Low Mood and Down Days During a House Sit: What Helps

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A note before this article: This reflects personal experience, not medical advice. If you are struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a doctor, a trusted person, or a mental health professional. Support exists, and reaching out is a strength, not a failure.

You could be living in one of the most beautiful homes you have ever seen, waking up to a view most people save years to visit once, and still find the view bad. This is not because house sitting fails you. It is because a low mood does not care where you are standing when it shows up, and if anything, the abundance of time and beauty on a long sit can make certain thoughts louder, not quieter.

We're currently three months into a six-month TrustedHouseSitters sit in Portugal, and I want to write about something that genuinely happens on this lifestyle and rarely gets discussed honestly. If you're new to the platform, a 25% discount on membership is available here.

I am not trained in psychology or therapy. What follows comes from years of self-reflection, reading, meditation, and watching how my own mind and other people's minds actually behave, not from a textbook. Take it as one person's honest account, not instruction.

You Are Allowed to Not Be Okay

This needs to be said plainly, because I don't think it gets said enough, on this site or anywhere else talking about this lifestyle. You do not have to be happy every day. You are allowed to be unmotivated. You are allowed to wake up and simply not feel like doing anything, not the exploring, not the work, not even getting properly dressed. None of that makes you ungrateful, and none of it means something is broken in you that needs fixing immediately.

I think a lot of people, especially people living a lifestyle that looks as enviable as this one does from the outside, feel an added pressure to perform gratitude even on the days they don't feel it. You're in Portugal, or Cortona, or Switzerland, someone else's house sitting content is telling you how incredible this life is, and then you wake up flat, disinterested, maybe genuinely sad, and it feels almost embarrassing to admit it. It shouldn't be. A beautiful location does not obligate you to feel beautiful things. Give yourself permission to have the day you're actually having, not the day the setting suggests you should be having.

Why Long-Term House Sitting Can Make This Louder, Not Quieter

Here is the part I think genuinely needs saying, because it runs against how this lifestyle usually gets sold. House sitting does not fix a low period. On a long sit specifically, it can actually make certain thoughts more present, not less, and I think it's worth understanding exactly why, rather than being caught off guard by it.

The first reason is time. A long sit, six months in our case, hands you an enormous amount of unstructured time, and unstructured time is exactly where the mind goes looking for something to chew on. When you're busy, distracted, working a normal job with normal obligations, there's less room for a thought to sit and grow. Give that same mind six months in a beautiful, quiet place with genuinely light responsibilities, and thoughts you might normally brush past get the space to actually develop, sometimes into something heavier than they needed to be.

The second reason is comparison, and this one is specific to house sitting in a way most people don't talk about. You are, quite literally, living inside someone else's success. The home you're standing in, the view, the pool, the life that home represents, belongs to someone who built it, earned it, arrived at it. You're a guest inside that achievement, temporarily. It is very easy, on a quiet afternoon with nothing else pulling at your attention, to start measuring your own life against the home you're currently living in, and to come up short in your own head. You might think: I am nearly forty, living out of a van, house sitting for a living, and this person my age already owns this. That comparison is almost never fair, you don't know their story, their debt, their sacrifices, their luck, but it doesn't need to be fair to feel real at two in the morning.

And the third reason connects to something we've written about separately: boredom during a long sit. Boredom and low mood are close neighbours. When there isn't enough to occupy the mind, it tends to wander toward whatever is unresolved, loneliness, self-doubt, the sense of not having achieved what you think you should have by now. None of this is house sitting's fault. It's what happens when a normally busy mind is handed this much open space, and the setting being beautiful does nothing to change that mechanism. A stunning view does not out-argue a genuinely loud thought.

What Actually Triggers a Low Day, For Me

For me it's almost always sleep, and sleep is almost always food or heat. Eating too close to bed has a real, noticeable effect on how I feel the next morning, heavier, foggier, more prone to dark thinking. Heat does the same thing here in Portugal, some nights sleep just doesn't come properly, and the next day I'm running on nothing. This has been consistent for me for years, not something house sitting created. I've always had a mind that runs deep on itself, considering life, death, the past, the future, more than most people seem to.

The Reframe: A Low Point Is Often a Starting Line, Not a Dead End

This is the part I actually want people to walk away with. A genuinely low period, the kind where you feel like you have nothing, like nothing is working, like you're behind where you should be, is uncomfortable, but it is very rarely actually a dead end. More often, it's the exact point from which real change becomes possible, because it's the point where you have the least left to protect.

Think about how many of the biggest changes anyone ever makes in their life happen from a place of genuine difficulty, not comfort. People rarely overhaul their life when everything is going fine. They overhaul it when something has genuinely fallen apart, because at that point there's nothing left to lose by trying something completely different. The comfortable version of yourself doesn't take the risk. The version of you with nothing left to protect does. Some of the most significant successes anyone ever achieves come directly out of a period that looked, from the outside and from the inside, like the bottom.

What I've noticed, in myself and in watching other people, is that the moment you actually focus real energy on something, genuinely focus, not half-heartedly, most of what you want becomes achievable in a way it never was while you were comfortable and distracted. A low point strips away the excuse. You run out of reasons to keep drifting, and that's uncomfortable, but it's also the first real opening to actually shape your life on purpose rather than by default. If you're in a low place right now, reading this, I'd genuinely ask: is the direction you're currently on the one you actually want, or would a real change, in work, in relationships, in how you spend your days, serve you better? A hard period is often exactly the moment that question finally gets asked honestly, because comfort stopped letting you avoid it.

What Actually Helps, Practically

A few things, in no particular order, that genuinely make a difference on a hard day rather than just sound good written down.

Accept the day for what it is rather than fighting it. Trying to force yourself into a mood you don't have usually backfires and makes the day heavier. Some days you simply won't be productive, motivated, or particularly present, and that's allowed. Tomorrow is a different day.

Pick up something with your hands. A hobby, even a small one, gives the mind somewhere to land besides itself. This doesn't have to be ambitious, our guide to filling time on a long sit has real, low-cost ideas that double as exactly this kind of anchor.

Talk to whoever you're with, honestly, without needing to perform that you're fine. Caro has learned to read my hard mornings without me explaining them, and on those days she'll quietly take on more of the pet care, feeding, watering the plants here in Portugal, while I take a day or two to come back around. I return that balance once I'm through it. Having someone who notices and adjusts without making it a whole conversation has made a genuinely bigger difference than any single technique I've tried.

If you're sitting solo, the pet's care still has to happen regardless of how you feel, and I think that cuts both ways. It's harder, because there's no one to quietly take the slack. But it can also be exactly the structure that gets you moving when nothing else would, a reason to get up that exists outside your own head.

And when a thought feels genuinely too heavy to sit with alone, reach out. To a partner, to a friend, to a family member, to even someone online, to a professional. I've had people take advantage of my generosity over the years, money taken, trust misused, and what actually changed that pattern in me wasn't avoiding how it made me feel. It was sitting with it honestly, asking why it affected me the way it did, and working through it rather than pushing it down. Pushing a feeling away doesn't remove it, it delays it, and it tends to come back heavier. I'm not trained in any of this. It's just what I've noticed works, and it'll be different for everyone.

On Thinking About Death, Without Fear

I'll say something here that might sound strange written down, but I think it's relevant. I think about death fairly often, and not in a frightened way. The more I've actually let myself sit with the idea, rather than pushing it away the way most people are conditioned to, the less scary it's become. Different cultures treat death completely differently, some celebrate it, some fear it, and looking into that has shown me how much of the fear is cultural conditioning rather than something inherent to the thought itself. I am not considering anything like that right now. I am genuinely happy with my life. But approaching mortality from a calm, safe place has, strangely, made me calmer about a lot of the smaller things too, including down days themselves.

I say this because I think a lot of people are afraid to even approach the topic, and that fear adds unnecessary weight to a hard day that doesn't need to carry it. If you find yourself somewhere genuinely dark with this, rather than calm, that's a different situation entirely, and it's exactly the moment to reach out to a professional rather than sit with it alone.

When It's Genuinely More Than a Hard Day

There's a harder version of this worth being honest about. I've read accounts, on Reddit and similar places, of sitters arriving somewhere with all their belongings in plastic bags, clearly carrying more than a suitcase's worth of difficulty, and homeowners later returning to a home and animal that had been genuinely neglected. I don't know the full circumstances behind stories like that, and I don't think it's fair to judge from the outside. But being handed someone's home and pet doesn't mean you're obligated to hide a genuine crisis to avoid letting anyone down.

If you're struggling to the point where you can't reliably care for the animal in front of you, that's the moment to contact the platform and be honest with the homeowner, not the moment to disappear into it and hope it passes. Asking for help is a far better outcome for everyone, the animal, the homeowner, and you, than pushing through something you're genuinely not able to manage.

Conclusion

Being down is normal, and it happens on house sits the same as anywhere else, sometimes more, because the time and beauty this lifestyle offers can give a low thought room to grow rather than automatically talking you out of it. You can be surrounded by the most picturesque view on earth and still find it bad on the wrong day, and that doesn't mean anything is wrong with you or with the life you've built. What matters is what you do with that low point. Treated honestly, it's rarely the end of anything. It's far more often the exact place a real change actually begins, because it's the place you have the least left to lose by finally trying.

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 any of this resonates and you want to talk it through, DM us @housesittersguide, we answer everyone, and we mean that.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why do I feel low even though I'm living somewhere beautiful while house sitting?

  A beautiful setting doesn't override a genuine low mood, and on a long sit, the amount of unstructured time can actually give difficult thoughts more room to develop rather than less. This is common and does not mean something is wrong with the lifestyle or with you.

• Can house sitting make loneliness or self-doubt worse?

  It can, particularly on longer sits, not because of the lifestyle itself but because of how much time and quiet it provides. Comparing your own life to the home and success you're temporarily living inside is a common trigger worth being aware of.

• Is a low period during a house sit a sign I should quit this lifestyle?

  Not necessarily. A genuinely low point is often better understood as a starting line for change than a sign to abandon everything. It's worth asking honestly whether the direction you're on is one you actually want, rather than assuming the low mood itself means the lifestyle is wrong.

• What should I do if I'm struggling but sitting solo?

  The pet's basic care still has to happen, and for many people that structure genuinely helps. If it goes beyond an ordinary hard day, be honest with the homeowner or the platform, and talk to a trusted person or professional rather than trying to manage alone.

• What if I read about a sitter who seriously neglected a pet due to their own struggles?

  It's worth extending understanding rather than quick judgement, since the full circumstances are rarely visible from the outside. The responsible response to genuinely struggling is to ask for help early rather than let an animal's care actually suffer.

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