Reliable and flexible couple available for European house sits

About this sitter

We are a 40-something Belgian-Dutch couple living in a small university town in the Netherlands. We liked our experiences with house and pet sitting so much that we are looking for other houses and pets to take care of!

Sidney runs his own web development company for over a decade now, mostly working from home. Niki recently resigned from her academic career to gain more freedom and work-life balance as a freelance data scientist.

Since we live in a busy town (and country), we are looking for rural or remote settings with preferably lot's of space and nature around the house.

Why they want to house sit

House sitting is for us the ideal way to keep a good work-life balance. It takes us out of our routines and provides a way to live at a slower, more mindful pace.
We enjoy getting to know new places and cultures. House sitting gives us the chance to immerse ourselves for a while in the local culture and landscape.

Their experience

We house sat multiple times (3 times 6 weeks) for acquaintances in 2023 in France. We will continue this in 2024. We took care of the house and the garden (4 hectares), included taking care of the vegetable garden and fruit trees, preparing firewood, mowing, etc. We also helped out with bigger (deferred) maintenance chores such as fixing a windowsill, clearing overgrown parts of the garden, fixing fence posts in the meadow.

We regularly pet sit two dash hounds, Lola and Otis, when their owners are on holiday.

In addition, we stayed on a houseboat for a few months, taking care of a cat and chickens.

What can they bring to the assignment

We are both responsible, caring and open-minded. Since we both run our own company, we are very flexible with timing of house sitting assignments. We listen carefully to and respect wishes of the house owners and keep them well-informed. We take pride in organizing our house sits well so nothing will fall through the cracks.

Sidney grew up with dogs, cats and horses. We both love working in the garden and have experience with (basic) pruning, weeding and vegetable gardening. As such, we know how to deal with common tooling such as chainsaws, brush cutters, etc.

We are fluent in Dutch and English, and can get by in French and German.