They say that nothing in life is free. It’s true. So although I’m going to tell you how to get your accommodation for free so you can travel your heart out and extend your dollar, don’t expect it to come for nothing.

Instead, you may have to paint murals on the property, or milk goats, or harvest organic ginger, or manage a hostel or campground, or even just be a warm body in an empty house and walk the dog.

Working in trade for accommodation is also called Caretaking. Your room (and sometimes more, like food around a family dinner table if you are remotely located) is provided free of charge, in exchange for your time and effort. Some are skilled positions, and others welcome untrained hands. Some work environments are manual, others are administrative. Some involve long hours, while others yet seem too good to be true (which is rarely the case – trust me)!

The Caretaker Gazette is a premier marketer of a huge variety of caretaking opportunities; they have over 25 years under their belts, so you could say the groundwork has been well-laid. Their huge quarterly reports feature opportunities from North America to Bhutan and beyond. When I initially joined and read a listing to house-sit a vacation property on an island in Micronesia, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Although I didn’t follow up on that opportunity, The Caretaker Gazette paved the way to my learning about permaculture and life off the grid in a Hawaiian paradise, as well as leading eco-treks on llamas and grounds keeping for a five star cottage resort in Australia. In so doing, I also turned down opportunities to manage a fruit-filled property in Ecuador, and tend a mountain resort in Colorado.

One of the beautiful things about caretaking is not only the money you save on accommodation, but the ability to dedicate the time you are not spending working to another craft or stream of income. Artists enjoy using the often remote caretaking locations as creative retreats, and retired couples find that caretaking can be a way to keep busy and stretch their retirement dollars with rent-free living. Professional Hobos like me use the free time to see a new spot in the world, as well as make money with writing to pay for incidentals and transportation to the next destination.

Caretaking positions can last from a few weeks to a few years depending on the job, so there is something for everybody from those taking a shorter trip, to others taking sabbaticals and beyond. Between quarterly gazette installments, regular updates of new positions are emailed to subscribers – sometimes multiple times a week.

So if you are looking for something different, The Caretaker Gazette may open your mind to – quite literally – a world of opportunities.