Practicalities of life as a House Sitter
As you might expect, being a house sitter places certain limitations upon how you live which most of us take for granted. The most obvious of these is how much stuff you can have. No-one wants a house sitter that brings their moving van with them at the start of the sit. But there are various other considerations to take into account as well.
On this page I'll try and shed light on a few of them, point out areas where I learnt things the hard way, and how I either improved or am hoping to improve at some point in the future.
Stuff
By house-sitter standards, I personally think that I've still got a bit too much stuff I bring with me from place to place. I have a hefty backpack which I keep my work + home laptops, my portable monitor (buy yourself one, they're amazing!), and various other tech items which I like to be very careful and protective over. I have a duffel bag which I've gradually been whittling down to be less and less full with each trip that contains my kitchen + bathroom supplies. The bag is waterproof as it holds things that could leak, none of which would cause significant damage if they were to leak onto other things. And then I have my large black suitcase containing my clothes, gaming PC, plus various odds and ends which don't really belong anywhere else. Finally there's my tiny little cooler bag which I used for transporting cold food items between places, this used to be carried separately, though I've now got to the point where there's room for it to fit nicely inside my suitcase.
Food & Cooking
I've always been very much a cooking minimalist. I don't take great joy in it, I do it because I know that I need to if I want to eat healthy affordable meals. As such, I never had a particularly large pantry....my friends joked that all it contained was a salt shaker. However, even with my reasonably modest collection of spices, kitchen utensils, cereals & fridge staples, I quickly realised before I'd even started house sitting that I would need to slim it down. I also had been using Hol Food meal replacement for quite a few years, something that I ate daily and absolutely swore by as my one meal that I never actually needed to give any thought to at all.
So when I first started house sitting, I had a collection of just a few spices that I reckoned I'd need, popeyes shakers (one packed full of Hol Food, one for actually consuming from), and a lunchbox sized cooler bag with ice packs for transporting any fridge items between locations.
I realised pretty quickly that I don't need a cold container at all, after all, my house sits have all been around Toronto, so there's very little transport time for things to warm up and spoil. Besides, as a house sit is winding down, I'll naturally go into a phase of winding down my food supplies, then grocery shop at the new place to re-expand my food selection.
It's only more recently that I've ended my Hol Food subscription, it was just totally impractical. The big tub that Hol Food deliveries come in could last 6 weeks, while filling up a shaker would last about 4 days before I'd need to go back to the storage locker for refilling. So, I ended up making a big push to finish it off before my March house sit ended, and I could then be done with the tub for good.
That leaves my current kitchen setup that I take with me: a tin opener, a grater, a garlic press, a peeler, salt & pepper shakers, assorted spice jars, a jar of marmite for a little taste of home, and a small bottle of olive olive oil. Everything else I can either use from the kitchens I'm moving into, or buy from the local store.