Summer absences remain a mystery, primarily for the yard. I don’t care about brown grass, except in our area it announces that no one is home. Some dry spells are also long enough that plants and smaller trees can be severely stressed, and I hate to lose those. We have the water turned off at the street during winter, but that won’t work in the summer, while maintaining landscaping. We’re checking the potential to install a new exterior hose-bibb directly after the house meter, and another shut-off valve after the hose bibb supply, so the house can be shut off, but the bibb would still get water. Finding someone responsible to water as needed over an extended time is still an issue, however.
We also have two very senior pets that travel with us in winter. Two weeks with a visiting neighbor or Rover has worked, but not fair to them (imho) for much longer. Trusted Housesitters might be a great option though. Thanks @Lindagaf & @tkoparent. Do you know how long and how remote the earlier visits were for your brother? I’m assuming finding someone to come to a Midwest subdivision for an extended stay, is not high on anyone’s wish-list.
DH solution is sell the house & buy a townhouse. I’m not there yet.
I’m not sure of the answer to your question, but if you look at the Trusted Housesitters website, you can enter a location and see sitters in that area. I just checked yesterday for the location we are moving to, and there were a lot of people local to the area.
Before we go on a trip we always turn of the water at the upstairs washer. In winter we turn off the incoming water at the shut-off valve in the basement. Alas, can’t do so in summer because it also cuts of water to the lawn irrigation. (We’ve talked about having a plumber come in and do changes, but we’ve not yet pursued it.)
What I have to add is that because mail in our area was being stolen out of mailboxes and because the USPS never held the mail consistently we replaced our old (no security) mail box.
I thought our new one would hold only 4 weeks worth but it actually held 7 weeks worth and still had room for about 2 more.(this happened when we were gone for 7 weeks for the delivery of our GD and we held the mail for 30 days then had them deliver the 3 weeks mail, but they never held the mail!)
We had gotten The Vacationer Mailbox from Fort Knox and placed it in the three log structure we already had for our old mailbox.
I actually never liked my old mailbox structure, but the new box actually looks great in it.
Good neighbors are worth their weight in gold. We turn off nothing, esp since they still have to water critters and houseplants. Heat will get turned down in winter and AC turned up in summer, but that’s it for us (other than paying the neighbors - and since they have almost always been kids, they really appreciate the “job”). The parents help as needed, so we’ve also sometimes supplied decent restaurant gift cards.
In the past they have corralled loose ponies, fixed fences, mowed lawns, taken pictures and texted them to us for important mail, and other such things.
We’ve done the same or similar things for our neighbors when they have needs, but few travel as often as we do. I think our longest trips to date have been 6 weeks.
When we had dogs and the kids were kids, we’d have a house sitter. One was a friend of my sister who pretty much lived in other people’s homes.
Now that it’s just us, if we go to our 2nd home we stop the paper, set the alarms, H monitors the cameras, and let the mail stay in the locked mailbox. With USPS informed delivery we can let someone know if there’s something that has to be picked up. If we go away for longer than a week or two, the mail gets stopped and we have someone check occasionally to see if the stoppage failed.
With local family there’s usually someone who can check on things, plus a pretty good set of neighbors who keep an eye out.
When our ramp to the beach decided to disengage and attempt to float away, a neighbor noticed and sent a text to let us know. A FB group for the area keeps us non-full timers informed when there are problems.
