Experienced couple, great references

More information about this house sitter

Current Availability 20 February -10 March 2025 only
We love dogs🦮 , NO cats 🤧 (allergy), nonsmokers 🚭
Excellent references on the trusted housesitters site

We are a retired couple in our early 60’s traveling half the year with total flexibility. This will be our 4th trip to Australia. We have four grown up children who all have partners now, and two grand girls. We are enjoying our happy golden years right now. We are Americans from the moderate/liberal state of Washington near Seattle.
(We DID NOT vote for him!)

We prefer staying in homes over hotels when traveling, especially if we get to hang out with dogs! Trading our services in exchange for accommodations works great for us. We are not tourists looking for a free holiday accommodation. We are travelers that enjoy living in another country for a time and getting to know the local residents and culture. Did we mention we like dogs? After we lost our last dog, we decided to wait on another since we travel long term, so we will enjoy caring for yours!

Taking care of homes was our full time business for 15 years. We owned a successful professional organizing and handyman business near Seattle, (Bainbridge Island), called Confusion to Order. Our services included organizing, redesign, repairs and maintenance, and management of homes and vacation rentals. We helped our clients with relocation services like downsizing, packing, home staging, and unpacking after a move.
(Ask us about helping you with redesign, home organizing and handyman tasks while staying in your home, or managing your Airbnb so you can go on vacation!)

We actually enjoy household and gardening chores, and organizing and mending things. We retired in 2020, but we still do our job everywhere we go. We also enjoy reading and audiobooks (me), and podcasts, (Dale). I embroider and sew, and am learning to knit. We both enjoy films and Netflix/Prime series, but aren’t much for TV otherwise. Walking dogs is enjoyable and great exercise for us both. I also do yoga and can practice anywhere, but if you have a mat, I’ll ask to borrow it.

We have excellent references from our six months traveling in New Zealand and Australia in 2024. We also have experience with 6 successful home exchanges, have 45 excellent guest reviews on Airbnb, and 5 references on the trusted housesitters site. We will send links to those sites in our correspondence so you can read lots of reviews about us.

Dale grew up in farm country, and is familiar and comfortable with most farm animals. If you have a hot tub or pool, the maintenance is no problem. We love fresh produce and eggs, and are happy to care for chickens and gardens.

We can be flexible, but prefer a minimum of a week to housesit--longer periods are welcome, especially when we are purchasing flights to reach you. We like to meet clients and pets ahead of time, and can arrange an interview in person if possible, or meet on a video call. We prefer to arrive a day prior to your departure so we can meet you, learn all about your pets and your home.

We love seeing photos of your pets, and hearing all about them. But, to make sure we are a good fit for the job, please give us some information about who you are, and include photos of your home on your listing so we know where we will be living while we care for your pets. We are simple people, and don’t need luxury, but we are not a good fit for extremely cluttered messy homes. For us it is like being surrounded by work, but unable to do our job and we cannot relax and enjoy ourselves. We don’t mind doing small repairs, redesign consults, or organizing jobs with permission from the host.

We are caring, professional, responsible and reliable people. We will take excellent care of your home, pets, plants and garden. We will leave your home in pristine condition, your pets happy and content, and a welcome home dinner waiting for you when you get back..
Please look over our profile, consider us for your housesit, and contact us with your offer! We look forward to hearing from you. We are currently traveling in Ireland as of 15 January 2025, and have not booked our flights to Australia yet. We have a ton of airline miles, but prefer to see what housesitting opportunities are available before we book so we can coordinate locations and dates. As soon as we accept an offer, we will book flights to arrive well in advance prior to your housesit.
(You can count on us to arrive as scheduled)

Suzanna and Dale

P.s.
If your home is not close to shops or public transport, the limited use of a car is a really nice perk for us, especially if we are flying into your location specifically to care for your pets and home. We tend to stay home when we house sit, and go out to only to walk dogs, buy groceries, or go for an occasional meal. Our tourist activities happen between house sits. We have realized that a rental car that sits in the driveway is just a very expensive taxi ride to a housesit. We have used hosts cars at four house sits now with no issues. We both have clean driving records, are familiar with driving on the left, and can provide you with a ride to and from the airport. Read more...