Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months

My family is going to Argentina for six months for my husband's job. While we are gone, we are going to have some family friends house sit for us. I need to get my house ready for us to be gone for six months because it's a whole different ballgame than moving or just going on vacation. Let me walk you through some of the things I did to prep for those six months away!

Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months | Packing up the Fragile Stuff

My mom came over and helped me pack up all of my Polish pottery and other fragile items. We decided it was better have it all put away so the family that is house sitting for us don't have to worry about possibly damaging anything. Not that it's high maintenance, it is more that some of it is kind of expensive and my mom has bought most of it for us so we just decided it was the best move. They're going to use their own dishes while they're here to make things easier.

Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months | Weather Stripping

The weather stripping on the back door just fell off one day, which was pretty annoying. We've only lived here for four years and this is a new build house so that is not necessarily ideal. Luckily, it's not a very difficult fix. I just removed the rest of the weather stripping, scraped off the residue, wiped it down, and put a new seal on the door. It took me about 20 minutes total and was pretty simple after I figured out which seal and what size to get. Now I don't have to worry about that door leaking cool or hot air or worry about bugs getting in, especially since we're leaving at the peak of cicada season here in Southeast Tennessee.

Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months | Bug Removal

Speaking of bugs, I discovered a mealworm infestation in our pantry. Not only was it in our pantry, but it was in a bunch of the food too as well as all throughout the wire shelving. While creating the pantry of my dreams is on my list of DIYs I want to do, this is definitely not the ideal time. I just don't have the time or bandwidth for it before we leave for Argentina. I took everything out, threw out 95% of the food and treated the pantry for the bugs. Then I patched all of the holes from the wire shelves I got rid of and painted. I had my bug guys come and treat to make sure there weren't any eggs left. They also added some hormone growth inserts into the pantry to get rid of any eggs that had possibly been missed. Then I added temporary shelves so the pantry was usable again.

Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months | Under Stair Closet Re-Fresh

The next thing on my list was the closet under the stairs. When I fixed it up last year, before I had the baby, I patched some holes in the wall, but never sanded them down because I was eight and a half months pregnant and I just wanted to get the project done. My kids thought it would be fun to pull a shelf off of the wall, even though it was anchored into the drywall. I sanded the previous holes, patched the new ones and gave everything a coat of paint. I decided to leave the shelf off for now and did a little rearranging. I moved our emergency kits into the front hall closet where I normally put the stroller since the stroller is going with us to Argentina. We keep the craft supplies under the stairs. I did a good purge of all of the craft stuff so the little girl that is staying here can access them easily.

Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months | Primary Bathroom Fixes

Then, I addressed a problem in our primary bathroom. I knew there was some water leaking out of the shower where the shower and the baseboard met and figured there was probably some mold there as well. When I took off the baseboard there was mold not just on the baseboard but in the drywall as well. That meant that I had to remove the drywall, put in some new supports so I could cut out and add the new drywall, patch it all up. I put on some mud, let it dry, sanded it down, put on some new mud, let it dry, sanded that down, then painted and put in a new piece of baseboard. When I replaced the baseboard I made sure to use PVC baseboard instead to the MDF baseboard that was there previously to prevent mold.

I then had to address the origin of where the water was coming from that was pooling in that corner. It turned out to be the shower door. I wasn't sure if it was because the silicone along the outside of the shower had come away after four years, or if because the shower door has never shut completely (an issue we tried to get the builder to fix, but they never did). To cover all of my bases, I removed all of the silicone, cleaned everything with the Pink Stuff and a really cool scrubbing brush I found on Amazon and put new silicone all around the shower door, both on the outside and the inside. Unfortunately, the door still won't shut all the way. I tried everything I could to try to fix most of the water issue without completely removing the door from the wall. I only have time for so much before we leave so It's not completely fixed, but it's almost there.

Prepping Our House to Be Gone for 6 Months | Closet Organizing

Lastly, I went through all of our closets. We purged some things, packed into boxes the things that would be in storage and put aside what will be going to Argentina with us. I also went through and organized all of our utility closet that was holding some tiles for a future project in our primary bathroom and made our HVAC closet easily accessible for any repairs that need to happen. I'll be doing a whole different post on how I organized my workshop specifically us to be gone for six months, so stay tuned for that soon!