House Sitting

At the end of November 2023, I moved out of my apartment with no plans of renting anywhere new. My goal was to try and live rent-free, looking after homes and animals in exchange for the roof over my head.

Continue reading to find out more about how I got into this, or go to my pages on...

Background

Back in September 2022, I ended a long term relationship. The break up hurt a lot. Almost as brutal was the sudden spike in the rent I was paying. My ex had managed to get a great COVID deal on an amazing apartment in the heart of downtown Toronto, with us splitting $1600 bills included 50/50 between us.

After the breakup, I was now paying $2100 + bills all by myself for a studio roughly half the size of what I had before. What sucked even more was when I wanted to go back to the UK for 6 weeks, knowing that I would be paying over $3000 for the luxury of an apartment that I wouldn't even be using. I investigated subletting it for that period, but couldn't end up finding anyone, and so in the end just gave it to a friend of mine who had been wanting to move downtown for a while. She took amazing care of it, though this is what I returned to...

What sucked EVEN MORE than that though, was that in September 2023 I got notice that my rent was going to go up another $150 per month, because Doug Ford has kindly removed rent control for all buildings first occupied after 2019. While I could still afford the rent increase, I felt offended by it. I was living in a tiny unit, in a building full of loud parties that go on way into the night, in a unit that quite simply refused to cool down even in the middle of winter. I did not feel like I was getting my money's worth.

Discovery

I started looking around at other rental options, but really wasn't finding much. I could save a few hundred a month if I moved out of downtown, but then I'd be away from all my friends and spend loads of time commuting each time I wanted to go do anything. Alternatively, I could find a rent share with some random person, but then that comes with its own long list of potential problems, and for how much you actually save, it again didn't seem worth it.

So I felt pretty defeated, that was until I was listening to an episode of the podcast Frugal Friends. It's one that I would play from time to time. And one of the hosts on there mentioned that she'd spent some time housesitting for a family while they were away for a number of months. This was like the flash of inspiration that I needed. I suddenly needed to know more!

I found that there are numerous house-sitting websites out there, though the 2 that seemed most interesting for me were House Sitters Canada and Trusted House Sitters. Trusted House Sitters is like the Rolls Royce of house sitting websites, it's very popular, membership comes with loads of perks, but as a result, is relatively expensive. House Sitters Canada is more basic with less members, but for me simply wanting to conduct an experiment whether this would be a viable approach for me to take, it was perfect. I've since set up membership with Trusted House Sitters as well.

Once I'd decided to commit to a membership with House Sitters Canada, I spent a while just going through the profiles on there. I wanted to understand the kinds of people looking for house sitters, as well as the kinds of people doing house sits. What I found was that most house sitters were your world traveller types, which to be honest is not me. I like Toronto, I've built up my life here, and for the time being, would very much like to stay here. So I got a friend to help me write up my profile, and together we agreed that I'm the Toronto-based House Sitter.

I would later learn that this was actually really working in my favour. Within a week I had my first message requesting that I do a 2-month house sit for a guy who escapes the Canadian winter each year to go down to Mexico. He'd had bad experiences with some of the people he'd dealt with in the past who's plans were regularly changing and couldn't even commit to what country they'd be in a few months ahead.

So, we arranged to meet up, had a long talk, confirmed that we're both decent human beings. We confirmed that I would house sit for him, and over the next few months I went round a number of times to feed & walk his dog, so that we could get used to each other before the house sit starts.

Committing

Once the house sit was confirmed, it was time for me to give notice to my building that I'd be moving out. This was pretty scary, as up to that point all my planning had been purely theoretical, but this was me signing a document actually stating that in a few weeks, I would no longer have a place to call my own.

My house sit didn't start until early January, but I was moving out end of November, so I needed to find myself a place for that month gap. I booked myself an airbnb, which would allow me time to get acquainted with this new way of living. I also booked myself a storage locker to put all the stuff in that I wouldn't be taking with me. While most storage lockers are in the industrial outskirts of cities, I deliberately chose a slightly more expensive one not far from downtown, so that I could easily access my things as needed.

In the lead up to me moving out, I did what I felt was some pretty thorough planning of what to do with all my things. I'd got myself a 5' x 5' storage unit, had taken measurements of all my things to make sure that they would fit within that space. I'd calculated that I'd easily have space for my bed, desk, office chair, table, shelves + 10 medium-size Canadian Tire boxes. One of my friends was happy to take some chairs and my piano from me for however long I needed, as she'd been wanting to learn piano for a while, and also had an entirely unfurnished patio.

On the day of the move, I'd got most of my boxes packed, with the final day being a bit of a mad rush to get the last few things packed which I had needed up until the last moment, taking apart furniture and loading it into the rental van I'd booked. Stress level at this point was medium, but still manageable. I'd got a friend helping me which made things so much quicker. Once we got to the storage locker, the stress really started to get the better of me. It turned out that when planning out how much space I'd need, I'd taken measurement of my bed frame, but somehow completely forgot to consider how much space the mattress would take up....which is a pretty damn large part of the bed, so suddenly I was working with significantly less space than I'd budgeted for. The van was half unloaded and the locker already felt full. I was getting freaked out, feeling stressed because we were running well over on the time I had for my van rental, and feeling like my plans were falling apart at the first hurdle. Luckily my friend managed to stay far calmer than I did, and together we managed to fit everything in, though with far less space than I'd originally planned, meaning pulling things out would now be quite a bit more effort.

Optimising

In the weeks since the move, I came to realise just how fortunate I was to get myself an airbnb for a month before my proper house sitting duties began. In just the first month, I think I became one of the storage unit facility's most frequent visitors. There were so many things that I'd taken with me which I realised could have been in storage, or had put in storage that I realised I needed with me. Each time I went, I tried to also improve my use of space within there just a little bit more too. I've now managed to get rid of several of the boxes that I loaded in, opening up a couple of shelves for stuff which I would want to have regular easy access to.

Reactions

When I first started looking into this, I was really scared to tell anyone that I was even considering it. I was convinced they'd call me crazy and talk me out of it. As I started confiding in friends though, I was so pleasantly surprised by how positive the responses were. Most were originally slightly taken aback and sceptical, but as I explained my thought process, pretty much all came round to the idea and became really encouraging of me doing it. My dad said it sounded like something that I needed to do, just to know if I could, as an experiment in minimal living. My mum was one of the most reluctant supporters initially, though in later calls said that she thought that as a money saving scheme it was pretty amazing. A couple of friends from back home are still having great fun making fun of me for moving to Canada just to (in their words) end up homeless.

Goals

One of my friends upon first hearing of my plans said he thought it seemed like an interesting idea, but also questioned how long I'd be able to do it for, which is honestly something I've been wondering too. I started doing this because I wanted to stop feeling like I was throwing all my money away on rent, and instead feel like I was making meaningful contributions towards my financial future. One of the things that has always caused me a fair amount of stress is that I felt like my savings were nowhere near enough for me to be able to put down a decent deposit on a place of my own. With this strategy, I should be able to save an additional $20k+ per year, which will get me to the point where I can afford a place so much faster! Once I get to that point, whether I actually do it or not is something for future me to make a decision on, but just knowing that I can will be such a significant burden off my mind, I'll be able to sleep a little easier.

So ultimately, my goal is to continue doing this until it doesn't make sense not to any more. But knowing that I'm saving towards my future, all while living in nice homes within the city I chose to call homes, while looking after cute animals seems like a dream which I'll be happy to stay in for quite some time.