MindMyHouse News

We are thus rolling out the red carpet of celebration and inviting our membership (all 150 thousand – gasp – of you over the past two decades) to dance a little jig along with us, the founders of this global house sitting community. 

It has been such a ride for all concerned. Not just for us, holding the structural elements of this large and expanding community but for you all as well, adventuring around our planet, one house sitting gig at a time. So this very special edition of MindMyHouse News is dedicated to our little family (we are originally from Aussie, then we moved to the UK to become British and now we are happily settled in New Zealand), and to you all as well…

Here’s the tribute album in case you’re interested:

Back in 2003, during our first ever white Christmas in London, and with a tiny baby (our first daughter, Marlena) balanced on our laps, the Pop of our Mom & Pop operation (Alan) asked the Mom (Susan) what she thought might be a cool thing to be doing from home while raising children? Hmmm… she thought back to the struggle for affordable trips away in London town, the awful experience of having their dogs in Aussie neglected by house sitting friends, and the dismal quality of the current house sitting sites online and had a lightbulb moment! Aha! I know, she said…

When MindMyHouse was still in its conceptual stage back in 2003 and 2004, there weren’t that many house sitting websites out there. Back then, the internet was a much smaller place, and our competitors’ sites and services were surprisingly humble. Despite this, Alan wasn’t convinced that our business model (a brand new site made by a professional editor – developer team!) would be a success. Never mind that thought though, cos shortly after launching in February 2005, our database was soon full-to-overflowing with eager new members (maybe because we were free to use till early ’08) who were joining their friends up to our service in droves and romping around the world having adventures, on us!

‘Scuse us while we toot our own horn: Unlike the big corporate house sitting platforms, we have always stuck to our moral compass when deciding how/what/why/when to structure and then to evolve our service. The editor, Susan, has always proudly said that we do not feature the awful Shutterstock picture-roll of ‘women laughing at salad’ on our site. Instead: we hope you liked Alan’s cute little home-drawn happy figures over the last three iterations of our site, variously popping out of holes in the ground! Haha. Neither will you find advertising of any description or any tie-in sponsorship promotional deals during your use of our service. It only takes a second of scrolling through our member listings to see that this site is community run by happy house sitters and home owners taking all the pics. We’re still old-school and we love it!

You won’t be surprised to read that listening to you all and providing customer service has been a labour of love for Susan (and now Alan) all these long years. Your web developer is a staunch believer in real content, uploaded in real time. He will not promote or use AI or bot technologies on MindMyHouse. Instead, you may be comforted to read that we personally check all house sitting assignments (using the ‘mark one’ eyeball), answer every single email you send to us, and we take all your questions, feedback and qualms seriously, as a matter of site policy. Because of this, and we probably don’t need to say, but we appreciate kindness and understanding from your end when you write to us. Ta. 🙂

And yep, sometimes we receive an earnest email inquiry from an entrepreneuring individual who has big plans to build something like MindMyHouse. They tend to ask: ‘What plugins or software do you use?’ For those who are curious about what tech we use to run our website, the answer is – mostly custom code! Alan (also known as Pop) has custom coded pretty much this entire behemoth from scratch, writing many millions of lines of code! (Oh the bills for his glasses prescription updates alone…) While you’re gripping the table in disbelief at this information, note that, as a lone ranger, Alan has rebuilt and redesigned MindMyHouse no less than THREE TIMES since we launched 20 years ago now. Gosh…

Over 20 years, you won’t be surprised to read that we’ve accrued our fair share of interesting work stories. In 2007 – and this only happened once – our blog site was hacked by a porn bot and we ended up briefly hosting a few rude images for a few days before we took them down. Ergh. Not sure why 2007 was such a big year for us (maybe because our membership numbers were exploding at the time) but we were contacted by the police (for the first and last time) about a reported theft at a property during an assignment. Bad buzz. In other industry gossip: We also occasionally get confused with the Australian sound-alike service, Mind a Home, whose members sometimes write to us asking ‘Why can’t I login?’ and ‘Who are we again?’. Hoho.

The Pandemic years were a struggle for us (as they were for everyone) and while we were still able to make our mortgage payments here in New Zealand (phew) we realised our membership was also taking a hit. We’re proud to say that we were the first of the top five global house sitting platforms to roll out a free six-month membership extension to all of  our house sitting members who were with us in early 2020. Phew (again). You can imagine that losing close to half our membership over those two challenging years was a toughie for us. We’ve come back to a tighter database full of loyal and dedicated folk, keen on the MindMyHouse experience. So yay!

The curious can read even more of our backstory here.

What does the future hold for MindMyHouse, you may be wondering? Our daughters are both in the process of launching themselves into the world, our dog is now a Welsh OAP (old age pensioner), who is less of a ‘springer’ and more of a professional ‘Welsh napper’. What about the Mom (Susan) and the Pop (Alan) who must be pushing 60 by now? We are both 56 this coming March but we’re still going strong, so please jump aboard MindMyHouse should you want to give our old school global platform a try : D. Looking forward to connecting with you as you go about the exciting buzz of seeking adventure and affordable digs at the same time!

So yes, expect more code upgrades (written by hand!) with new subtly enhanced site features, more comforting newsletters, more friendly offers from our home owner members made to our house sitter members, more hilarious pet pictures from you all to have a chuckle over while perusing our listings. In short: more of the good stuff you’ve come to expect from us at our dedicated family project – gone global in scope. Let’s keep on keeping on!

A quick history/timeline of MindMyHouse 

From humble beginnings – MindMyHouse version 1 (2005 to 2011)

• February 2005, Initial release v1 (all memberships were free)
• February 2006, MMH turns 1 (1000 members)
• June 2006, our first doggo passes away, and we finally get out of Google’s sandbox!
• February 2007, MMH turns 2 (4000 members)
• February 2008, MMH turns 3 (7000 members) and started charging house sitters (US$20 per year)

MindMyHouse grows up – version 2 (2011 to 2018)

• June 2011, Initial release v2 (new design and new features)
• February 2015, MMH turns 10 (20000 members)
• May 2016, MMH adds mobile and tablet device support, and new virtual help desk
• Sept 2016, featuring our first gold star members

MindMyHouse version 3 (2019 to current)

• January 2019, Initial release v3 (new design and new features)
• February 2020, MMH turns 15 (33000 members), adds new assignments tracking, and Coronovirus hits (lockdowns)
• March 2020, MMH offers free six month extensions to house sitter memberships in response to Covid 🙂
• Feb 2022, MMH ditches social media (that stuff is fluff)!
• Jan 2023, House sitter annual membership price increased to US$29,
• April 2024, Home owners now charged for annual membership 
• February 2025, MMH turns 20 (43000 members, of which 10000 are currently active)

Featuring our gold (silver & bronze) legendary house sitters

Going all the way back to 2016, we awarded 85 of our longest house sitter members with a gold star. Now that we are 20, we would like to do this again! So, how many of our registered house sitters have renewed their annual memberships with us year after year and are still with us today? Here they are:

6 house sitters have been with us for sixteen to nineteen years!

30 house sitters have been with us for thirteen to fifteen years

90 house sitters have been with us for ten to twelve years

For all the house sitters above ie. gold, silver and bronze members, we have awarded you a special legendary badge, which we will display on your listing. Thanks for being with us for so long! Check your listing to see your new badge. We’ll also email you to let you know you’re badged up. May you continue to enjoy being a MindMyHousie!

Featuring our gold (silver & bronze) legendary home owners

How many of our registered home owners (with older free accounts) are still with us today? We have (alot) more of these legendary home owners than house sitters, as we used to give home owner accounts away for free.

345 home owners have been with us for sixteen to twenty years

1003 home owners have been with us for thirteen to fifteen years

3390 home owners have been with us for ten to twelve years

For all the home owners above, we have awarded you a special legendary badge, which we will display on your listing! We’ll also email you to let you know you’re badged up. Thanks for being with us for so long! May you continue to enjoy being a MindMyHousie!

Well, that about wraps it up. Please wish us a happy birthday!