It has become clear that we will need some variant of a house-sitter when we're gone. We arrived home from Michigan last night and it appears that a crew of mice have been taking care of the place. Just like us, they seemed to spend most of their time in the kitchen and sunroom (rooting through the kids' toy baskets) but in time they found their way to the bedrooms too. I spent half the day today cleaning away mouse droppings, and now I'm sitting at the computer, listening to the traps click.
It's a hundred-year-old house. These things happen. My job is to detect rodents' presence and set traps. My dear husband does the rest. So far we're two down; who knows how many to go.
Want to hear the funny thing? Tomorrow I'm going to pick up our pet hamster from a friend's house. Mental note - remove the trap from the boys' room before Little Guy gets back. We don't want any collateral damage.
When we got home last night, I had not made it in the door before J was on the phone inviting friends to come play. Between 7 and 9 pm we had nine friends stop by. It's good to be home.
SO here are the things that need to be done once a week to maintain the house while we're gone:
Run water in all the sinks and flush all the toilets so the s-traps don't dry up and allow stinky sewer gas into the house.
Check for rodents; set traps; remove bodies.
Water the plants (over the summer I just move them to the back deck and they survive on rainwater but come November that's not going to work out).
Start the car and drive it around the block to prevent the tires from flattening.
In the week before we return, we need a housekeeper to give it a heavy duty all around cleaning - dust settles when we're gone, and everything gets a thick coating. The air smells musty and the water tastes funny.
