Road trippers--preparing your home before you go

[whitestavern]

For those of you who have taken road trips of 4+ weeks, how have you prepared? I'm talking about things like turning off your water, getting someone to mow your lawn, etc. What about your finances? Do you pay all your bills ahead of time? What do you do about your mail? Do you just hold it? Forward it? Do you have someone stay at your house or come regularly to check on it? I need to make a list of all these things, and I'm sure there are many I haven't even though of yet. Thanks in advance for your help!

[Spryte]

For those of you who have taken road trips of 4+ weeks, how have you prepared? I'm talking about things like turning off your water, getting someone to mow your lawn, etc. What about your finances? Do you pay all your bills ahead of time? What do you do about your mail? Do you just hold it? Forward it? Do you have someone stay at your house or come regularly to check on it? I need to make a list of all these things, and I'm sure there are many I haven't even though of yet. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

 

Set the thermostat to a reasonable temp, turn down the hot water heater. Hold the mail/paper or have a neighbor pick it up. Lights on timers. Yard work arranged in advance.

 

We have an arrangement trading off with our neighbors, so they come in and check on things periodically. We have aquatic animals that need to be checked in on every few days, so the neighbors do that.

 

Do you have an alarm system? Make sure your emergency contacts have up to date keys and passwords. Let the alarm company know you're gone.

 

We usually let the other neighbors know we're gone, too, so they can keep an eye out.

[Pawz4me]

The longest we've been gone is three weeks. We did the following (and do the same things even for shorter trips) --

 

Set the thermostat at a reasonable temperature (depending on time of year, heat or AC)

Hire someone to do the yard work

Turn off water

Turn off water heater

Unplug all easily unplugged appliances

Put a few lights on timers

Contact USPS and have them hold the mail.

We pay almost all bills online, so that's not a problem

MIL comes by at least every other day to check on things and feed the cats, water plants, etc.

We don't get the newspaper, but if we did we'd arrange to have delivery stopped temporarily

[AmyontheFarm]

I pour just a bit of a nice smelling soap like a Lysol cleaner down each sink. When we come back the bathrooms don't smell funky. I also was able to plan one time to recaulk the bathroom right before I left for 9 days. It was great because the caulking was able to really dry before we had to use the bathroom again. The caulking job has outlasted every other bathroom in the house. We also toss a Clorax bleach tablet in our sump pump hole again to make sure so stinky smells build up.

 

Take a water bottle half full, lay it on it's side and freeze it solid. Then when you leave, stand it up in the freezer, you'll know if you lost power for a very long time when you got home because the water will have melted and refroze differently in the bottle. That will let you know if you need to toss anything from the freezer. Also, make sure your kids don't help you get something from the freezer and leave the door open just before you leave for a few days (luckily, my MIL came over an hour later and saw it open and shut it!)

[Excelsior! Academy]

I can tell you what to not do. I read once to pour a little cleaner in the toilets before leaving to prevent sale water. We did and it burned the inside of our toilets. They looked dirty all of the time. It was disgusting!

 

We don't usually travel for a solid month at a time, but we always have mail held, someone to check on the house or board pets, alert trustworthy neighbors. Bills we just pay while we are gone online or just before leaving or after returning. We have generally had a lawn service, so mowing was taken care of.

 

Of course, if you live in an area prone to freezing you might drip a faucet or two. We try to plan trips during times we can avoid this.

[whitestavern]

Thanks for all the great advice. For those of you who have people come check the house, do you pay them, and if so, how much?

[coralloyd]

For those of you who have taken road trips of 4+ weeks, how have you prepared? I'm talking about things like turning off your water, getting someone to mow your lawn, etc. What about your finances? Do you pay all your bills ahead of time? What do you do about your mail? Do you just hold it? Forward it? Do you have someone stay at your house or come regularly to check on it? I need to make a list of all these things, and I'm sure there are many I haven't even though of yet. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Well we are on a trip right now. I am not a supper organized person. So I do things as easy as possible.

 

Where we live weather is pretty mild right now. We just turned the heat off.

 

We don't have a lawn. But we have scheduled our yard guy to come and clip the bushes pull weeds etc. before. We know him well so we pay ahead or when we get back. We didn't do that this time. We might have a jungle when we get back lol.

 

All our bills are either automatic withdrawal from the bank or paid online.

 

My parents live about 3 minutes away. They pick up our mail and check on the house everyday. They offer to do things sometimes that are hard to get done when you are home; like clean the stove (because of the awful smell) or clean out the fridge really well. They also take any leftover food we have in the fridge. Yes, I am very blessed to have such great parents.

 

I also try to leave the house as clean as possible and with as little laundry as possible because I don't like to come home and take care of the rv mess and the house mess.

 

ETA: We do unplug everything. We do not turn off the water or put anything in the toilets or sinks. We have never had a problem with smells, etc...

[mumto2]

Due to dh's work I am an old hand at this. We travel frequently for long periods. These are some of the things we have learned. It normally goes smoothly but things do go wrong sometimes.

 

Depending on where the home is we sometimes cover the toilet with plastic wrap. This prevents all the water from evaporating and has the added bonus of preventing unusual visitors. One house we had frogs -- they died.:( A bit of bleach in the toilet water helps too.

 

Turn appliances off if possible unless someone will be in frequently. Our freezer was hit by lightening when we were gone for three weeks. No one discovered it. The mess we came home to was huge. It was throughout the house -- hundreds of flys. Absolutely disgusting. If you want to leave your freezer on try to eat it down a bit. Limit you exposure. I do.

 

Make sure your neighbors know that you have lights on a timer and which rooms they are in. Our neighbors called the police because we had a "break in" -- yep two weeks into our vacation our neighbors noticed a light in ds bedroom, the timer had been on every night for two weeks but we had never put the timer in his room before so ...... it was somehow our fault.

 

Whoever is collecting our mail has permission to open if it looks unusual. Sometimes we forward sometimes a friend gets it. Odd things happen when we are gone as you can tell. Much better to get a phone call so you canfix the problem.

 

 

I clean like crazy before leaving. It makes the return much easier.

[J-rap]

We were gone for a year. We left our home one afternoon, thinking it would be one night, and it was one year instead (for emergency reasons). It was pretty crazy. We had dear friends who came and re-set our thermostat and put timers on our front porch lights. Our neighbors mowed our lawn, and another neighbor shoveled snow. We forwarded all of our mail. Someone walked through the house once or twice/week. I don't think we did anything else.

 

Next year, we PLAN to be gone for four months. We'll be out of the country, so I'm not sure how we'll handle mail. I suppose we'll do as much online payments as possible. Lights on a timer, a neighbor to shovel the main sidewalk so it looks like someone is home, and someone to check in the house regularly, at least once/week.

 

Oh, another year we were gone on a planned trip for about 3-1/2 weeks. We asked a college-age young man to stay there the whole time. It worked out great!

[Jennifer3141]

We hire a pet sitter who stays with all the animals at this point. She's expensive but then we don't have to worry about the house or pets. :)