Name: How To Prepare Your Home Before Going on Vacation
Uploaded: 2025-08-20T18:20:41.000Z
Duration: 8 min 18 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Past simple

Well, it's already been a couple of years, but there's a lot of things I learned that I need to do before I go on vacation.

To-infinitive

So I thought I would do a video on a list of things you need to prepare and check off your list before you leave your home and go on vacation.

Number one, and I didn't know this until my handyman told me about it, is to turn off the water supply.

So if you're gone for more than two days, my handyman said that you should definitely turn off your water supply just in case there's a problem with the water and there's water overflowing everywhere and you need to stop it.

So if you turn off the water supply, you won't have to worry about any of that.

My water supply is actually located in front of my house in the yard and you have to lift up this really heavy metal plate to get to your water supply and then use this thing that I have to figure out what that's called.

Okay, I don't know what this thing was called, but it's called a solid steel water meter valve key.

So you use this stick to turn because you can't turn it any other way because it's really solid.

So you have to turn it to the left, no, to the right to turn it off because right is righty-tighty, left is lefty-loosey.

Another thing I learned from my handyman, thank you Rob.

You can also, you know, make sure that it's off by going into your home, making sure, turning on the water and seeing if it's all off.

And if you still need to use the water a little bit, like to wash your hands, you still have enough water for that to wash your hands before it's completely shut off.

So this is to avoid, you know, any mishaps.

If you have like a water leak or something, you won't have to worry about that while you're on vacation.

Another thing you should do is just to let your neighbors know that you're going to be away for a bit.

If I'm away for more than like a week, I will let my neighbors know that I will be away just so they can keep an eye on everything.

Make sure there's no suspicion, suspicious things going on around your house or, you know, if a package accidentally gets mailed to your house or if you're expecting something, you can let them know like, hey, can you pick it up?

Which has happened to me a couple of times already.

My awesome neighbor, he lives in front of me, but he keeps a great eye on my house and whatever he sees anybody just lurking around, he always checks up on them to see what they're doing.

He's picked up a couple of packages for me that arrived too early before I got home.

So yeah, it's great to let your neighbors know.

And also when the first time, when I first moved into my house, I left for a long time.

I left for about a month or so when I went on my road trip to California and stayed with Candy for a bit.

So I was gone for a month, a little over a month, maybe.

So my neighbors were kind of worried about me and wondering where I went because I just moved.

So I wasn't really close with any of my neighbors yet.

I met them and they were nice, but I didn't think I needed to tell them anything or I didn't want to bother them.

But when I came back, they were like, oh my gosh, you're worried about you're wondering what happened.

So I was like, OK, yeah, from now on, I'll tell you guys when I'm gone for a while.

So that's another reason just to let them know that, hey, you're OK.

I also like to hold my mail if I'm gone for more than a week, just so your mailbox doesn't get full and you can get everything right when you get back.

All you have to do is go to USPS.com and they have a whole mail button that you click and you put in all your information, how long you're going to be gone for.

And you can either choose to have it all delivered at once when you come back by the mailman or you can pick it up at the post office.

But it also depends on where you live, too.

So and they'll let you know if that service is available or not, too.

And also, I like to adjust the temperature or turn it up before I leave.

So I like to leave it at about 80 degrees.

I live in Florida, so it's always hot here.

So if you leave it at 80, then it's not using your AC too much.

You don't want to completely turn it off because your house will just get gross.

But just to get a little bit of air, I think 80 is always like a good temperature to leave it at.

I'm not sure what you do when you live in a cold area, but just adjust accordingly so you're not wasting energy while you're away.

Another thing to do is to unplug as many plugs from the outlets as you can.

I try to, you know, unplug all the stuff, like all my computer stuff.

Just anything I could think of, except for my Wi-Fi router.

But everything else I try to unplug just to, again, save energy and to avoid any mishaps with, you know, electrical fire or something.

Even if your appliance isn't turned on, the plug still uses energy.

So to, you know, reduce your energy cost, just unplug as much as you can before you leave.

My handyman also advised me that I should turn off my water heater as well, so I do that.

The brake box to my water heater is actually in the back of my house, so all I do is just flip that off and when I come back, I just put it back on and then turn the water back on.

Before I leave, I also turn on my porch light.

I actually have my porch light on at all times, just because I always forget to turn it on at night.

Having it on will just give, you know, the sense that someone is home.

You can also get one of those things where you can time your lights.

So to give a sense that you're home, the timer will turn on the lights at random times to, you know, give a sense like, oh, somebody's because they turn the light right now.

It's not off, like it's been for like a week.

Like I said, my neighbor keeps a really good eye on my house, so I don't really feel like I have any safety issues or I'm gonna have any thieves come here.

I also have cameras all around my house too, so that's another thing.

So I have like lots of ring cameras around my house, and I also have the Vivint system, so lots of security and cameras, plus my neighbor's watching.

So I don't really feel like I need to have like these timed lights, but I think it's a good option to have if that'll give you more security and a peace of mind.

So a few days before I leave, or maybe like even, you know, five days before I leave, I make sure to have trash in a separate bin so that I don't accumulate too much trash and it doesn't stink while I'm away.

Because my trash days are Monday and Thursday, so if, you know, I leave on a Wednesday or Thursday, I won't have anywhere to throw my trash.

So what I usually do is try to keep my trash at a minimum and keep any food scraps and, you know, things that can stink in a plastic bag, and I just put that in the freezer.

And then when I come back, I just throw that away.

Or you can find like a trash can nearby, but yeah, usually I just, you know, I don't have that much trash, so putting it in the freezer works fine for me.

And if you have plants and you need to water them while you're away, I recommend these plant watering stakes.

I've used them several times while I was on vacation.

Even I've been away for like three weeks and use these watering stakes and my plants were all fine.

They were all alive and well, and it was all thanks to these plant watering stakes.

So if you want to learn more about that, I did make a video about that, so I'm going to put a link somewhere in this here, here, or down below.

Every time I come back and see my plants alive and healthy, I'm like, thank you, plant watering stakes.

So those are my tips on how to prepare your home before you leave on vacation.

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