MindMyHouse News

Dear MindMyHousies,
Hello again from this eleventh glorious edition of our little community newsletter. I feel I can say that our community is not so little now at over 1600 members from around the planet.

To our great joy, the site is getting busier by the day – as of today (19 May) we have a record 18 sitter wanted adverts live on our site! These adverts can come and go at a surprising speed so the total will no doubt have changed by time you read this but we thought we would give ourselves a little warm fuzzy here anyhow.

In this edition: lots of new sitter wanted adverts for you to peruse from the Caribbean to Japan; it’s now easier for home owners to hide their adverts; we’ve listened to our members and have given house sitters a way to track their messages to home owners; two more elucidating pieces from our Australian Blogger on Assignment; results are in for our polls on security deposit – to pay or not to pay; and finally, how to get more involved with the site – think of us as your home on the web!

Home owners – we’ve made it a lot easier for you to hide your sitter wanted adverts

If you read some of the recent messages from home owners on our testimonials page you will see that home owners’ sitter wanted adverts are now very successful at attracting replies from our house sitter members. So successful in fact, that we recently had a sitter wanted advert published live on our site for a record three hours!

Because we know that you spend some time and energy composing your adverts and also may need to advertise for a house sitter again in the future (life’s like that isn’t it?) we have made it much easier for home owners to hide (rather than delete) their sitter wanted adverts. This is a nice way to store your advert on our database – sight unseen – until the next time you need to advertise for a house sitter. The previous six-step process has been refined into a much more convenient three as follows:

• login to your account area with your email address (username) and password
• choose ‘edit/show my advert’ from the left-hand menu
• click on ‘hide advert’

It’s done!

Tracking your messages to home owners

As a result of feedback from two of our house sitter members the webmaster has recently added a nifty new feature to the site. Previously when using our contact form system to respond to sitter wanted adverts it may have felt that after pushing the send button your well-written and lengthy messages to home owners simply vanished without a trace. We’ve realised that you may want a record of these application letters for your own future use or reference. Now, when you contact a home owner through our contact form system you will automatically receive a copy of your message at your email address. See, all you had to do was ask! If there’s anything else you would like to see different about our site just write and say so!

Our Blogger on Assignment publishes more gold from sunny Queensland (Australia)

We introduced Clare, our resident Blogger on Assignment, in edition five of MindMyHouse News (November 2005). Clare actually publishes her own online blog called Temporary Shelter which contains some of my favourite reading. We love to pick and choose from her blog excerpts and have recently published two of her choice new pieces for your reading pleasure. In her second piece Housesit Rejects, Clare explains how she finds herself in the enviable position of being able to turn down offers of house sitting assignments. Lucky girl! In her latest piece we find out all about her ‘non interference rule’, where it seems her good intentions seem to be getting her into trouble. This is blogging gold from one very experienced house sitter.

Security deposit polls – statistics are in for house sitters and home owners

Over the past two months we’ve been running two polls on our homepage covering the hot topic of security deposits. We asked house sitters if they expected to have to pay a deposit and home owners how often they asked their sitters for one. The results are very interesting (for the likes of me anyhow). Although our poll would cut no ice at the Kinsey Institute I think that the 115 house sitters and 15 home owners who took the time to answer our questions have given us a little snapshot of what is going on out there in the big world.

It seems that our home owners and house sitters share similar expectations when it comes to the paying of security deposits. Although home owners tend to ask for a security deposit 20% of the time while house sitters only expect to pay one 13% of the time. Hmmm… I wonder if this could be a cause for conflict between the two parties when it comes to negotiating the agreement? It also seems that home owners are more than twice as ambivalent about the whole issue (should I ask for a deposit or shouldn’t I?) than house sitters are.

View polls currently on MindMyHouse: https://www.mindmyhouse.com/community/surveys

MindMyHouse – think of it as your home on the web!

There are plenty of ways to get more involved in the MindMyHouse project. We want you to feel as if MindMyHouse is one of your homes on the web! If you have a story to tell which is loosely themed around house sitting why not submit it for publication in ‘Bloggers on Assignment’ in our Community area. Or if you want your fifteen minutes of fame simply answer my questionnaire and I’ll write up the story of your life and house sitting adventures for publication in our ‘Meet the house sitters’ section. Or you can take a minute to leave a comment at the bottom of any of the published pieces in our Community area. And I always welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can still improve our service to you our valued members. I’m all ears!

Happy house sitting (or best of luck with your sitters!)

Susan Holtham
aka the team at MindMyHouse