Homesick.

It's the start of the 2024 house sitting season and I have a feeling that this could be the hardest year ever.

Since the world opened back up in 2021, the house sitting side of my business has really taken off. My dog walking clients want to go on holiday and for those who aren't taking the dog with them, very few are comfortable putting the dog in kennels for a week. That's where I come in. They get to go on holiday with the peace of mind that their dog has got their other best friend sleeping over and is as happy as a clam about it, plus their house hasn't been left empty either. Bonus. They get to come home to a freshly cleaned house, fresh milk in the fridge and one (or more) very happy dog.

Whilst I was living with a friend post break-up, house sitting was a welcome break from her house for both of us and when I started renting my first flat, The Bachelorette Pad, it was also a welcome respite from feeling like I was really living alone. But as time went on and my relationship with Watson grew and grew, house sitting lost some of it's original alure and I began enjoying the time away from home less and less. Cut to the end of last summer when I moved in with Watson and closed the house sitting books until this new season.

We've spent a glorious six months cosied up together in the evenings, playing board games from our ever expanding collection, cooking increasingly elaborate meals and generally getting on with creating a life together. We've established a morning routine that allows the early bird in me to thrive and his night owl nature sees him taking over the decision making and adulting in the evenings. We've been on holiday together, redecorated the entire flat and more recently, started combining our finances and have been window shopping on RightMove to see what the first home we buy together might look like. In short, life is pretty darn comfortable and coming away from all that to start the 2024 house sitting season is proving challenging.

I have deliberately accepted fewer bookings this year 1) to give myself a bit of a break and 2) because I knew I would find it harder to leave home now that I'm living with Watson.

The dogs are staying home with him instead of coming house sitting with me and while the three of them will undoubtedly enjoy their boys week together without me, it doesn't seem fair for me to ask Watson to do too much solo dog-parenting while I'm off looking after other people's dogs. I have been lucky that my clients have had no problem with my own dogs joining me while I house sit for them but Barney is a sensitive soul and it's time for him to put his paws up and leave the house sitting to me.

The truth is, house sitting is surprisingly hard work. My first house sittings pre-pandemic were a breeze; I thoroughly enjoyed my time away from home and treated them as something of a holiday. But now that I'm a bit older and have had a lot more life experience, leaving the comforts of my own home feels less exciting than it used to.

One of the things that I find challenging is cooking in other people's kitchens. I think that living alone and being able to solely create my "ideal" kitchen has been responsible for this. Now, I'm using "ideal" in the loosest possible sense here because my kitchen in the bachelorette pad was far from ideal, but I did make it work for me. I created a kitchen island for myself out of Kallax style cube storage units and a piece of kitchen worktop that I rescued from a skip and have been carting around with me for four years. Because I had so little cupboard space and no drawers, I could only keep what I needed and got used to cooking with one of everything. But it worked perfectly for me; I've always fancied trying a minimalist lifestyle and that tiny flat gave me the chance to experience it.

I was strict about what I allowed into my tiny home so that it wouldn't become cluttered and that meant that my bizarre kitchen was a well-oiled machine that had a place for everything and everything in it's place. What I find most complicated about other people's kitchens is understanding their 'system' or, more commonly, being baffled by the apparent lack of a system. I once spent an ten-day long house sit thinking my client didn't own a chopping board because I couldn't find one. It wasn't until the following year when I house sat for them again that I found multiple chopping boards stored in a little nook inside the island, on the opposite side to where every other kitchen utensil was.

Another thing that comes up for me is a lack of salt. More than one of my clients don't keep salt in the house in an attempt to rein in their husbands blood pressure. Completely understandable and acceptable behaviour, but inconvenient for your house sitter to discover when they're halfway cooking a meal. Oil and butter are other controversial grocery items too. Everyone has a preference and I personally can't stand 'spread'. I make do when I'm house sitting because I can't be bothered to bring my own butter with me but I do now carry a small pot of salt.

Dishwashers are a faff too. Well, not the dishwashers actually; the dish washing facilities. Most of the clients I house sit for are families with children and so create far more washing up in an ordinary day than a single female can when she's living on her own. As a result, I don't tend to use the dishwasher and prefer to wash what I've used by hand instead. The problem with this is that these lovely kitchens with their integrated dishwashers and aesthetically pleasing sinks often aren't set up for everyday dish washing use. There's rarely an obvious dish cloth or sponge to use and sometimes there isn't even a bottle of Fairy liquid to be found, let alone kept in sight. Plus the materials the sinks themselves are made from are the kind that will break a mug if dropped and these homes don't keep a plastic washing up bowl to wash up in. At least, not anywhere that I have found.

Then there's the more obvious things like knives that aren't sharp enough and pans that don't work on the induction hob. I do love these kitchens. They are so beautiful to look at it, but sometimes they are quite hard work to actually live in. And don't get me started on easy-to-stain surfaces, but since we're here, "spot-treatment" stain remover for carpets and laundry work a charm on removing tea stains from marble effect worktops...

Bathrooms are a force to be reckoned with too. When you live in a house, whether owned or rented, you learn all it's little quirks and adapt to them accordingly. Things like, knowing that the upstairs hot tap doesn't work but the downstairs one does, which shower is the best shower (I once had three to choose from) and remembering that the upstairs toilet doesn't always flush unless you run the cold tap first. I have started keeping a mental list of questions to ask new clients during the tour of their home and this includes quirky plumbing need-to-knows. I always get a baffled expression when I ask this but once I give examples such as wobbly taps, not touching shower head heights etc, they inevitably do have at least one thing that they can warn me about and wouldn't have thought to mention.

Quirks aside, the other thing about house sitting is that you are 'on' 24/7. When I say house sitting is hard work, I don't mean in the obvious sense; looking after someone's home and pets is no harder work than looking after your own, the difficulties lie in the unfamiliarity of your surroundings. There's always a part of you that is conscious of keeping the place clean and tidy at all times and never knowing exactly where everything is makes everything take little bit longer and requires that little bit more effort. Sleeping in a new house can make for restless nights too. No matter how many times I stay at the same places, my subconscious still works overtime at night to identify the unfamiliar creaks and groans of the old houses, the bang of the neighbours garden gate, the hiss of the radiators. Over the course of a week, that unconscious effort adds up and coupled with not sleeping in your own bed (another thing that can really make or break your house sitter), I'm always surprised at how tired I am by the time I get home.

On the plus side, house sitting gives me a chance to knuckle down on any personal projects that I've been procrastinating on at home. I find that I'm reading less and journaling less since moving in with Watson, so I'm now viewing my time away as something of a retreat. I make sure that I eat well and take my yoga mat with me with the intention of doing longer yoga sessions than I usually do at home. The time away gives me a chance to reflect on how far I've come and how much has changed in the past few years too; it gives me a different perspective from which to view my life and helps me zoom out and see the big picture.

So while I settle in for another summer of finding my way around other people's houses, I shall be trying to be mindful of the time I have to spend with myself and shall try not to waste it on wishing I was back home among my puzzles and board games. But absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that, and the time away does certainly make me appreciate what Watson and I have together. Now, where do they keep the good biscuits in this place?