So What Have You Got... 50, 100, or 200GB?

Well, what do you know… over the last few months we’ve come across another fun aspect of this lifestyle. I suppose some people might consider it a problem and a pain, but I genuinely think it adds an interesting aspect to our daily routine - or at least it does at the moment since it usually only lasts a few days.

So what is it?

Well… believe it or not, we keep running out of internet!

Funnily enough, before we started house-sitting, it never occurred to me that there might be people out there in this big wide world who only had limited internet access - let alone none! But there are you know! Yes! Really! Still!

Therefore, to overcome the risk of us getting caught out and staying in a house with limited access, we actually made being online a requirement of any house we look after. We are, after all, Digital Nomads not Grey Nomads.

The crazy thing is we don’t really use up THAT much internet, or at least I didn’t think we did. Yes, we’re online everyday, but there’s no regular and huge uploading or downloading. Yet towards the end of many months we’re still finding ourselves having to get up during the starlit hours to use the off-peak allowance, or (oh darn!) having to go out to one of these many wonderful local cafes and buying a coffee whilst using their free wi-fi.

Of course, it also makes it harder for me to find reasons for putting off doing my actual writing, which gets so overlooked most of the time (and of course doesn’t need the internet).

So what are the drawbacks, you might ask? Well, no really major ones, in many ways it’s all part of the fun and unpredictability offered by this lifestyle. The main challenge it causes is simple really - I Skype my UK family less. After all, Skyping from a cafe really doesn’t work (even if it’s to Mum!) Does it?

But it does make me wonder… are we actually attracting people with lower internet access divided between peak/off peak times? Alternatively, is it possible that these are the main people looking for house-sitters? Or is it all purely a fluke that we end up together? Who knows? But with the changes in life and the growing popularity of Stan and Netflix, I’m pretty sure I’m not being naive in thinking that the number of small internet plans will be lessening…

(FYI, for those that are curious - I don’t think we’ve ever used more than 100GB of data in a month.)