Keeping a Slow Travel Journal as a House Sitter: What Works

Home > Blog > Slow Travel Journal for House Sitters

Quick Facts

The private journal and the public social media account serve two different purposes and should stay separate. The journal is the record of the life as it actually happened. Social media is what you choose to share of it. The sit that looks like a beautiful terrace and a glass of wine also contains the quiet Tuesday when it rained and nobody messaged. Both are true. One is yours to keep.

Caro starts her mornings with a planner. She writes out what she wants to get done that day, works through it, and adjusts the list as the day changes. Anything unfinished moves to the next day or gets reconsidered. She adjusts the workload regularly so it reflects what is actually achievable rather than an aspirational version of the day. It is organised, functional, and it keeps her on track.

My journaling looks different. I use the Journey app to tag photos and videos with the time, place, and a short description. Together, Caro and I share this journal. We both add to it. The result is a private record of the last three years that contains more than we usually remember is in it. Over thirty countries traveled together. Twenty house sits across twelve countries. Approximately 40,000km driven in our campervans across Australia and Europe. Two campervans built. Businesses started. A life that, written out like that, sounds larger than it feels from inside the day-to-day.

All sits through TrustedHouseSitters. Use our 25% discount when joining.

Public and Private: Why the Distinction Matters

The Instagram account is professional and curated. It shows the sits and the places and the things we want other people to see about this lifestyle. The Journey journal is private life. The meal that was exceptional, the moment that caught us both off guard, the view we did not post because it felt too much like something that belonged just to us.

When Caro calls her dad or her friends, they sometimes say they already know what she has been up to because they saw the Instagram story. Those are the parts of our life we have chosen to share. The rest is in the journal. Nobody else can talk about it, debate it, or have an opinion on it. It exists only for the two of us to look back on.

Social media, as discussed in the social media and house sitting guide, is a performance by nature. Not dishonest, but selective. The journal is not. The journal is where the full experience lives, including the parts that do not photograph well and the days where nothing particularly notable happened except that you were there and you were present. Our slow morning routine guide covers how journaling fits into the structure of the day before work begins.

Two Approaches That Work

Caro's method: the daily planner. Goals written in the morning, worked through the day, adjusted as reality changes. This is not a diary of feelings. It is an active productivity tool that also functions as a record. A page from any given day shows exactly what was being worked on, what moved, and what was dropped. Over a long sit, those pages accumulate into a picture of how the time was actually spent.

The photo and video journal. Journey tags entries with location, date, and time automatically. A short description added at the time makes them searchable and contextual later. The power of this method is the reminders. The app occasionally surfaces something from a year or two ago, a photo from a sit we have half-forgotten, a short video from a specific evening, and the memory comes back intact. Three years of travel documented this way produces a record that is much harder to construct from memory alone.

Physical journals and ephemera. The tickets and pressed flowers and market receipts the research recommends are truly appealing in principle but impractical in a van where space is limited.

Photos do the same job of grounding a memory in a specific place and moment, and they do not accumulate. The phone holds everything.

Our van cooking guide and campervan setup guide both deal with the same calculation. The value of an object weighed against the space it takes.

Journaling Prompts for House Sitters

These work for any format. A physical notebook, a planning app, a simple notes document, or a photo journal. The sit provides natural structure: arrival, daily experience, and closing.

On arrival at a new sit: What was the first impression when I walked through the door. The smell, the light, the specific detail that caught my attention? What am I most looking forward to about this sit? What am I most uncertain about?

Daily anchors (five to ten minutes): What was the best moment of today? What was the hardest? What did the pet do today that I want to remember? What would I tell someone about today if I had two sentences?

Weekly reflection (fifteen to twenty minutes): What did I discover about this place this week? What challenged me and how did I handle it? What is one thing I would miss if I left tomorrow?

On the last day of a sit: What will I remember most about this sit in five years? What did living in this home teach me about how I want to live? If I were to write one sentence about this sit, what would it say?

When you have nothing to write: Write one hundred goals. Not carefully considered life goals. Just write. You will exhaust the easy answers quickly. After that, you start writing things you have not thought about in years, things you pushed aside because life got in the way or because someone told you they were not practical. What comes up after goal sixty is usually the most interesting. This is an exercise, not a plan. The writing is the point.

The Privacy Question

Caro's journal is primarily a planner, so even if it were left somewhere, nothing particularly private would be exposed. The truly private content. The photos, the videos, the moments that belong to us. Is in the app, password-protected, accessible only to the two of us.

More broadly: I do not have a great need to write down frustrations or grievances. I prefer to meditate, breathe, move on, and not carry a record of things that have already passed. The journal is for things I want to remember, not things I want to process. That distinction shapes what goes into it.

For sitters who do write more personally. Who use journaling to work through difficult experiences, relationship dynamics, or complicated feelings about the homeowner. Keeping that material truly private is worth taking seriously. Keep the notebook in your bag, not on the kitchen counter. Use the passcode on the app. The sit is your home for its duration but you are still a guest, and the vulnerability of leaving private writing visible is real. A sitter on the forum left a notebook on the counter and the homeowner who returned early read it. That kind of breach is avoidable.

The Record Over Time

The most unexpectedly valuable thing about any consistent journaling practice is not the individual entries. It is the accumulation. A single tagged photo from a specific evening in Albania does not look like much. Three years of tagged photos, videos, meals, sits, drives, and moments produce something that truly surprises you when the app surfaces it.

We have done more in three years than most people do in a decade. Not because we are exceptional but because we kept moving and we kept noting what we saw. The journal holds it. When one of us wants to remember something specific. Which country, which sit, which evening. It is there, searchable, accurately dated, anchored to a place.

That is what a journal is for. Not for impressing anyone, not for content, not even necessarily for reflection. Just for having a record of the life that was actually lived. Our loneliness and house sitting guide covers how having a private record of the journey changes the relationship with solitude over time.

Join TrustedHouseSitters with 25% off. DM us @housesittersguide on Instagram. We answer everyone.

Journal Methods at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the best journaling app for house sitters and digital nomads?

  Journey is the most practical for the combined van life and house sitting lifestyle. It tags entries automatically with location, date, and time, supports photos and videos, syncs across devices, and can be shared with a partner. The built-in reminder feature surfaces past entries from the same date in previous years, which produces genuine surprise at how much has accumulated. Day One is the best alternative for Apple users who prioritise a beautiful interface and end-to-end encryption.

• Do I need to write every day for journaling to be worthwhile?

  No. Consistency matters less than honesty when you do write. A photo tagged with a short description on the days something notable happens is more useful over time than a forced daily entry written out of obligation. The goal is a record you will want to look back at. That record does not have to be daily to be valuable. Caro writes every morning because it helps her work. That is a different function from memory-keeping. Both are valid. Neither requires the other.

• What should I write about if I feel like nothing interesting is happening?

  Write one hundred goals. Start writing and keep going past the point where the easy answers run out. What comes up after goal sixty tends to be truly interesting. Things pushed aside for years, things others told you were impractical, things you forgot you wanted. The writing itself is the exercise. You do not need to act on any of it. The practice of putting things down without editing them is more useful than any specific prompt.

• How do I keep a journal private on a house sit?

  Keep it in your bag, not on a surface in the house. For digital journals, use the app's passcode or biometric lock. If you write personally about the homeowner, the sit, or people in your life, that content should not be visible to anyone in the home. The case of a sitter whose notebook was read by a returning homeowner is a real example of an easily avoidable situation. Private writing stays private when it is treated that way from the start.

Related Guides