One Advantage of Two

This is an odd week, or maybe bittywould be a better description since we’re trying to get so many odd little bits done ready for our first move to the next house.

We’re in this house for another 10 days – or at least Steve is. I’m here for another 11 days because we have a day overlap between this and the next house-sit. Not something I’d considered we’d be doing, but there being two of us is a definite advantage to house-sitting. After all, let’s face it matching up bookings is hard enough as it is, without even considering how much tougher it would be if there was only one of us and no possibility of overlap. Not something that might be an issue for house-sitters who are only using it as a form of holidaying, I guess, but definitely an advantage to those who are doing it as a full-time lifestyle. But then we did make it tougher on ourselves when we decided to sell up everything, rather than keeping a house we could turn up at any time of day and expect a bed.

I’m delighted to say, though, that we’re now booked almost all the way through to early January, which is decidedly reassuring considering Steve and I took it all more or less on trust that this would work perfectly. There’s an odd few days, and a week or so, in October that still need booking, but other than that we’re pretty right. Believe it or not, there have even been some home-owners who really liked us but we had to turn down their requests to house-sitting due to double-booking.

Another thing I hadn’t expected was how so many home-owners are generously offering us extra nights of accommodation. Not just so that our bookings match up and we have somewhere to stay, but so that they can leave for their holiday at some ridiculous time of night and yet still know their house and pets are cared, or so that their animals find the transition of who’s caring for them goes more smoothly. Of course, there’s also the added bonus that it negates the risk of us turning up a house and not finding the spare key or having to win the dog over as it tries to protect the home from us.

Oh well, I suppose I’d best get back to the odd and bitty jobs. Other than writing the blog post today, we have to condense and repack everything we’re going to take with us, then check it fits in the car. Not something we could really do earlier, because until we were actually house-sitting for a month or so it was impossible to know what we actually needed or wanted. Fingers crossed.