How House Sitting Changed the Way I Travel (For Good)

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I've stayed in a suite on a Mediterranean cruise ship and a suite at Marina Bay Sands. I've also been robbed in a hostel and stuck sharing a bed with a stranger on a couch-surfing stay that went somewhere I didn't want it to go. After all of that, house sitting is the only way I can imagine travelling now, and it's not close.

We're currently three months into a six-month house sit in Portugal, found through TrustedHouseSitters, and if you want to try this for yourself, a 25% discount on membership is available here. This isn't a sales pitch though. It's an honest comparison, built from actually having done the other options, not just heard about them.

Every Way I Tried to Travel Before This

I've done real luxury travel, and I don't say that to brag, I say it because it's the honest starting point for this whole comparison. Suites on cruise ships around the Mediterranean. A week in a suite at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Five-star hotels and resorts across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. It's genuinely beautiful, and I'm grateful to have experienced it. But there's a ceiling on what it actually gives you. You're a guest in a building designed to feel identical whether you're in Dubai or Cape Town, and nobody there knows you. Nobody's waiting for you the next morning either.

That feeling followed me into ordinary hotel travel too, maybe even more so. After leaving Iceland, I spent a few months travelling alone, hotel to hotel, especially through the Balkans, where there's no shortage of genuinely excellent places to stay. But somewhere in the middle of that stretch, it started to feel empty in a specific way. You walk into a room that's been cleaned for a stranger, a bed, a fridge, nothing that's actually yours, and after enough nights of that, a quiet kind of sadness sets in. Nobody is waiting for you anywhere. That's part of why I always preferred hostels over hotels, at least there, you could talk to someone real.

Backpacking is where that need for connection actually got met, and it taught me more about independence than almost anything else I've done. The big pack on your back, the small one on your front, jumping city to city through Europe and Asia relying entirely on yourself. I think everyone should do a version of this at some point, the growth is real and it's not replaceable by anything else. But it came with a real cost too. I was robbed in a hostel, money taken straight out of my wallet while I slept a few feet away, and something shifted after that. Shared rooms stopped feeling exciting and started feeling exposed, other people's schedules, other people's noise, zero privacy for anything, ever. That was the moment that actually pushed me from a full backpack toward smaller bags and completely different ways of travelling.

One of those ways was volunteering, and for a while it genuinely felt like the answer. In Iceland, I helped run a farm and community property, growing food, cleaning, supporting the Airbnb side of things, and by the end I was managing both the place and the people working there. That was real, valuable experience, the kind that builds actual skills rather than just filling time. But volunteering elsewhere, in the Netherlands specifically, started to feel like something else entirely, closer to an unpaid job than any kind of exchange. There are genuinely people out there ready to take advantage of a volunteer who has no contract and no leverage, and I learned that the hard way more than once. The one real advantage of that kind of arrangement is total flexibility, if it stops feeling fair, you can just leave, no notice period, no consequences. My honest advice to anyone volunteering right now and feeling taken advantage of is exactly that: pick up and go. There's always somewhere else.

Couchsurfing sat somewhere between all of that, and it gave me both some of my best travel memories and the story that ended it for good. Across Europe with my friend Kyle, we had genuinely great nights, home-cooked dinners with strangers who became, briefly, real hosts in every sense of the word. It's a wonderful way to meet people and save money at the same time. But in the Czech Republic, we arrived to find our host clearly under the influence of something, with only a reclining single-person sofa and a shared bed on offer for the two of us. Kyle took the sofa. I ended up in the bed, and a wandering hand made an appearance more than once through the night. Nothing worse happened, and we left the next morning, but that was it for me. Couchsurfing can be genuinely wonderful, and it can also put you in a house with someone whose intentions you have no way of knowing in advance, and by the time you find out, you're already inside.

What House Sitting Actually Gave Me That None of the Others Did

By the time I found my way back to house sitting, I had already tried, in one form or another, almost every way there is to move through the world without a fixed address. And this is the part I genuinely didn't expect: it took all of it, the good parts of every single one, and somehow left out most of the bad.

The views alone have been extraordinary in a way none of the other travel styles matched. Looking straight out at the sea and hills in Kefalonia. An unobstructed view from one of the highest points around our current home in Portugal, the kind you step out onto a balcony for every single morning without ever getting used to it. The full Mont Blanc range from a sit in Cries, Switzerland, close enough that it stopped feeling like a postcard and started feeling like the view from my own kitchen. We've had homes with saunas, homes with pools, but the view is always what actually stays with me longest.

The people have been just as unexpected, and this is the part almost nobody talks about when they describe house sitting. In Cortona, we met a business owner who used to travel with actual bodyguards. In Switzerland, a similarly successful homeowner with a genuinely interesting story to share over dinner, the kind of conversation you don't get from a hotel concierge or a night in a shared hostel dorm. We once nearly booked a sit belonging to the founder of one of the biggest game companies in the world, that one fell through in the end, but it's a fair illustration of who ends up on these platforms. You end up sitting across the table from people with completely different life experiences to your own, exchanging real conversation, not small talk, and it's genuinely inspiring in a way I didn't expect a free place to stay to be.

But the thing that actually changed everything, more than any view or any dinner conversation, is time. For the first time in years of doing this, we are genuinely in charge of it. There are no bills stacking up in the background while we're out exploring. No rush to be anywhere by a certain date because a hotel booking or a flight demands it. Not answering to anyone except ourselves, and, obviously, the pets in front of us at any given moment. That's a piece of freedom that almost nobody talks about when they describe house sitting from the outside, and after everything else I've tried, it's the biggest one by far.

We have three more months here in Portugal, and after that, genuinely nothing lined up. We want to actually explore the rest of the country properly before moving on, then Spain and France, at our own pace, entirely on our own terms. Maybe somewhere near friends close to Andorra, if a listing there lines up when we're ready for it. That kind of uncertainty used to make me anxious, not knowing what comes after a set date. Now it's the whole appeal. Our full breakdown of house sitting across Europe covers how we actually plan routes like this, one sit at a time, without ever locking in more than we need to.

Conclusion

I've tried nearly every way there is to travel, luxury suites, hotel chains, backpacks, unpaid farm work, strangers' couches. Every single one gave me something real. None of them gave me all of it at once the way house sitting has: real homes with real views, real people with real stories, and genuine control over our own time, without the financial pressure that usually comes attached to any of it. If you've tried a few of these travel styles yourself, tell us which one changed how you travel too, in the comments, we'd love to know.

Caro and I have completed 20 house sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs over three years of house sitting. If you're weighing up whether to try this for yourself, DM us @housesittersguide, we answer everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is house sitting really better than luxury travel?

  It depends what you're looking for. Luxury travel is genuinely beautiful and comfortable, but it's largely interchangeable, one five-star resort can feel very similar to another. House sitting gave us real homes with genuine character, unexpected views, and real relationships with the people who own them, something luxury travel on its own didn't provide.

• How is house sitting different from volunteering or WWOOFing?

  The core difference is the exchange itself. Volunteering often has no formal agreement, which means it can shift into something closer to unpaid work without much recourse. House sitting is a clearer exchange, home and pet care for accommodation, with platforms, reviews, and expectations that keep both sides more accountable.

• Is couchsurfing safe compared to house sitting?

  They're very different situations. Couchsurfing usually means staying in a home while the host is also present, which introduces a level of unpredictability about who you're actually staying with. House sitting typically means the homeowner is away entirely, and platforms like TrustedHouseSitters have reviews and verification that reduce a lot of that uncertainty.

• Do you need to already be experienced to start house sitting like this?

  No. Every one of our 20 sits started from zero experience once, and the platforms are built for people getting started. Our guide to getting house sits without prior experience covers exactly how to begin.

• How do you find house sits with amazing views or in luxury homes?

  It takes a genuine track record of reviews and a strong application, since these listings tend to be more competitive. Our guides on becoming a luxury house sitter and the best luxury house sitting websites cover exactly how we approach this.

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