with strangers for real we’ve done it many many times for people who are friends of ours hey can you watch our pet sometimes we would take the dog in to our actual house other times we’d be at the house their house you know and that kind of thing so this particular one was definitely different we elected to take for starters a two- week one we probably should have done a a shorter one that probably would have been better better to do like a two day or 3-day just to get a little bit of a feel for it although the twoe wi worked out great love the dog the house was great neighborhood was fantastic it was fun doing it the neighbors were all friendly hey you watching pumpkin yeah yeah like you you end up meeting the neighbors because they know the dog uh so it was pretty cool but one of the things that we noticed that that we had not expected is that particularly if you go for two weeks one or two days probably it’s not so such a big thing but for two weeks all of a sudden it’s like you got to get food and you got to get you know be able to wash clothes and you got to essentially it’s like you’ve just picked up and went to Europe you know for two weeks and you have to carry and take care of you know and a you know and project what you’re going to need everything for those two weeks as if you’re not at home because you are not at home just before like a day or two before we were going to go in and do the uh the pet sit um the lady called and said hey um this only just came up I just got new sod in the backyard they just roted everything can you make sure you water it you know every day you know a couple times a day and I was like yeah sure no problem whatever that’s totally fine she put like a screen netting mesh you know and it was it’s aluminum across the entire lawn which no problem to water but super hard you can’t mow the lawn so we never mowed the lawn just kept growing and growing but then that made it have even better Roots because all of a sudden you when you’re responsible it’s like okay I forget about lawn haven’t had a lawn in so long you know what do you do with sad so you on Google like what do you do with sod you oh yeah don’t cut it for at least three inches ideally go to Five before you cut it and then just cut it down to three better roots and so you end up learning that type of stuff the other thing as you’ll see is Vivie loves the outdoor stuff so she had things um the owner um of stuff for us to do and then there were things that Vivy like maintaining the outside and mowing the lawn and doing the front plants and stuff you know she was just doing it on her own because she likes to do it so um you know I’m sure the lady came back and went wow my yard looks nicer than it did before what happened here one of those things but you know Vivie was having fun doing it and uh I had no work so it was good for me I just play played with the dog that was basically my job feeding and playing with the dog and going for walks so that’s pretty much you know an overview of sort of what you’re going to be in for but I’m going to take you over to trusted house sitters website and show you exactly what it’s like to be a member of this and we get nothing for this you know just us making a video and you’ll see what’s on there and you’ll see what’s entailed you’ll see what homeowners are looking for and you know and various works that you’re going to have to be doing while you’re house sitting give you a couple examples and uh and all of that for the most part if you like pets and you get along with pets um which for some reason I seem to do I don’t know why dogs for some reason just really love me they come up out of the blue you know I rarely would ever get a dog growling or anything like that not sure why that is uh must be some sort of karma given off or whatever but if you’re if you’re fine around pets and you know how to you know handle pets and deal with pets and like pets this isn’t that hard hard to do and again it’s a win-win because you’re going to save money while you’re traveling a lot and the home owner has someone who knows how to take care of their pet and likes taking care of their pet and will take a good job taking care of their pet in their home so win-win now let’s go over to the website and we’ll go from there let’s take a run through of the website and you get an idea of what’s here first thing you’re going to hit you know after you’ve signed up and you have a membership that you’re going to have two things here one is finding a pet sitter so this will be somebody who has a home and they have some sort of a pet that they needed someone to sit and watch their house and also take care of the pet while they’re gone for our purposes for the you know it’s going to be almost identical on both sides different requirements of what you need to do but you’re going to see basically both sides as we look at searching for homes to sit because if you’re an expad and you want to go somewhere and you want to you know basically save money and be in someone else’s home take care of the pet and not have to pay for a hotel or Airbnb or whatever this is what you’re going to be doing so let’s search for a home so you would hit that and all of a sudden things would start coming up in different places all over the world I mean as you can see here’s UK here’s Australia uh here’s Seattle Washington somewhere in California and what they do is they basically tell you that the dates that they need you you know so You’ be searching on the dates that would be a big one and and up here if you have a specific time like say you wanted to go to Argentina or Panama or you wanted to go to California and you wanted to house it you probably know what dates you’re looking for so you would put your dates in and then well how long do you want to do it just a weekend A lot of these are weekends 2 or 3 days people go away the long weekend especially but there also people go away on holidays so it will be a one week two weeks or they’re working on another place you know different part of the world different state something and they may want you you occasionally see uh it’s not like the rare either somebody goes away for a month or two months or three months and like I had mentioned in Panama we met people down there a couple that had been doing it for two years and they were doing like four or five six month stretches because someone with a house there was a snowbird they came to Panama in the winter time and then left probably somewhere around the end of April so May June July August September probably came back somewhere around October or November long time to be away from your home I mean certainly if I had a home in in Panama or anyway really um somewhere like that in a different country I’d be a little paranoid about leaving the home alone I’d want somebody in it that I was comfortable with over here is a map of the world let me zoom out a little bit let’s do Europe um in here in the United Kingdom there’s roughly three and a half thousand people looking over the course of a year in Spain there’s 24 people um families 53 in France let’s do France here’s the regions what would you be interested in okay there’s only one in Paris uh what’s down here Bordeaux or something else not sure what’s down here let’s take a look well whatever it is let’s just oh okay that’s a pretty house so in this area there’s 1 2 3 4 You see four places on the screen and these are the four this one this one this one this one okay and then matching sites not currently accepting applications so these probably were in this area but they’re not taking applications now they’re not going away or they maybe already have somebody for their sit so let’s take one of these um let’s take uh okay obviously this one you’re going to be having to take care of a horse um let’s let’s take let’s just see what this one is oh okay looking for a cat so they’re looking for a cat lover who wants to spend time in France and these are the dates so it’s 10 days October 5th no more than 10 days sorry I thought that was October to October so October 5th to December 15 so here we go so basically all of October all of November and a little bit into December so this is a this is more than two months here so they want somebody for more than two months and what are they looking for we’re looking for somebody who could love or spend a couple of months in the Pyrenees with a chitchat cat called surge rescue cat I’ve never heard of that term chitchat cat uh anyway who’s loving and very vocal so I guess they meow a lot and then they start telling you what sort of what you need to be aware of and what you need to do Serge likes to spend time outside during the day so you’re not tied to the house if you want to visit places around the is ideal for cycling hiking skiing and season an hour from the Spanish border if you want to go there and and so forth and then they’re going to be saying they’re they have a late flight so they’d like you to arrive if you’re going to be sitting arrive in the evening of the 4th or the morning of the 5th so they basically want to if you arrive on the fourth they want you to stay there for one night before they leave um which is understandable and then here’s when they to return and they’re explaining you know the place itself and where it is and and uh and and things all around the area then after that typically they would go into what’s expected of you with in this instance a cat and that would be the responsibility section which would be here okay and you know and they also have a lot of amenities and things that they’ll show you I’m just going to click this you can see all the things that they have everything basically to live there you know which is helpful if you want to live there so um this is what they want you to do so live in the property feed and you know take care of chitchat she’s affectionate and um and an outdoor cat so all right so what else I he may or may not want to stay in overnight colder it gets the more likely this becomes I do not overstress his preferences he has a cat flap into the garage and some to sleep there in the warmth if he changes his mind during the night okay so the cat can go in and out on its own here’s where like things to do start to kick in you will probably need a flee and tick pippet once a month I don’t know what that is um but again you’re there two months so you’re going to have to do this um depending on the weather he’s a total tick magnet as opposed to a chick magnet uh white cat so it’s inevitable I guess but uh other than that no other medication so you have to do the tick um the tick medication eats twice a day once in the morning when you get up and once around 4:00 this cat will eat anything including bread if you leave it out so wow it’s like a dog and you have to learn to ignore his pathetic cries of starvation outside of normal eating ties or he will quickly become spherical and overweight funny person’s got a neat sense of humor and water the house plants what else is odd here here uh depending on the temperature pots on the Terrace need to be watered once a week if there’s no rain pots on the front door Terrace need watering at least once a week even if it does not rain as the rain does not usually penetrate the Terrace okay so that’s what you would need to do all of these um listings are pretty much the same some get a little bit more involved like sometimes you have to give you know uh a dog maybe a shot every day you know or they’re going to have to take a particular pill every day so you’re going to have to feed it to them some where you would have to hold them and stick it in their mouths others you can open the pills and put it into their dog food and they’ll just eat it so some are a little bit more chores than other but um that this is basically it and then you get a shot at looking at the house you know and where you’re going to be staying and what’s involved so this would be the house on the inside nice kitchen so these would be the plants you’re probably watering on which she was talking about outside there a lot of them but again it’s only watering and there’s the Pyrenees pretty and there is chitchat a sleeper for sure so that’s basically what’s involved I’m going to back up a little bit and just I’m going to pick a different area of the world and let’s just see where that gives us let’s let’s go back over to uh let’s go back over to the states and um yeah let’s just take this one for time somewhere in Florida and um let’s go up by oala see what’s up there might get a nice Farm up there here’s one of the villages maybe yes it is in The Villages okay well here let’s look at this one so this one is uh August 10th to August 25th so 15 days 15 days in August and very pretty home as all of the villages homes are almost virtually all of them are really pretty I mean check this out you stay there for July yeah this is a month here wow these are long longer than I normally see but then I’m looking in a different area so let’s just do this one just give you an idea and then we’ll call it a day on looking through so this person is retired they go into your life let’s see what they need to do responsibility see if they’re different just basic upkeeping the house feed Theodore twice a day and get oh okay and gets medication once a day definitely a lap dog loves people not the best with other dogs bodies in a fenced area he accesses himself through a doggy door nice and goes to Doggy Daycare once a once a week okay so you’d have to take them over there take him over there and walk Teddy in a parking lot since he’s not good with golf carts bikes and unfamiliar dogs because everybody everybody in the Villages rides golf carts everywhere and you know you’re close you’re not really on the road you’re on like cart path bike paths basically um and uh yard and pool maintenance oh they’re M maintained by a service so you didn’t have to do that you don’t have to care of the yard or the pool so not a lot really to do for this particular dog and let’s take a look at the house nice home nice pool outdoor and they got the uh bird cage outdoor type thing where you know this is it’s open but um you know and rain water will fall in there but there’s no mosquitoes coming through these are screens if you can’t can’t really see them this is all screened in you see that a lot in Florida and there is what was the dog’s name Teddy and there’s Teddy Theodore he’s kind of cool and see there’s a screened in pool and anyway and there’s the house so that’s basically what trusted house sitters is you sign up if you want to do this you know again stupidly um yeah I’ve been paying for this thing for three years the first two years you it’s like never did it then finally was like okay we need to try this just to see what it’s like and it was great at least you know what we did was fantastic pumpkin the dog that you saw I love that dog that dog was like she was following me around it was like it was my dog it was awesome she was great and it was fun taking around and also you know I think maybe for older people depending on what your lifestyle is it gave me a reason to get up early and to go for a long walk with the dog and I would normally gone out for walks like that so from a health point of view it’s probably great I noticed on my iPhone that all of a sudden you know an iPhone tracks your walking all of a sudden it it like tripled you know instantly so another benefit on the side well how was that house sitting Adventure something a little different as I said but I think we might just uh be on to something and might do it again and again thank you for watching please be sure to subscribe if you haven’t ready and stick with us come back and see us again soon