“I Lived in 50 Homes Over Two Years. Here’s What It Taught Me”
With no rent to pay and no permanent address, journalist Megan Lawton spent two years “trying on” the lives of the people whose homes she house-sat.
Until I moved to Canada, I had never really given much thought to the idea of home.
Call me basic, but at the age of 30, the homes I'd chosen had mostly been dictated by work. When a job took me from London to Birmingham, then Manchester, I'd find an affordable rental within easy reach of the office, and if there happened to be a good pub nearby, a park, a decent coffee shop, that was a bonus.
Then, in March 2024, my partner and I moved to Canada and started house-sitting.
Over the next two years, we lived in more than 50 homes, and cared for well over fifty varieties of dogs, cats, reptiles, and sheep. We slept in downtown apartments, country cottages, remote cabins and enormous suburban houses. We woke up beside lakes and mountains, in leafy neighborhoods and in cities where everything we needed was a short walk away.
Initially, it started out as a way of saving money, but somewhere along the way, we realized house-sitting had become a constant experiment in how we might want to live.
Every few weeks, we'd step into somebody else's life, and essentially cosplay it. We'd walk their dog along their usual route. We'd cook in their kitchen, sleep in their bedroom, read books from their shelves and watch TV on their couch. Then we'd leave and try somewhere else.
Slowly, we started noticing how much these new environments were affecting us. In cluttered or dimly lit homes, we argued more. In some suburban neighborhoods, I felt restless, while in a cabin miles from anywhere, I was completely content.
Beyond the interiors and exteriors, I saw just how many ways there are to build a life. In most house-sits, we would briefly get to know the owners, and naturally – because we were house-sitting – the chat focused on the home.
Some explained they had chosen city life, whilst others had escaped it. Some had built a family home; others were downsizing. Living temporarily in so many people's homes made me realize there wasn't one obvious way to build a life; there were dozens of possibilities. Presented with so many, I wasn't sure which one I wanted.
A life I could have chosen
One of our first house-sits was in the manicured, suburban home of a successful, professional couple who had gone away on their babymoon.
I'd just turned 31, and the mum-to-be (let’s call her Layla), whose home we were looking after, was around the same age. That coincidence stayed with me.
There I was, deliberately shaking up my life, leaving the UK and trying out a way of living that had very little permanence to it. And here was Layla, my contemporary, nesting down in a very different version of adulthood.
Their home was stunning; a polished semi-detached house, with cream velvet sofas, crisp pale rugs and fresh magnolias by the front door.
In many of the rented homes I had previously lived, the furniture had accumulated rather than been chosen. You and your housemates would find a sofa on Facebook Marketplace, each add a few books to the communal shelf and inherit a table from someone's parents. The home was essentially a record of who had lived there.
This was different. Everything here was intentional. There was a sense that these people had made decisions not simply about where they wanted to live, but about how they wanted to live, curating a space that was theirs.
It struck me that this could have been my life. At 31, I could have been choosing the house, designing the nursery, watering the magnolias.
Another house-sit taught me something different
For three glorious weeks, we stayed in a manor house in one of Toronto's most affluent neighborhoods. It was enormous: six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and an entire basement floor with its own built-in bar. I loved it. I also felt out of place.
As I would later learn from speaking with psychologists, we tend to feel most comfortable when our surroundings mirror our tastes, memories, routines and the kind of life we want to lead.
The manor house, filled with portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Union Jack decorative tea sets and a wood-paneled office, reflected its owners perfectly. It just didn't reflect me.
Ultimately, those three weeks felt like a novel holiday, rather than a home base.
The house that felt like me
About a year into our house-sitting adventure, we arrived at a one-bedroom maisonette in Vancouver. Of all the places we lived, this is the one I would choose to return to.
By this point, we had stayed in homes with beaches on their doorstep and mountain ranges outside the window. We'd lived in places with home gyms, cinema rooms and gardens that seemed to go on forever. This wasn't any of those things.
The couple who owned the maisonette were in their mid-thirties, had no children and had a wonderful dog. Their home was modern without feeling like a showroom. A huge, welcoming sofa, adorned with textured cushions. Colorful artwork lined the walls. Lush green plants. A balcony strung with fairy lights. A bedroom that felt calm. A small home office. And a large dining space fit for hosting family and friends.
And then there was the neighborhood. The flat overlooked a community park. A 15-minute walk took you to a high street filled with cafés, pubs, restaurants, yoga studios and shops.
Unlike some of our previous homes, nothing about it was quote, unquote ‘extraordinary’, but that, I guess, was the point. I could imagine my life there.
A mountain view is wonderful, as is a cinema room. But I’ve come to think those touches are best suited to being on holiday, where you can appreciate the novelty of it all. In everyday life, I've realized first-hand it's less important to have the things that look impressive and more important to build around the things you actually get up to.
Too many possible lives
The three house-sits I've shared make it sound straightforward, like Goldilocks trying three types of porridge before finding her favorite.
Alas, we didn't just try three homes. We tried more than 50, and there was a strange downside to having so many options: it was completely overwhelming.
Through moving home every few weeks, I started to understand that home wasn't just somewhere you lived. It shapes the way you spend your days, the people you see, the pace of things. That was exciting, but it was also unsettling, because I also discovered we were adaptable and could comfortably settle into many new homes, often within days.
If all these different versions of life were possible, how was I supposed to know which one I wanted?
I fell in love with a home by the beach, and for a while my boyfriend and I thought Brighton could be our next UK home. I equally loved a home surrounded by epic forests, so we floated the Peak District.
But coming back to the UK forced us to ground those fantasies in reality. Our time in Canada had, in many ways, been one long working holiday. We had been able to move around, try things on and leave when they stopped working. Life at home comes with different considerations, like our careers, families and friends.
I wish I could say I'm writing this from the home we've chosen. The one where all those lessons finally came together. But we're still searching.
Like many, we're also at the mercy of the housing market, and our budget puts some fairly obvious limits on where and what we can buy. So, we're having to balance the things we've learned with the reality.
But that's probably another valuable lesson house-sitting has taught me: you can change your mind about where you live.
Over two years, we met people who had done exactly that. We met homeowners who had moved from the US to Canada, and others who had gone the other way. We met couples who had left cities behind for remote islands. We stayed in homes belonging to people who had changed careers, started families, or decided they wanted a completely different pace of life.
We also met people who had moved after divorce, choosing a new city that felt more aligned with who they were becoming rather than staying somewhere simply because it was where they had always lived.
There was something reassuring about seeing this up close. Of course, a home can be forever, if you want it to be. But it can also be somewhere you live until it no longer fits, and then you can start all over again.
Make a House a Home
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