4 Easy Vacation Prep Tips: How to Prep Your House for a Long Vacation

Last updated on October 13th, 2023 at 10:10 pm

If you're taking a long vacation, it's important to make sure your home is ready so you don't come back to an unexpected mess. Vacation prep is key.

4 Easy Vacation Prep Tips: How to Prep Your House for a Long Vacation

This post is a guest submission. Please see our Disclaimer, Disclosures, & Affiliate Notice for details.

If you’re about to go on a longer vacation, simply locking all the doors and shutting all the windows won’t cut it as a way to keep your house in order while you’re absent. Vacation prep is key.

While the many locks and alarms you’ve planned to set up will probably do a good job of preventing any would-be burglars from breaching into your property, there are also other ways in which your property can get compromised.

For example, if you forget to take your trash out and set off on a fortnight-long vacation, you will come back to a house that smells as if hounds of hell all ascended into your living room and all died there.

Also, imagine you forget to turn off all electrical appliances and thunder strikes your roof antenna?

Your entire house can burn down without you even being aware of it. (Your neighbors would certainly notice it, though.)

In this article, we’re going to talk about what preparations you need to complete before you leave your house for an extended period of time. As you will see, it’s all a matter of thinking ahead and covering every eventuality to prevent accidents before they can happen.

Here’s the deal.

Electricity power supply plug and outlet
vacation prep - unplug appliances

Unplug Electrical Appliances

This is one of the key vacation prep tips: If you’re going on an extended vacation, unplugging all of your house appliances (except for maybe the alarm) is a must for two main reasons.

The first reason is that the appliances themselves can malfunction if they are left to work non-stop. This can turn into a particularly big problem if they catch fire and that fire spreads to the rest of your house.

The second reason is that if they keep working, the electricity bill will keep getting bigger and it doesn’t make sense to pay a bill for the electricity you didn’t even use.

Get Rid of Food in the Fridge

… and then turn the fridge off, too.

Since you are going to be absent for more than just a couple of days, you’ll have to get rid of all food from your house, lest it ends up getting spoiled before you come back to it.

As far as the food in your fridge is concerned, you can either eat it all or throw it away – but the goal is that the fridge should be empty so that nothing can rot or otherwise decay in it. Alternatively, though, you can also give some of the food away to your friends or family, so they can preserve it in their freezers until you come back.

Save water

Turn the Water Supply Off

One other sort of disaster that can affect a house other than an electrical problem would certainly be a plumbing issue.

The thing about plumbing is, if a pipe bursts, it can create a flood in your house, which can be a big problem if you aren’t there to tackle the issue straight away.

So, to turn off the water supply to your house, turn shut all the water valves in your house and then run all the taps to empty the pipes of the plumbing system of any remaining water.

This way, you can be sure that all the pipes will be dry and that you won’t have problems with floods any time soon.

Throw Out the Trash

… for pretty much the same reason as emptying your fridge.

Organic matter that stays in the trash bin for too long will start to go bad after a while and then that trash will become the place where germs and bacteria can multiply fairly easily.

While you’re at it, you may also want to address the vermin situation if there is one. This is especially important if you live in a country with a hot climate such as Australia for example, where vermin can multiply quickly and take over your entire house.

If you already have a tricky vermin situation in your home, you can always find a company that can help you with this such as a group of pest control professionals.

Vacation Prep for Peace of Mind

All in all, leaving your house for an extended period of time is a move that requires some preparation in order for it to happen smoothly. Proper vacation prep will allow you to go away and truly relax without worry about your home.

As long as you take every precaution to shut down the major systems in your house before you leave and so prevent terrible things from happening and get rid of the food, too, you should be A-ok.

Blogger

Ayla Anderson is an avid reader and an enthusiastic blogger who writes articles on home improvement, business, Family and beauty. She is also an MBA student who spends much of her time giving advice to newly small businesses on how to grow their businesses. You can follow her on Twitter.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like:

Scroll to Top