In this week’s Just The Tip, we share how to score free accommodations around the world  by pet sitting, or get free pet sitting for when you are out traveling! We’ll share details about the Trusted Housesitters platform, what to expect from being a host or pet sitter, real stories from Kim’s experiences, and tips for landing your first sit. Perfect for budget travelers, digital nomads, and anyone who loves pets and adventure.

Use our promo code 12TRUST to get 12% off your membership when you sign up at Trusted Housitters using our link!

Contains affiliate links, thanks for supporting Travel Squad Podcast!

How to get free places to stay & free pet sitting – Episode Transcript

0:35

Hey squaddies, welcome to this week’s Just the tip. Today you have me Kim to talk about how to get 3 stays in exchange for pet sitting through Trusted House sitters.

I have been using Trusted House Sitters since March 2025 and I’m so excited to talk to you about it because it’s been a massive benefit to my life and has enabled me to travel much more than I could have before.

1:02

I’ve been using it since March 2025, offering up my home to travelers who want to stay in it for free while I’m away traveling in exchange for watching my pets.

I have a little cat and a little dog.

Absolutely no money is exchanged between the two parties.

It’s just two people in the community doing each other a solid and getting really big benefits out of it.

1:23

We know some of you don’t listen to the episodes in full, so I just drop this U here at the beginning.

You can use our promo code 12 trust at the link in our bio to get 12 off your annual membership so you can start taking advantage of this today.

So I’m going to get into exactly what the membership is and what you get out of it.

1:42

First of all, let’s start with what is Trusted House Sitters.

Trusted House Sitters is a global platform where homeowners or home renters can connect with pet sitters and house sitters for free through mutually beneficial arrangements.

The person that has the home gets free in home, pet and house care, while the sitters or the travelers receive free accommodation in exchange for pet companionship and a place to stay.

2:09

Both members of the website pay an annual fee to join the community and access the platform.

It has profiles of homes and profiles of people.

It has reviews for both sides of things and then it also has background checks so you can be a verified pet sitter.

2:28

There’s two ways you can join or you can pay a little bit extra and you can join up on both sides of the membership.

That first side of the membership is the home and pet owner.

You’re looking for someone to stay in your place and watch your pets while you’re traveling.

The second one is the pet sitter.

You’re the traveler that’s looking for a free place to stay in exchange for looking after their pets.

2:48

So up until recently, I have only done the home aspect of trusted house sitters.

I have the membership for both sides but I haven’t used it as a pet sitter yet.

I’ve only used it as the home offering it to the traveler.

This has been very very beneficial to me.

3:05

I’ve used it three times so far.

I have a couple of others coming U.

I’ve used it once when I was gone for two weeks traveling in the South of France and Greece.

It was a Japanese man.

He invited his Japanese friend.

They stayed for two weeks.

They kept everything super clean, they worked remote, They were fantastic.

3:24

I mean, it was my first experience of trusted house sitters, and I think you’re going to have some reservations about offering up your home to someone for free.

They’re strangers, right?

It’s like Airbnb, but it’s your home.

It’s not cleaned out for a rental.

Your stuff is all there.

So for me, I have a three bedroom, 2 bathroom house.

3:41

I have put all my trusted house sitters listing that it’s really just a two-bedroom 1 bath because the master bedroom and bathroom, which is mine is off limits.

So you can make stipulations like that on your own profile.

When you set it up, you’ll upload pictures of your house, your pets, kind of give some information on what the house is like, where the location it’s in, what your pets are like, what you’re looking for.

4:04

Went from a pet sitter, everything someone would need to know when they see that listing and they want to apply to it.

The second person that I had in my house was when I went to Quebec for the TEABEX conference.

It was a solo German girl in college.

She was just kind of traveling throughout the US and she was studying still in college.

4:23

So we had a call before she came to so we can both get to know each other.

She was super clean.

She walked my dog every day.

Even though that wasn’t part of what I asked her to do, she still did it.

She actually had come in the night before and left the following day after I got home.

So for those two nights she actually was in the house with me.

4:41

You don’t have to do that.

I’ve had some sitters ask if that’s OK and sometimes I was able to say yes and sometimes I wasn’t With her.

I was totally fine.

I barely saw her.

She, we only crossed over for a few hours, so it was absolutely fine.

The third person was a guy who was sort of local to Austin.

4:58

He kind of goes from sit to sit in the area and, and other nearby areas and he’s from here, but he doesn’t have his own place, much like a nomad.

I, I find that a lot of the sitters are nomads.

The Japanese couple, they kind of go from sit to sit working remotely.

So this guy was super friendly, super commutative.

5:14

We exchanged numbers before, of course, arranged some details.

He would send me pictures while I was gone and took great care of the house.

I have no complaints about any of the sitters that I have had in my house.

They’ve been fantastic.

I think some tips for coming into it is to of course, exchange your number, WhatsApp before this day, share some details and then when things get closer you will share more details.

5:38

You do put together a welcome guide for your home through the Trusted House Sitters website.

On there you’ll put things like their feeding schedule, water schedule, exercise schedule, things about the home like your Wi-Fi password or where the lock box is to get in, all those little details that you’ll probably still discuss on the phone.

5:55

But it’s good to have it in writing so they can reference it while you’re gone.

I, like I said, kept my bedroom off limits.

You don’t have to do this.

I find plenty of the smaller homes that are one bedroom or two-bedroom.

Obviously you’re using their own bed.

So that’s just something I do because I have the space and and one of their other rules is that you cannot have cameras inside the house.

6:15

I have two blink cameras inside my house, one in the front room by the door and one in my living room so I can watch my pets.

But when I have trusted house that are staying here, I’ll put one outside the front door so I could still see who’s coming in and out of the house.

And then I put one in my bedroom because it’s off limits.

6:31

The doors always closed.

You know what’s funny whenever I tell anyone that I do this, especially men, the first thing they say is hide your panties.

They’re going to be stealing your sniffing your panties.

I don’t know why men always say that, but I can tell you with full confidence because I have that camera in my room.

6:48

My doors never been opened.

Panties are safe and secure.

And then of course, my last just tip is just to set expectations for what you wanted.

Do you want to picture videos of your pet every single day?

Say that.

Are you expecting them to get back to your text within a reasonable amount of time?

Say that I haven’t stipulated any of that and I still get pictures and texts and updates frequently.

7:09

So you know, it works out really well for me.

I highly encourage you if you are someone that’s traveling frequently for decent periods of time to explore trusted house sitters.

I wouldn’t necessarily do it for two days, three days, maybe 4 days.

7:25

I would maybe consider it for four days.

But anything less than that, I’m just going to use my drop in pet sitter who comes by and feeds them, spend some time with them.

If it’s longer than four days, then I want someone to be here with my pets.

They, they get lonely and they would love to have someone here and not feel as sad without me.

7:41

So if I’m going to be gone for more than four days, I will drop it on trusted house sitters.

I’ve never had a problem getting applications.

And that’s how the process works is you list your dates, then people will apply.

Usually they’ll send you a message and say, hey, I’d love to watch your pets.

I’m doing this and this is a little about me.

7:58

Then you can communicate with them through the app.

You can schedule a phone call.

Then you approve their application.

Then it goes to them to confirm the application.

So it’s very mutually beneficial.

You have to agree.

There’s been some where I’ve extended the approval and then they’ve said, oh hey, my schedule changed.

8:15

I have to decline this so that can happen.

I’ve had a couple sits where I just got the one application and I accepted them.

I have a sit right now coming up in a couple weeks that I’m still trying to confirm someone for, but I have three applications right now.

Sometimes people will e-mail you and or through the app and they’ll ask if they can bring their pet.

8:34

I always say no because my dog doesn’t like other dogs.

So if you’re OK with that and you want to let them bring their pet, you can let them do that.

Or I have on mind that I prefer single pet sitters, but sometimes it’s a couple like the Japanese guy, he had a friend with him.

Sometimes it’s families.

8:50

You can decline anyone you wish and you can put anything in your profile that you’re looking for and not looking for.

All right, now moving on to the pet sitter side of trusted house sitters.

When I first joined, I only joined for the house.

I was just testing it and I had such great success with it because I mean, a pet drop in twice a day is 30 bucks.

9:08

So if you’re going to be gone for 10 days, that’s $300.

The trusted house sitter annual membership was something like 100 bucks and then with our discount code even less.

So I thought, you know what, at the very least I’m going to lose 100 bucks.

That’s like my biggest risk right now.

And there are membership tiers.

9:25

The highest tier also has a built in safeguard that if you don’t get a sitter application, you’ll get your money back or if a sitter cancels last minute and you’re out that money for having to find other sitters, then you will have like an insurance reimbursement.

9:40

So there are safeguards.

They’re very confident that you will find a sitter for your house.

On the other side of things.

After doing it twice, I said, you know what, I want to do this.

This is so amazing.

The people that stay in my house have been great.

I can be a great person that stays in someone else’s house for free.

9:56

And I knew I wanted to go to a couple places.

So I started looking around and then once I saw what was listed, I was like, OK, I’m going to just add on the pet sitting membership.

It’s so great if you are just looking for a place to stay or you want to go somewhere for a little bit longer and a hotel would just be expensive or even Airbnb, would it be expensive?

10:15

So this is kind of like Airbnb with a pet perk and you don’t have to pay for it.

So when you sign up for that side of things, you again fill out your profile with all your info, talk about your love for pets, background, the pet ownership background with pet sitting, anything else you think would be important for someone to look know about you when they’re considering if they’re going to let you stay in their house.

10:37

I always put that Ioffer my house up on trusted house sitters on the other end of it, so I know what it takes to be a good pet and house sitter.

I put that I have a dog and I have a cat and I’ve watched pets my whole life and I’ve had pets my whole life and that I’m clean and then I work remotely and I’ll be there with them for a long time.

10:55

So you get all that on there.

You’ll put some pictures of yourself on there and then you can start searching.

And here you can search as open-ended as you want, like you want to go anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world.

I will say I was looking for stays in Switzerland when I was going over the the last couple months, I didn’t quite find what I was looking for and I’ll get to that in a second.

11:15

But there are house sitters all over the world, not just in the US, so that’s even cooler.

So you can be as open with your dates and as open with your destinations as you want.

Or you can filter down.

I always filter on cats only.

I don’t want to Watch Dogs.

I mean, they have fish, horses, chickens, like there’s tons of different types of animals that could be at the place that you’re staying.

11:37

I only want to watch cats.

That’s just me, but you can do whatever you’d like.

You can actually set specific dates.

So if you want to go January 1st through 15th, you only want to see stays that are available there.

You can do that.

If you want to specifically look at San Diego, CA, any dates you can do that.

11:55

So you can filter down as little as possible or leave it a little bit more open as much as you would like.

The drawback of course is you might not find a sit that is your exact date.

So being open and being flexible is really the key.

You’re likely to find a sit in a destination you’re looking to go to as long as your dates are more open.

12:14

I’ve been eyeballing a couple of places just kind of, I don’t have a specific data I want to go.

So I’m kind of keeping an eye on what’s available and I’ll let the trusted house sitter opportunity kind of guide me into when I go.

The interface is kind of like Airbnb.

I mean, it looks a lot like it we’re used to filtering.

12:30

Then you have the map view or the list view.

You can scroll into the destination and see if there’s multiple types of stays.

It’ll show you the dates that the stays available, the types of animals that it is.

And then whatever that homeowner has put in their description about their house and their pets and what they’re looking for, you’ll see that too.

12:46

And then you can submit your application and right the owner a message about who you are.

Some sits even add other benefits like if they have a bike, they say you can use the bike.

Or if they have a car, sometimes they’ll allow you to use the car.

I wouldn’t expect that, but I have seen some sits like that, which is even cool.

13:02

And you can find some really great houses on there, like with pools and hot tubs and cool amenities and really cool neighborhoods in the destination that you want to visit.

And like I said, it’s completely free, so it’s worth checking out.

You don’t have to be a paid member to at least scroll what’s in there, but in order to alley you will have to become a paid member.

13:23

Like I said, I have not used trusted house sitters yet as the traveler, but hot breaking news.

I have just secured my first one in San Diego over Christmas.

I’m going to be there December 19th through 25th watching 2 cats in a beach bungalow in PB in a neighborhood that I actually used to live in.

13:40

So I’m really excited about that.

We just had a call to discuss some of the details and get to know each other a little bit.

We locked in the application, confirm the sit and I am so excited to try it out and just have, you know, six days in San Diego without having to bum a couch to sleep on from my friends or pay for a hotel to sleep in during that time.

13:59

I am actively looking for stays with cats only in two places.

I really want to visit West Palm Beach, FL and I want to stay like a local.

It’s not an urgent trip.

My dates definitely are flexible, but I want to stay a little bit longer because I do want to live like a local.

It’s a destination I kind of have my eye on as a potential place.

14:18

Maybe one day I would like to move to and live.

I’ve never been, but I want to live like a local there, immerse myself in the place, and I know a hotel just wouldn’t give me the same experience.

So I really want a stay and I’m just kind of keeping my eye on it, waiting to find a really cool place in a good location that’s walking distance to stuff and then I’ll be able to explore West Palm Beach.

14:39

I’m also looking for stays in Honolulu, HI.

Not because I’ve had my eye to live there, but because Honolulu is very expensive and if I can cut some costs by not paying for a hotel or Airbnb, I would like to do that.

I want to stay in Honolulu for at least 4:00-ish days, maybe more.

14:57

My dates are kind of flexible so we’ll see how that goes.

My mom has told me that she’s going to celebrate her 10 year anniversary with her partner there and so I told them, hey, would you mind if I come crash that?

So my mom and her boyfriend, maybe I’ll be crashing their anniversary in February if I can find a good trusted house sitter to stay in.

15:17

Again, Squaddies, if you want to try out trusted house sitters as a traveler slash pet sitter or as the home slash pet owner, you can use our promo code 12 TRUST at the link in our bio and you’ll get 12% off your annual membership.

Sometimes they offer more perks if it’s your very first time signing up for the subscription and if you have any questions about it because believe me, I had hesitation too when I first joined and started offering up my home.

15:42

If you have any questions at all, DM us on Instagram at travelsquadpodcastoryoucanemailustravelsquadpodcast@gmail.com.

And thank you so much for tuning into just the tip.

Make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us on all the socials at Travel Squad Podcast.

And you squaddies, you have fun traveling this weekend.