When she retired last year at 75, Janine Klay decided to move out of her rental apartment and sell almost everything she owned to mind people's homes and pets full-time.
Janine, who was born in Melbourne and eventually settled in Canberra to work as a chef, has spent the past nine months moving between homes in the ACT, Victoria and NSW, choosing to live a nomadic lifestyle.
She is now booked with back-to-back house sits until March next year.
"Because I moved to Canberra for a job, and then stayed much longer than I thought I would, I was still renting, and I just thought, well, if I'm going to retire, do I really want to sit in one place and learn to play golf or learn to knit?" she says.
"And both were equally unappealing."
While her lifestyle requires her to be constantly on the move, Janine says she likes the freedom and variety it offers. In between stints, she stays in serviced apartments or motels for a few days, occasionally returning to Canberra for a breather.
She does this interview after spending some time on Melbourne's Phillip Island while staying in Tuggeranong for a two-day stopover. The next location, she says, is Broughton Village in the Illawarra to look after two dogs up in the temperate rainforest.
"A lot of people choose [this lifestyle] because of the financial benefit, because if they're travelling they're not paying for accommodation, but there are a lot of obligations to it as well - and it's not for the fainthearted," she says.
"The disadvantages are the insecurity of not knowing where you're going to be in three months, but the advantages are that you get to go and stay in interesting places."
Janine, who has been married twice previously and has no children, says she has received some negativity from people who worry about her decision to rely on house-sitting gigs because of her age.
"My philosophy has been that you could become dreadfully ill at 22, so life doesn't have any guarantees, and if anything happens, you deal with it," she says.
House-sitting has become an increasingly popular way to cope with rising rents and a limited supply of affordable housing for a growing number of Australians.
A spokesperson for the house-sitting website Aussie House Sitters confirmed that registrations to the site have risen around 20 per cent each year since Covid-19, partly driven by "exorbitant rental prices".
While house-sitting removes the cost of rent and utilities, Janine says other expenses such as travel, insurance and fuel costs mean the lifestyle is not a great way to generate significant savings.
She says most homeowners she has worked with have generally reported positive experiences using pet sitters. There are horror stories, though, where animals were neglected and the house was treated simply as a base for travel by the person staying over.
Despite some of the costs and uncertainties, Janine says she has no plans to stop in the near future. She eventually plans to travel to Southeast Asia to live as a nomad full-time.
"For me, it's gold. But I'm sure some people try it and just think, no, I don't like the insecurity of it, but give it a go, and don't let age be the restriction, because it seems that older sitters are more in demand in some places," she says.
