Ants and Crumbs and Water
Ants. Yes, ants. Whether you are in sultry Singapore, hot all year, New York in summer, or somewhere cooler, clean up before you leave your home empty. A there week holiday, a holiday home empty, same thing applies.
Ants and insects are like humans, they like water and food. So the crumbs under or in your toaster and the water in your coffee machine are giant free food and drink events.
Ants
Get rid of them. Not use going into another room and ignoring them. I have had ants all over a computer which I used on a balcony in a hotel in Asia (I think it was Indonesia.) Eating not he balcony beside your laptop sounds amusing, until you find ants all over the table and your laptop. If you can smell the coffee, so can the insects.
Rice, Sugar, Coffee
You can find weevils and ants and insects in flour, sugar, rice, any packet. Give away opened packets to friends or neighbours. Put whole unopened packets in sealed containers - or the freezer.
Not everybody is so bothered. When I was first in Singapore, in the 1980s, I met Australian and American women at expat groups. I remember at one meeting a women told us she had bought flour from the local corner shop. When she opened it, she found it was full of insects. She took it back to the shop, expecting a refund and profuse, abject apology. But the elderly Chinese shop owner grudgingly refunded the money and said crossly, 'Why don't you just sieve them out like everybody else does?'
Termites and Freezers
The freezer is a place for killing termites in books / photo albums and dust mites in pillows.
Any problems? Pillows can turn rock hard and stick to the freezer trays. Pillows might come out wet and need drying off.
Books In Freezers
Books in the freezer inside plastic bags get water on the surface when they thaw out. I was worried that the pages would stick together. I had photo albums with plastic pages. I used kitchen paper between the books. Ideally spread them out. But the work surfaces were filled with crockery, I don't want cross-contamination, and the floor was dusty. You need to check regularly, daily, even hourly if you are a paranoid type, to see how everything is faring.
You can see why the top paid people employ full time maids and cleaners.
So, if you don't have full time cleaners, you have to clean yourself. You forget. Put it on your list. o f things to do on arrival. You'll need several hours of cleaning, but it can be squeezed in amongst shopping cooking, working or sightseeing.
Plants Needing Watering
Leave all the plants grouped in one place near a source of water, such as on the bathroom or kitchen windowsill. Then if you extend a holiday from one or two weeks to three or four you can remind the family at home to water the plants, or the house-sitter, whoever had the house keys.
Plants Which Grow Alone!
Plants can die in the dark - or grow. After my late father was in hospital for a month where he died, it must have been about eight weeks after he was last in the flat that we opened a top cupboard in the kitchen. It was full of plant life, a hidden jungle. Like Jack and the beanstalk. What had grown, not fed, not watered, hidden, in the dark, on its own?
We fought our way through it and detached it from the walls and ceiling and flour of the cupboard. Can you guess what it was? In a kitchen? The culprit was a couple of potatoes!
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher,
