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How do you manage your house, pets, etc. while on such a lengthy cruise?


OnTheJourney
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We've been house sitting for the past 3+ years while seeking a place and property to buy (which will come <2 months before a long-planned but short cruise), some of whom have gone away for months (4 continuous months is the longest but not on a cruise).

 

Pets. Your dogs will miss you initially (some of them will anyway, not all) but they'll get over it. This is from a population of ~ 20 dogs. Some of the dogs preferred me to their owners as I took them out for more and longer walks. The cat likely won't give a rip for the most part if they never see you again (our experience with ~ a dozen).

 

If your house sits empty, be sure to comply with your home insurer's policy re: prolonged absences. Some require the house to be visited every few days, not be vacant over a certain length, or take precautions (most likely turning off water, keeping temperature above a certain threshold in winter).

 

Depending on your property, location and responsibilities, you may be able to get someone to house sit for you for free (we've never charged).

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  • 2 weeks later...
We've had several postmasters over the past few years ... I guess we've been fortunate! We know we can't assume that will always be the case.

Regarding payment of bills ... we are still dinosaurs who write checks :eek: (if you can imagine such a thing!). We are able to estimate expenses and prepay all of our bills before we leave. I don't know what we'll do for a WC, I would like to set up electronic payments, but Mr Chew is adamantly opposed. We'll see what happens!

 

Does he live in the 18th century.? Who actually writes checks today? Even when we don't travel, we pay 100% of our bills automatically and have been doing it for years. Anyone who pays bills by checks is being very old fashioned.

 

DON

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Enjoyed reading this thread. What do people do about services, like water or cable tv or internet? do you cancel and reconnect upon return? does the company allow you to stop being billed for non-use otherwise?

The longest I've been away is ninety days so far. I still use electricity for security lights, lights on a timer, and HVAC, but turn off circuit breakers for everything else, even the emptied refrigerator.

Probably another good idea is to remove batteries from remote controls.

What I do for mail is to have the hold delivered at the 30 day mark, have a family member pick it up from my mailbox, and then I regenerate another 30 day hold over the internet. I suppose if I were at sea, I would have said family member regenerate the hold for me.

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Enjoyed reading this thread. What do people do about services, like water or cable tv or internet? do you cancel and reconnect upon return? does the company allow you to stop being billed for non-use otherwise?

The longest I've been away is ninety days so far. I still use electricity for security lights, lights on a timer, and HVAC, but turn off circuit breakers for everything else, even the emptied refrigerator.

Probably another good idea is to remove batteries from remote controls.

What I do for mail is to have the hold delivered at the 30 day mark, have a family member pick it up from my mailbox, and then I regenerate another 30 day hold over the internet. I suppose if I were at sea, I would have said family member regenerate the hold for me.

 

Some cable companies and internet providers have provision for a highly reduced price, or even no cost, "hold" on services if you are away for an extended period. Call yours to find out what they might offer.

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Mulling over asking next door neighbor to start up our vehicles once a month or just hook up battery trickle chargers.

 

FYI, in doing some basic research for maintaining our car batteries, one apparently should use what's called a 'float' charger. A trickle charger might overcharge a battery, unless it has an automatic switch-over from a trickle charge to a lower float charge when the battery is fully charged.

Our $.02

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:o

(three4RD: BTW...moving to a 55+ community was the best decision ever!) Downsizing frees you up for so much more in life! (Like a WC!)

 

The day may well come yet! Taking care of my property certainly is not as easy at 61 as it was 10 years ago or more! Definitely starting to think about it more and more.

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We utilize a key-holder service. These are security professionals, usually retired police officers. They patrol in marked vehicles and are armed.

 

They monitor the mailbox and send us first class mail; water the plants, ensure the house looks lived in; bring in stray newspapers and flyers left in driveway and mailbox; rotate the curtains and blinds; respond to security system alarms, including intruder, water, and freeze alarms; handle emergencies (ie power outages and water leaks); randomly patrol the premises; start the car; flush toilets and circulate water; etc.

 

No matter where I am, I know that there are professionals who can handle just about anything that could happen to my home in my absence. No need to depend on neighbors, who might be away for the day, or relatives who are busy working.

 

It's a business; and I'm willing to pay for the service. :D

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We utilize a key-holder service. These are security professionals, usually retired police officers. They patrol in marked vehicles and are armed.

 

They monitor the mailbox and send us first class mail; water the plants, ensure the house looks lived in; bring in stray newspapers and flyers left in driveway and mailbox; rotate the curtains and blinds; respond to security system alarms, including intruder, water, and freeze alarms; handle emergencies (ie power outages and water leaks); randomly patrol the premises; start the car; flush toilets and circulate water; etc.

 

No matter where I am, I know that there are professionals who can handle just about anything that could happen to my home in my absence. No need to depend on neighbors, who might be away for the day, or relatives who are busy working.

 

It's a business; and I'm willing to pay for the service. :D

 

Sounds interesting. Please send me a PM with the name of this service, if you please. landryrk at gmail dot com.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Sounds interesting. Please send me a PM with the name of this service, if you please. landryrk at gmail dot com.

 

 

 

Also there is a web site Housesitter.com that will arrange a number of people to come live in your home- they will watch out for your animals house and other tasks . You pay your normal bills and the sitters live for free.

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

My husband stopped in at the post office last week.

As there are pieces of mail which are not forwarded, sending the mail to one of our kids will not be a viable option.

We have a retired police officer who checks our house every week when we are away.

The post office agreed to having mail held for 30 days at a time and having our designated person pick it up.

He will then take it to our house and put it in a (really big) basket for our return.

We will just fill out the requests and take them in to the post office.

I hope that this helps someone else who might be wondering what to do regarding mail.

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My husband stopped in at the post office last week.

As there are pieces of mail which are not forwarded, sending the mail to one of our kids will not be a viable option.

We have a retired police officer who checks our house every week when we are away.

The post office agreed to having mail held for 30 days at a time and having our designated person pick it up.

He will then take it to our house and put it in a (really big) basket for our return.

We will just fill out the requests and take them in to the post office.

I hope that this helps someone else who might be wondering what to do regarding mail.

I think the post office will forward first class mail. The other classes tend to be junk mail. Do you really want those as well ?

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I think the post office will forward first class mail. The other classes tend to be junk mail. Do you really want those as well ?

 

We have a home up North. (We live in Florida)

Our water bill for the Northern home does not get forwarded and this creates chaos for the water company up there.:D

My husband's pension stuff does not get forwarded either, and they get all perturbed.

Our home watch person will toss the crap( usually cruise brochures :D) and keep the stuff we need, like tax info etc.

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  • 1 month later...

We leave for San Francisco in 15 days to join the Queen Elizabeth World Cruise.

So far the most problematic arrangement has been the medication Vacation Over ride.

This has been a nightmare of epic proportions.

We live in Florida. It is flu season. Our local CVS is a version of Dantes's 7th circle of hell.

We have spent over 4.5 hours on four different phone calls with our insurance company over the course of the past two weeks.

I have spent hours in lines at our CVS (remember it is flu season) and each time I am told;"We put in the request and they denied it." Well, that is supposedly how it works and once the insurance company rejects it you are supposed to try again at which point it should over ride.

I am so frustrated I am ready to simply tell them that I will pay cash and get on with my life.

So, just a heads up for anyone trying this next year.

I thought it would have been one of the easiest things to deal with. It has not been.

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One person asked about water bills while the house is empty. I teach during the academic year and am gone during the summer. The water bill is about $32 each month whether I am home or gone. There is probably a minimum charge and I don’t use enough water to get charged more than the minimum. The local municipality will charge me $1 if I want to pay by credit card or on-line, which I stubbornly will not do. Instead, I write a check for about 6 months of usage and pre-pay. I hate writing checks so this way I only write a check twice a year. I do the same thing w my HOA fees. It’s not like I’m losing any interest by prepaying my bills.

I’m dreaming of a WC someday, but I might ease into it by first doing segments of one. Enjoy!

 

 

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We leave for San Francisco in 15 days to join the Queen Elizabeth World Cruise.

So far the most problematic arrangement has been the medication Vacation Over ride.

This has been a nightmare of epic proportions.

We live in Florida. It is flu season. Our local CVS is a version of Dantes's 7th circle of hell.

We have spent over 4.5 hours on four different phone calls with our insurance company over the course of the past two weeks.

I have spent hours in lines at our CVS (remember it is flu season) and each time I am told;"We put in the request and they denied it." Well, that is supposedly how it works and once the insurance company rejects it you are supposed to try again at which point it should over ride.

I am so frustrated I am ready to simply tell them that I will pay cash and get on with my life.

So, just a heads up for anyone trying this next year.

I thought it would have been one of the easiest things to deal with. It has not been.

Have you tried calling your insurance company yourself? I’ve always done that in the past, and never had a “no.”

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Have you tried calling your insurance company yourself? I’ve always done that in the past, and never had a “no.”

 

 

The 4.5 hours mentioned were with the insurance company.

We will discover this morning how well my husband fared.

His call was the latest.

Everyone has been so nice. Just totally ineffective.

We also have Century Link for our phone and internet.

Last summer I called them to place our service on "vacation mode.". It took two months of them charging me incorrectly and hours and hours on the phone to correct that.

This week I decided that I would take the opportunity to use the chat feature so that I have a record of the conversation. My chat session lasted 49 minutes. The majority of that time was being told that they would get to me as soon as they could and that I was #6 :) in the queue, #3 :D in he queue, #9 :confused: in the queue and so it went for 29 minutes until I was assisted by someone who had to keep telling me that she was working in it.

So what am I saying? Plan for so many screw ups in the three weeks prior to departure that you will not have any spare time left to socialize. Do not let that put you off though. You will not be fit for spending time with normal people until you board the ship. (At least I am hoping that is the case because right now I am more like a female version of Seinfeld's Kramer than my normal self. .)

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We haven’t done a WC, but travel extensively leaving the house for 6 months or more at a time.

 

House: We have a list of things to do when leaving from and arriving to the house that includes turning the water on/off where it enters the house (found this is easier than dealing with turning it on/off with the water company), unplugging/plugging in TVs and anything with a transformer, turning certain breakers on/off, adjusting thermostats, turning off/on the ice maker, checking/setting mousetraps, adjusting water heater temperature, checking the ice cube in the freezer (if it is melted everything in the freezer gets dumped) and many other things....I can’t remember them all and we are currently in Mexico for a couple of months so I can’t look at the lists.

 

Yard: We pay friends/family to mow and keep an eye on things and we have autopay set up with our bank so that a check is mailed to them either weekly or monthly, whichever they prefer.

 

Mail: We use a mail service that discards junk mail and holds everything else until we request that they forward it to another address anywhere in the world (we pay postage) or we ask a neighbor to pick it up or we return and pick it up ourselves.

 

Bills: Everything is autopay that can be. Other things we set up a one time payment from our bank - either direct transfer or a check is printed and mailed.

 

Medications: Lucky that isn’t an issue for us.

 

Auto insurance: Recently learned we can put one vehicle in “storage” and save quite a bit of money. It is effective immediately and we have to notify them a few days ahead of when we want the full insurance again. While in storage the vehicle is still insured for theft, fire, etc but since it isn’t being driven all insurance related to driving is temporarily dropped.

 

We don’t have cable or internet since we aren’t home that much so that isn’t a problem.

 

Cards: I use an online card service where I can customize birthday/anniversary/condolence, etc cards and pay only the postage for them to mail the card to any address. I can set up known cards ahead of time with a to be mailed on date.

 

We have no pets - wouldn’t be fair to them as much as we travel. Luckily the neighbors have pets we play with when we are home.

 

 

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Here is another option for mail. We live in Georgia part of the year and always have to forward our mail. It doesn't always occur, and we regularly miss some first class mail, so I don't trust the PO to forward mail further than the local PO.

 

I recently closed my business PO box and asked the clerk what happens when the box gets filled, assuming I would need a large box for when we take the 82-day cruise in September. The clerk said that any of our personal mail forwarded to a box, of any size, will be kept at the PO. He recommended renting the smallest box for three months. Bingo! Problem solved.

 

Hope this helps.

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One person asked about water bills while the house is empty. I teach during the academic year and am gone during the summer. The water bill is about $32 each month whether I am home or gone. There is probably a minimum charge and I don’t use enough water to get charged more than the minimum. The local municipality will charge me $1 if I want to pay by credit card or on-line, which I stubbornly will not do. Instead, I write a check for about 6 months of usage and pre-pay. I hate writing checks so this way I only write a check twice a year. I do the same thing w my HOA fees. It’s not like I’m losing any interest by prepaying my bills.

I’m dreaming of a WC someday, but I might ease into it by first doing segments of one. Enjoy!

 

 

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Why can't you just pull up the monthly bill online and pay the bill through your bank's online service? You are paying by check and should not be charged. That is what I do with our utility companies, who, similarly, charge for credit card or online at payments on their websites.

 

Re the auto insurance suspension - thank you to that poster. What a great idea and one of which I was totally unaware.

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