More on Housesitting

This post was written by Colleen Easley on January 30, 2008

If you’re interested in housesitting, you might want to surf over to The Savvy Boomer blog as there is an article there that recommends another housesitting web site, MindMyHouse. In fact, if you’re over 50 you will certainly find something of interest at the Savvy Boomer because it’s all about being a boomer!

Housesitting – It Brings Peace of Mind

This post was written by Colleen Easley on January 29, 2008

Last summer both Dale and I left our home in Washington to work in Alaska. For the past 14 years I had been spending my summers in Alaska working as a tour guide, but this year Dale was asked to come up as well to work as our motorcoach operations manager. For months prior we agonized over whether this would be a good move for him. We do, after all, have a house, a yard, and two cats to take care of. It would be impossible to just pick up and leave without someone to take care of things at home.

How could we find a housesitter?

I got on-line and did some research on housesitters and found a great resource in HouseCarers.com. This web site shares the profiles of thousands of people all over the world who are looking to either house sit or hire a housesitter. After filling out our profile and stating exactly what we were looking for in the way of a house sitter, the offers started to roll in.

We read the profiles of the people who were expressing an interest, and if they looked like a possibility, we would private message them back. Once you’ve communicated with a person on the web for awhile, you get to the point where you can decide if you’d like to exchange more private information like phone numbers and email addresses.

Like I said, we had lots of offers, but one stood out from the rest. It was a couple who had both recently retired from major companies in this area and moved to Arizona for retirement. They were not, however, too interested in spending the hot summer in Arizona and wanted to come back up here to be near their grown children.

They were coming up to Washington in April for their son’s wedding, so we had plenty of time to set up a meeting. We first met them for dinner at a local restaurant, and after that we felt comfortable asking them over to the house. Soon we came to a mutual decision that this would be a good working arrangement for both of us. I can only say that you have to listen to your gut feelings once you get to this point. For us these folks just “seemed right.”

Since we were both familiar with the guidelines of HouseCarers.com we all knew basically what to expect in the way of contracts and responsibilities. I was able to download a sample house sitting agreement from the web site and with a few modifications, made it work for us.

The HouseCarers site will answer many of your questions about housesitting. If you’re even remotely interested in getting a house sitter, or being a house sitter, we suggest you surf over there to do some reading. Here are some topics you’ll find interesting.

• What is House Sitting?
• What are the advantages of using a house sitter?
• What are the standard guidelines of a house sitting agreement?
• Why do people register to housesit?
• Who pays the bills during housesitting?
• Will house sitting affect my homeowners insurance?
• Should I require a bond or security deposit from my house sitter?
• How do homeowners and house sitters register and communicate?
• Making your decision – Steps to selecting your housesitter.
• Finalizing the arrangement – preparing a house sitting contract

What does it cost?

As a homeowner looking for a housesitter, you can register for free. If you’re the person looking to be a housesitter, there is a $45 annual membership fee. There is, however, a limited non-paid membership that allows you to try out the service, but does not allow you to actually apply for housesits.

So how did it work out for us?

It worked great! I have to admit, we were a little nervous about the whole thing to start with, but finding someone who had been well respected in our community prior to moving away was a big plus. They took care of our house like it was their own, and managed to keep the yard work in check. They also took good care of our cats.

One thing to caution you about if you have animals – be sure your housesitter knows how to reach your vet and that you have a payment option set up with the vet before you leave home. One of our cats, shown here, required a $250 surgery while we were gone, so I was grateful that HouseCarers.com had reminded me to make sure to include veterinary information in the agreement. We also had an issue with a broken water pipe while we were gone, and again, because we had included information on what plumber to call, our housesitters were able to get it resolved quickly.

And to top off our experience, our housesitters have recently contacted us again to see if we’re going to Alaska this summer because they want to stay in our house again. We haven’t decided yet on Alaska, but at least this year the decision will come easier.

So What’s the Take Away?

If you’re planning a trip and want your house to have that lived in look while you’re gone, or if you’re looking for a place to stay for short or longer term, take a look into housesitting. It’s another way to experience new places without spending a lot of money.

The Chinese Bamboo Tree and Other Lessons on Patience

This post was written by A Guest Contributor on January 28, 2008

by Charlie Dexter

Do you remember back in the 60’s when Simon and Garfunkel sang the 59th Street Bridge song? ( if you remember the 60’s you probably weren’t there…) The duo advised us to “slow down, we move too fast…” What a laugh thinking about the speed of the 60’s compared with how fast we are actually moving today! We live today in an instant results – or else – world. If a politician doesn’t produce instant results to our liking we boot the bum out and vote in some other bum. If a corporate CEO doesn’t produce an instant turnaround, then that bum is on unemployment too. If the drive through on Airport Way doesn’t give us fast – fast food we get testy and swear to never go back there again, until next time. It’s a fast pace world we’ve created for ourselves.

Unfortunately, we are trying to live our fast paced lifestyle in what is naturally a slow paced world. Zig Ziglar, the famous motivational speaker, once told the story of the Chinese Bamboo Tree. It seems that this tree when planted, watered, and nurtured for an entire growing season doesn’t outwardly grow as much as an inch. Then, after the second growing season, a season in which the farmer takes extra care to water, fertilize and care for the bamboo tree, the tree still hasn’t sprouted. So it goes as the sun rises and sets for four solid years. The farmer and his wife have nothing tangible to show for all of their labor trying to grow the tree.

Then, along comes year five.

In the fifth year that Chinese bamboo tree seed finally sprouts and the bamboo tree grows up to eighty feet in just one growing season! Or so it seems….

Did the little tree lie dormant for four years only to grow exponentially in the fifth? Or, was the little tree growing underground, developing a root system strong enough to support its potential for outward growth in the fifth year and beyond? The answer is, of course, obvious. Had the tree not developed a strong unseen foundation it could not have sustained its life as it grew. The same principle is true for people. People, who patiently toil towards worthwhile dreams and goals, building strong character while overcoming adversity and challenge, grow the strong internal foundation to handle success, while get-rich- quickers and lottery winners usually are unable to sustain unearned sudden wealth.

Had the Chinese bamboo farmer dug up his little seed every year to see if it was growing, he would have stunted the tree’s growth as surely as a caterpillar is doomed to a life on the ground if it is freed from its struggle inside a cocoon prematurely. The struggle in the cocoon is what gives the future butterfly the wing power to fly, just as tension against muscles as we exercise strengthen our muscles, while muscles left alone will soon atrophy. My problem with exercise is not getting instantly stronger after each work out! I pray for more patience every day and I pray to get it right now!

We live in a quick-fix society. We get frustrated if we have to wait more than 2 minutes for service or a stop light to change. We want instant solutions to every complex problem and every fractured relationship. In short – we want it all now! Maybe its time to reflect on an old, old poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that is as true today as it was when he wrote it over 100 years ago:

“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Toiled ever upward through the night.”

Charlie Dexter is a professor of applied business at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Tanana Valley Campus. He can be reached at 455-2837 or ffcnd@uaf.edu. This column is provided as a public service of the TVC Applied Business Department. Copies of this column can be found at www.CharlieDexter.com.

Tumwater Falls Park

This post was written by Colleen Easley on

I took this photo on November 4, 2007 at Tumwater Falls Park in Tumwater, WA. The park is next to the site of the old Olympia Brewery and has a very nice walking trail. It’s a great place to go walking any time of year, but if you go in October you can watch salmon coming up the fish ladder to head up the Deschutes River to their spawning grounds.

Catalog Choice – Good For You and the Environment!

This post was written by Colleen Easley on January 27, 2008

Were you as overwhelmed with catalogs this past holiday season as we were? If you’re like most Americans, you probably were. It just makes me sick to think of all the resources that go into printing and mailing all those catalogs. For awhile I was saving them all in one big box just to see how many we got. I finally threw them into the recycling bin when the stack got to be about a foot tall! I personally try very hard to stay out of stores during the holidays, but I don’t shop from catalogs; I do my shopping on-line. It just seems like the greener way to shop.

Well hopefully next Christmas I won’t be getting so many catalogs because just before Christmas I found a website called Catalog Choice. Catalog Choice is a free service that allows you to opt-out of getting paper catalogs in the mail. To use Catalog Choice, you’ll need to create an on-line account. You’ll also need copies of the catalogs you want to opt-out from because you’ll need your customer number off the back.

Once I had my account set up it was easy to decline the catalogs I didn’t want to get any longer. It takes some time (up to ten weeks) for the merchants to take you off their mailing lists, but if after that time period, you still continue to receive declined catalogs, you can report the infraction to Catalog Choice and they will follow up with the merchant.

One great feature of the service is they allow you to list multiple addresses and names. This was good for us because some catalogs came to me and some to Dale. Some to the home address and some to the PO Box. Having the actual catalog in front of us when opting-out insured we had the right name, address and customer number to enter.

As I write this, I’m reading the blog over at Catalog Choice and see that they were actually featured on the Today Show 2 days ago. What a coincidence! I’ve had links to Catalog Choice on some of my other sites for several months and have been meaning to write this article for a couple days now, so I’m sorry I missed the show. I’m overjoyed that the site is gaining so much publicity. 57,000 new members signed up on January 25th as a direct result of the Today Show. It shows that people are really wanting to clean out their mailboxes and help reduce waste. There are now over 500,000 people enrolled who are opting out of almost 6 million catalogs! Cutting down on catalog waste is good for everyone, including the merchants by lowering their costs of distribution and helping them better target their marketing.

So What’s the Take Away?

“The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate which catalogs they no longer wish to receive, and businesses can receive a list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs.” – Catalog Choice mission statement

So what do you think? Are you going to enroll at Catalog Choice? Have you already enrolled? We’d like to hear your comments. I think it’s too early to tell if it’s working for me yet since it hasn’t yet been 10 weeks. Most of my declined catalogs are still showing as unconfirmed, but a few are confirmed. At least none are refused!