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As you know www.LocalEye.co.za provides a home care or home watch service in Cape Town’s False Bay or Southern Peninsula area. We often get people asking us about house sitting and home care when they leave home for a week or many months.

We decided to define  house sitting and  compare it to home care or home watch.

According to Wikipedia: House sitting (or bedsitting) is the practice whereby a landlord (or “homeowner”), leaving his house for a period of time, entrusts it to one or more “house sitters”, who by a mutual agreement are entitled to live there rent-free in exchange for assuming responsibilities such as taking care of the homeowner’s pets, performing general maintenance (including pools, lawns, air-conditioning systems etc.), keeping trespassers off the property, readdressing the mail, and in general, making sure that everything runs smoothly just as if the owner were at home.

It is also generally implied that crime is deterred by the presence of the house sitter.

The whole practice is open to negotiation, notably as to whether a security deposit is required by the homeowner and whether a money payment should be made from one of the parties involved (as its share of the benefits is larger: typically, this is considered to be the house sitter).

This is a very neat definition of what House Sitting is and it will help me to define what Home Care or Home Watch is:

House Care or House Watch is the practice whereby a landlord (or “homeowner”), leaving his house for a period of time, entrust it to one home caretaker, who by mutual agreement assume responsibility for the home, such as doing weekly inspections in and around the house, performing maintenance or arranging and supervising maintenance, such as pool cleaning, window cleaning, emptying the post box, re-addressing post, respond to alarms, welcoming self catering guest, arrange to stock the home with foods and drinks.

Basically taking care of the home, without living in it, until the owners return.

Rather than living in the home while the homeowner is gone, the house watcher visits the home periodically to perform the aforementioned tasks.

www.LocalEye.co.za provides a home care or home watch service and not a home sitter service. If you need a home sitter as defined above or a pet sitter then we can recommend great people.

You have been a way from home, you arrive at the airport and then had to take the trip via Strandfontein, all the way to the Southern Peninsula, past Muizenberg, the lovely St. James, watching whales (if your lucky), through Fish Hoek were you can go to Simon’s Town or Noord Hoek. And you think, "is it not great to be back in the nicest place in the world".

But when you get home you realised that friends or family who stayed at your house left it empty!

No food, nothing to drink and the bedding isn’t clean.

You don’t feel like shopping and not even thinking of cleaning your home.

But it has to be done.

Why was it not done?

Or let’s look at the scenario where you have friends and colleagues who you invited to stay while you may be late or may not arrive until a week from now:

Let Your Local Eye Take Care:

• We freshen up
• We open, welcome and give the key
• We arrange food and drinks
• We arrange to keep your friends, family and colleagues busy
• We unleak the roof leaked and stop the dripped all over the floor
• And we do what you want

All these home care issues can be and will be resolved by your Local Eye. Because we take care when you are not there. Today, tomorrow and the next day. And we will even take care when you are there.