21 July 2010

House-sitting!

As the title suggests, I am currently house-sitting :D

I started on Saturday July 10, and I'll be going back home tomorrow - Thursday July 22. So, I will have had nearly two weeks of house-sitting. It's awesome!

I began at Gawler East, in a beautiful, huge, two-storey house - by myself (although I had Kim sleepover on my first two nights there). I had to look after two cats and one massive, active dog. Remind me never to buy a huge dog if I live in a small house-yard. It's pointless, really. I took the dog for runs nearly every day, to try and expel some of his energy, but unfortunately each day I'd come home from work and find the newly laid lawn dug up :(
I [miraculously] had a few nights at home!!! This very rarely happens! I enjoyed watching TV, which was especially momentous because they had Foxtel :P

On Thursday July 15, I moved houses, to Blakeview. I have house-sat at this place before, with Elyse, over New Year's in the summer school holidays (2009-2010). They have two cats, about six birds, one rabbit and two guinea pigs, so there's a fair few things to take care of! Julia and Elyse are staying with me, so for the most part we all just do a bit, and it's not too bad.

I've really been enjoying the extra independence having my own house brings - although, it is really hard to coordinate everything around work. Things like cooking proper meals, doing the washing and feeding the animals. That's certainly a challenge!!

I mentioned to a lady at work that I'm house-sitting, and she asked how often I do it. She said that she's getting married next year, and she has two dogs, and doesn't really want to send them to kennels or anything (she's getting married in Fiji!). She asked if I'd be interested in looking after her place... Of course I said yes :) It's a long time away, but still!! - The more contacts, the better!
She also gave me the telephone number of friends of hers who are going away for about two months, from August or so, this year. She said they're looking for a house-sitter, and they live in Gawler East as well, so it's nice and close, too.

I went to the shops one day to buy some groceries, and was talking to the girl at the check-out. She was saying how she'd been working all day, and she was tired, etc... Then I told her I was house-sitting and everything, and she became really interested and wanted to know how to find places to house-sit! As she asked me, I realized (and told her) that I really just house-sat once, and then as you mention to people that you're house-sitting at that time, they think of you later on when they're going away; or the people you house-sat for tell their friends... It's really just word of mouth! Pretty cool, really!

So, if you want to get into house-sitting... It just takes one time to get your career started! ;)

~Rachel

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If only you got paid for it... :P

PS Can you send an invite to my new blog address for me to sign in here? I'm going to delete this one.