Finding a home as the world closed down

by Jill Stafford

I remember when I first started hearing about COVID-19 in earnest. It was mid-February and we were on a house sit in London. To this point, we had been out and about walking our "puggle" every day and going out to restaurants and museums and shops as often as possible.

But one day things seemed to change.

I heard stories of this virus but couldn’t quite understand what was happening. “It’s like the flu” some said. Hmmm…ok, nothing to be too concerned with, I guess. But then one day I heard something that made me look at people differently.

We were on the tube and this poor guy was just looking so awful. He was hunkered down in the seat and looked very pale, sweaty and generally unwell. Then he unleashed this horrific wet cough. My husband Zac and I looked at each other and were extremely grateful that we weren’t sitting next to him.

But still we thought, he has the flu or something, it’s fine.

From London to Scotland

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we arrive at a friend’s house in Scotland. Within two weeks of our arrival the country went on lockdown and all our lives had changed. We were unbelievably lucky to be staying where we were. Our friend is an herbalist and a forager, living with a mycologist/forager, and we were in the countryside outside of Edinburgh. We had limited interactions with anyone other than those who we lived with for months.

Our morning conversation focused solely on COVID. How many deaths? How many ill? And what does this mean to our full-time house-sitting lifestyle?

When we left London at the beginning of March, we had a repeat house sit booked mid-May near Glasgow. We had another booked for one-month end of June through the end of July in Switzerland. We planned to pepper my time at our friend’s with little breaks for sitting here and there around Scotland. As the news and our morning conversations got more serious, we began to wonder what on earth we were going to do.

The homeowners on our sits weren’t quite ready to call it off. We texted at least once a week, if not more, with one another, but they were planning to travel as well, and uncertainty reigned for us and them. If they can’t leave, we can’t go there to sit, and perhaps we can’t leave either. All we could do was wait to see what the governments advised.

Could we make it to Switzerland...

First, our sit near Glasgow canceled. They wouldn’t be able to travel for work as planned. That left our sit in Switzerland. We set decision points with the homeowners based on government communications. Our first decision point came and went, and we were no clearer in knowing what would happen. Our second one was the same. Finally, after the ban on Americans traveling to the EU, Zac and I understood there was no way we were going to get into Switzerland.

We had to cancel.

Our stress levels were high. We knew we could stay where we were until our visas ran out at the end of June. We were very fortunate to have that option. I looked at house sitting websites each day and found maybe one or two sits had been added. I feared our lifestyle was over.

... or back to the US?

Zac and I started to make contingency plans. Few countries were open to Americans and we did not want to go back to the US. But on the other hand, that would be one place we could go where we wouldn’t have to worry about being kicked out and furthering the cycle of where to live and what to do without house sits.

Then, like magic an amazing sit showed up for LA. We applied, they accepted and then we waited. Two more sits came up for later in the year in Maine. We applied to those and were accepted to both. We were elated.

A plan was coming together.

But as we considered this plan and thought about the lengthy flight from the UK to LA and then roaming around the US for one month between sits and then needing to fly from LA to Maine, we started to worry. We were also worried because each of those house sits depended on the homeowners being allowed to travel as well – one to Spain, one to New Zealand and the last to Portugal. Things were not looking good for any of them to be able to pull this off.

As we were struggling to make a plan for our future one sort of plopped into our laps.

Wait... what about Turkey?

A long sit in Turkey showed up and we took a chance to apply. We knew this would mean canceling all our scheduled house sits, but we felt this would be the right thing for us to do. We never feel good about canceling on anyone, but felt we needed to make the right decision for us and that meant staying away from the States.

Luckily, we were accepted for the sit in Turkey and alerted each of our previous commitments. They all understood and were feeling they probably needed to cancel as well, though were waiting until things got closer to do so. The LA sit was the only one that really stung. They were still able to travel to Spain but were super gracious and had someone else they could contact.

As all of this was playing out for us, the number of available sits slowly began to increase. Each day there were more and more available. We were able to secure and complete two shorter sits before we left the UK on our way to Turkey.

But I have to say, even though there are more sits available, it feels like it’s much more competitive out there. It also isn’t as fun to apply and dream about getting the sit. I’ve seen many sits that we just simply can’t apply for because we won’t be allowed in. And then there’s the logistics of safely managing the handover with the homeowner.

Adapting to a new normal

Gone are the days of hugging and shaking hands when we first meet. We kept our masks on the entire time we met our homeowner in Turkey. We sanitized the surfaces on our first day in the house even though she mentioned she cleaned. And as we think about leaving the sit, we are thinking about when, how and what will need to be cleaned leading up to our departure.

We’re fortunate to have flexibility with the sit we’re on in Turkey. The homeowner helped us secure a year long residency here just in case we can’t leave when desired. We have another sit booked for early February back in the UK but know we may need to cancel if things get too bad or we’re unable to travel.

Our backup plan right now is to stay in Turkey until we need to go to the UK and if we’re unable to go, we will stay in Turkey until further notice. We plan to rent an apartment in that case and just stay put until we can figure things out. We’re also talking about buying a property somewhere so we can actually have somewhere to retreat to if needed and taking time off from house sitting. But we’re just not ready to do that quite yet.

We realize the scope of our world has changed. House sitting feels a bit more difficult now than it did over the past five years when we’ve been lucky enough to be part of this lifestyle. Our plan is to continue to house sit as long as possible while trying to determine what settling down could actually look like for us. We definitely feel more vulnerable and more at risk since COVID came into everyone’s lives.

There’s a need in us to find a balance between accepting these changes, honoring the new circumstances and living our lives the way we have chosen – as nomad house sitters who want to continue to respectfully travel the world while cuddling furry little beings.

Jill Stafford house sits and travels the world full-time with her husband. Just because she left the corporate world in 2015 doesn’t mean she’s not still trying to solve problems and manage various projects. An avid yoga and fiber arts student, Jill is frequently taking online and in person courses.

You can follow her at:

visa-vis.com

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