What to Include in Pet Sitter Instructions: The Complete Checklist

A good pet sitter can only follow instructions that actually exist. Here is everything worth writing down — the obvious, the easy-to-forget, and the things sitters say they wish every owner would tell them.

Every pet owner knows the feeling: you’re at the airport, phone in hand, typing a wall of text to your sitter that starts with “Oh, one more thing…” The problem isn’t that owners don’t care — it’s that pet care lives in your head as habit, not as a list. Your dog’s breakfast routine feels too obvious to mention right up until your sitter is standing in your kitchen at 7 a.m. holding two different bags of food. A written instruction sheet fixes that. Below is the complete checklist, section by section, with the reasoning sitters themselves give for each item.

1. The basics: who, where, and how to reach you

Start with your name, your phone number while traveling, and your travel dates. Add a second emergency contact — a nearby friend, neighbor, or family member who can physically get to your home if you’re on a plane or out of coverage. Sitters consistently say this is the section they reach for first in any problem, and the one most often missing from handwritten notes. If your emergency contact has a spare key, say so; in a lockout or a genuine emergency, that one line can save hours.

2. Feeding: write it like a recipe

“Feed the dog twice a day” is not an instruction — it’s a category. Write each pet’s feeding routine the way you’d write a recipe: the exact food (brand and type, because “the blue bag” stops working the day you buy a different one), the exact amount in a unit your sitter can measure (one level scoop, half a can, three-quarters of a cup), and the times of day. Note where the food is stored, whether it needs anything added — warm water, a topper, a supplement stirred in — and where each pet eats. That last detail matters more than people expect: many multi-pet homes quietly depend on separation at mealtimes to stop food stealing, and if the sitter doesn’t know, one pet gets two dinners and the other gets none. Finish with treats: which ones, how many per day, and where they’re kept. Every sitter wants to spoil your pet a little; giving them a treat budget channels that kindness safely.

3. Water: simple, but say it anyway

Bowls should be washed and refilled daily even if they look full — stale water is the number one reason pets drink less than they should. Note any quirks: the cat who only drinks from a running tap or a fountain, the bowl that must stay in one particular spot, or ice cubes in the water on hot days. If you have an automatic waterer, say when it needs topping up.

4. Medication: the section that cannot be vague

If your pet takes any medication, this is the most important box on the sheet. For each medicine, write the name, the dose, the exact time, and how to give it — hidden in a pill pocket, crushed into wet food, or straight into the mouth. Describe what to do if a dose is refused or spat out, and whether a missed dose should be doubled (almost never) or simply skipped. If your pet takes nothing, write “No medication” explicitly. Sitters say the explicit negative is genuinely reassuring: it removes the fear that they’ve lost a page. And if your pet is mid-treatment for anything — an ear infection, a healing wound, a sensitive stomach after a vet visit — describe what normal looks like right now, so the sitter can tell the difference between “still recovering” and “getting worse.”

5. Exercise, walks, and outside time

Write down how many walks a day, roughly how long, and the usual route if there is one. Say which collar or harness to use, where the leash hangs, and anything the route involves: the dog three doors down who is not friendly, the gate that must be latched, the habit of lunging at squirrels near the park. For cats, this section covers litter and play instead: where the litter box is, how often to scoop (daily is kindest), how often to change it fully, and where supplies and bags live. For small animals, note cage-cleaning rhythm and handling rules. If your pet is a known escape artist, say it proudly and early — sitters would far rather be warned than surprised.

6. Vet details and your wishes in an emergency

Include your vet’s name, phone number, and address, plus the after-hours emergency clinic if yours closes at night. Then answer the question no one wants to think about: if your pet needs urgent care and you can’t be reached, what do you want the sitter to do? Most owners want the sitter to take the pet in immediately — say so in writing, and mention how payment will be handled (many clinics will let you leave a card on file before you travel). This short paragraph removes an awful hesitation in a frightening moment, and vets will tell you those saved minutes matter.

7. Personality, quirks, and comfort notes

This is the section sitters secretly love, and it’s practical, not sentimental. Where does your pet hide during thunderstorms? Which spot behind the ears is fine and which belly is a trap? Is the barking at the mail carrier normal (yes, always) or new? Does your cat need the bedroom door left open at night, does your dog sleep in a crate with the door unlatched, is there a blanket that must not be washed because it smells like you? Behavioral baselines help a sitter spot real problems early — an owner who writes “normally inhales dinner in 40 seconds” has just given the sitter a genuine early-warning system for illness.

8. The daily routine, at a glance

Finally, compress the whole sheet into a simple daily timeline: morning feed and walk, midday check, evening feed, last let-out, lights out. Even with perfect detailed sections, sitters plan their day around this summary — and it’s the part they’ll photograph onto their phone. Our Pet Sitter Sheet Builder generates this summary automatically from the feeding and exercise details you enter.

How to Prepare Your Home for a House Sitter

A house sitter is doing you a real favor — and your home will be looked after best when you’ve made it easy to look after. Here’s how to hand over the keys properly, from the pre-trip walkthrough to the note you leave on the counter.

House sitting runs on trust, but trust works best with good information. Most house-sitting problems aren’t caused by careless sitters; they’re caused by homes that only make sense to the people who live in them. The light switch that also kills the fridge outlet, the shower that scalds if you turn it past the dot, the bin day that changed in March — you navigate all of this on autopilot, and your sitter can’t. Preparing your home is mostly the job of noticing your own autopilot and writing it down. Here is how to do it well.

Start with a walkthrough, not a handover at the door

If your sitter is local, invite them over a few days before you leave and walk the house together. Show, don’t just tell: arm and disarm the alarm while they watch, run the shower, start the dishwasher, open the tricky back door. Things people are shown once, they remember; things they’re told in a rushed doorstep speech, they don’t. If an in-person walkthrough isn’t possible, a short phone video walkthrough is the next best thing — then back it up with the written sheet anyway, because nobody wants to scrub through a 14-minute video to find a WiFi password.

The security essentials

Your sheet should cover the alarm code and exactly how the system behaves (which doors chirp, how long the exit delay is, what happens if it’s set off by accident and who the monitoring company calls). Cover locks honestly, including their personalities: the deadbolt that needs the door pulled toward you, the window that doesn’t quite latch. Note where spare keys live and who else has one. If you have cameras, be upfront about them — a sitter who discovers an undisclosed camera feels watched rather than welcomed, and in many places disclosure is a legal requirement as well as a courtesy. Say which lights you’d like left on, and whether you want the house to look lived-in (blinds varied, porch light on a timer) while you’re gone.

Make the everyday things obvious

Walk through your home and label your own assumptions. Which day is trash, which is recycling, and when do the bins go to the curb — the night before or the morning of? Where does mail go, and do you want packages brought in daily? What temperature range should the thermostat stay in, and are there rooms that get too hot or too cold? Which appliances have tricks — the washing machine that must be set to a specific cycle, the oven that runs hot, the breaker that trips if the kettle and toaster run together? Write down where the breaker panel, water shut-off, and a basic toolkit live. A burst pipe is rare, but a sitter who knows the shut-off turns a disaster into a story.

Set your sitter up to be comfortable

Someone comfortable in your home takes better care of it. Leave clean sheets on the bed they’ll use, fresh towels out, and space in the fridge and a drawer or two — living out of a suitcase for two weeks makes anyone feel like a guest rather than a caretaker. Leave the WiFi password somewhere they’ll find it in the first five minutes; for most sitters it’s the single most-used item on the sheet. Point out the basics a stranger genuinely cannot guess: how the TV and streaming work, where cleaning supplies and the vacuum live, which mug shelf is the good china they might want to avoid. A small welcome touch — coffee and milk in the fridge, a note saying “help yourself” — sets the tone for the whole stay.

Be clear about what’s welcome — and what isn’t

Can the sitter eat food from the pantry? Have a friend over for dinner? Borrow the car, use the good towels, light the fireplace? Owners often assume these answers are obvious; they are not, and sitters err on the side of caution to the point of discomfort when rules are unclear. Write a genuine “make yourself at home” list, and then a short, kind “please don’t” list: no smoking indoors, no overnight guests, the home office is off-limits, please don’t rearrange the workshop. Short and specific beats long and legalistic — five clear lines will be followed; two pages of rules will be skimmed. If something truly matters (a fragile antique, a neighbor sensitive to noise), say why in a few words; people respect reasons far more than prohibitions.

Prepare for the things that go wrong

Leave a short emergency list: your phone, a trusted neighbor, and the tradespeople you actually use — plumber, electrician, landlord if you rent. Note anything scheduled during your absence: the cleaner on Thursdays, a package you’re expecting, the garden service, a grocery delivery. And be explicit about money and decisions: if a pipe bursts, do you want a call first or the plumber called immediately? Most owners say “fix first, call me second” for anything that would cause more damage by waiting — putting that in writing frees your sitter to act fast without worrying they’ll be second-guessed.

While you’re away, and when you return

Agree on communication before you leave: a quick photo or message every day or two reassures most owners without hovering. Then, when you get home, close the loop — thank your sitter properly, ask what was unclear (and fix your sheet for next time), and if they sat for free, a gift card or a home-cooked meal is the going rate of gratitude. The best outcome of a well-prepared handover is a sitter who happily says yes next year, and a sheet that gets better every trip. Our House Sitter Sheet Builder turns everything in this guide into a one-page handout in about three minutes.

Going on Vacation? How to Brief a Plant Sitter So Nothing Dies

Here is the uncomfortable truth about vacation plant care: most houseplants that die during a trip are not neglected — they are overwatered by someone kind. This guide shows you how to brief a sitter so every plant gets exactly what it needs, and nothing more.

Ask any plant sitter what went wrong on a bad sit and the story is rarely “I forgot to come.” It’s “I watered everything every day, like you’d water a garden” — and the succulent rotted, the fern drowned, and the one plant that genuinely needed daily water still somehow missed out. Houseplants are individuals with wildly different needs, and your sitter cannot see those differences the way you do. Your job, in one briefing, is to make the differences obvious. Here is how.

The one rule that saves more plants than any other

Teach your sitter the finger test, and ask them to apply it before every single watering: push a finger about an inch into the soil. If it feels damp, walk away — no matter what the schedule says. If it feels dry, water. This one habit prevents nearly all vacation plant deaths, because schedules are written by optimistic humans, while soil tells the truth. Overwatered roots rot silently and the damage is usually done before leaves show it; an underwatered plant, by contrast, almost always announces itself with a droop and recovers within hours of a drink. When in doubt, your sitter should err dry. Say that sentence out loud and put it at the top of your sheet.

Group and label before you brief

A week before your trip, reorganize. Move plants with similar needs together — the thirsty ones in one spot, the drought-tolerant ones in another — and, if you can, pull everything into a couple of easy-to-visit clusters near a water source. Then label. A strip of masking tape on each pot with the plant’s name (or just “the fern”) and its rhythm — “1 cup every 3 days” — removes all memory from the job. Your sitter will water confidently, and confidence is what stops both skipping and double-watering. If two plants look similar but need different care (and every plant owner has that pair of identical-looking pots), move them apart or mark one with a colored tie; sitters water by recognition, and lookalikes are a classic trap.

What to write for each plant

For every plant on your sheet, your sitter needs five things. Which plant — a name or description tied to its label. Where it lives — the room and spot, because “the one in the bathroom” beats a Latin name every time. How much water — in real units your sitter can measure: half a watering can, one full mug, a slow count to ten. “Water thoroughly” means something different to everyone; “one mug, slowly” doesn’t. How often — every day, every third day, once while you’re gone. And anything special — mist the leaves, never get water on the fuzzy leaves, rotate the pot a quarter turn, keep it out of the afternoon sun spot. Our Plant Sitter Sheet Builder turns exactly these five things into a day-by-day grid your sitter can tick off.

Set the scene: light, baths, and self-watering tricks

For trips under a week, most plants honestly need less than you fear — a deep watering the morning you leave, pots moved a foot or two back from scorching windows, and they’ll wait for you. For longer trips, a few classic tricks reduce the burden on your sitter. The bathtub method: line the tub with a wet towel, set thirsty plants on it, and they’ll sip steadily for days. Grouping pots together raises the humidity around all of them and slows drying. Pebble trays under humidity lovers, a clear bag loosely tented over a delicate fern (off the leaves, with air holes), and mulch or a layer of gravel on exposed soil all buy time. Tell your sitter which tricks you’ve set up — otherwise a kind sitter may “helpfully” dismantle your system and water everything by hand instead.

Know your categories, and brief by risk

It helps to sort your collection honestly before writing the sheet. Nearly unkillable for two weeks: succulents, cacti, snake plants, ZZ plants, pothos — most want one modest watering at the start, if that, and to be left alone. Steady drinkers: most leafy tropicals and herbs like basil want consistent moisture every few days. Drama queens: ferns, calatheas, fittonias, and anything flowering — these want the finger test daily and humidity help. Brief by risk: spend your sitter’s attention on the third category, and explicitly release them from worrying about the first. A sitter told “honestly, ignore the succulents entirely” is a sitter whose care lands where it’s needed.

The handover, and permission to text you

If you can, do one watering round together before you leave — five minutes of watching how much “a mug, slowly” actually is will calibrate your sitter better than any written description. Then give explicit permission to ask questions: a photo of a worrying plant texted to you is a success, not a failure, and sitters hesitate to “bother you on vacation” precisely when a photo would solve everything. Finally, set expectations kindly when you return: if you come home to one crispy fern out of twenty thriving plants, that is a good sit. Plants are replaceable; a friend willing to water them is not. Print your grid, leave a pen beside it, and go on your trip.

About SitterSheets

SitterSheets exists because of a familiar scene: the night before a trip, someone is hunched over a notebook (or a phone) trying to remember everything a sitter could possibly need — while the sitter, a few days later, is standing in an unfamiliar kitchen trying to decode it.

Pet sitting, house sitting, and plant sitting run on favors and trust. Friends, neighbors, family members, and professionals all do the work — but the briefing is almost always the weakest link. Owners scribble notes at the last minute, or send a chain of text messages that gets buried under newer ones. Sitters, meanwhile, are too polite to say the instructions are unclear, so they guess. Most of the time it works out. Sometimes you come home to an overwatered fern, an underfed cat, and a sitter who swears they never saw the note about the medication.

We built SitterSheets to close that gap. The idea is simple: a small set of guided forms — one for pets, one for your home, one for your plants — that ask you the questions a good sitter would ask, in the order they would ask them, and then lay your answers out as a clean, printable sheet. No design skills, no fiddling with document templates, no wrestling with a word processor’s tables at midnight. You answer prompts; the sheet designs itself.

Why we made it private by design

Think about what a sitter sheet contains: when your house will be empty, your alarm arrangements, your WiFi password, your vet, your phone number, a neighbor’s phone number. That is exactly the kind of information that should never be uploaded to a random website’s database — and so, on SitterSheets, it isn’t. Every builder on this site runs entirely in your own web browser. There is no account to create, no server that receives your form, and nothing is saved when you close the tab. We chose this design on purpose, and we think it’s how tools like this should work. You can read the details in our Privacy Policy.

Why it’s free

SitterSheets is free for everyone, and always will be for the core builders. The site is supported by advertising displayed alongside the tools — never inside your printable sheet. Your printed page contains only what you typed, formatted for the fridge door. That’s the deal, and it keeps the tools free without ever selling anyone’s data (which, as explained above, we never receive in the first place).

What you’ll find here

• Pet Sitter Sheet Builder — per-pet feeding, medication, exercise and quirks for up to four pets, plus vet and emergency contacts and an automatic daily routine summary.
• House Sitter Sheet Builder — WiFi, alarm and locks, mail and trash days, thermostat and appliance notes, and your “please don’t” list.
• Plant Sitter Sheet Builder — up to ten plants with amounts and frequencies, rendered as a day-by-day watering grid your sitter can tick off.
• Three in-depth guides — on writing pet sitter instructions, preparing your home for a house sitter, and briefing a plant sitter — drawn from what experienced sitters say they actually need.

Get in touch

SitterSheets is a small, independent site, and we read every message. If a builder is missing a field your sitter always asks about, if something prints oddly on your printer, or if you just want to tell us the sheet saved your vacation — we’d genuinely like to hear it. You can reach us any time at hello@sittersheets.pages.dev, or through the Contact page.

Thanks for stopping by — and safe travels.

Contact SitterSheets

Questions, suggestions, corrections, or a field you wish a builder had? We’d love to hear from you.

What to write to us about

• Builder suggestions — a field you always end up adding by hand (a medication we didn’t think of, a house quirk, a plant need) is exactly the kind of thing we add next.
• Printing problems — if a sheet prints strangely on your printer or paper size, tell us your browser and printer model and we’ll look into it.
• Guide corrections — if you’re a professional sitter, vet tech, or gardener and spot something in our guides you’d phrase differently, we’re happy to learn.
• Anything else — feedback of every kind is welcome.

One important note

Please don’t email us the contents of a sheet you’ve built. The builders are designed so your details — contacts, WiFi passwords, alarm notes — never leave your browser, and emailing them to us would defeat the point. If you’re describing a problem, a description of the issue (without the private details themselves) is always enough.

We aim to reply within a few business days. SitterSheets is a small independent site, so during busy periods replies may take a little longer — thank you for your patience.

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 31, 2026. This policy explains what information SitterSheets (https://sittersheets.pages.dev/) handles when you use our sheet builders and guides — and, just as importantly, what it never handles.

1. Information you type into the builders

The pet, house, and plant sitter sheet builders on this site run entirely on your device using your browser’s built-in capabilities. The text you enter is used only to draw the preview sheet on your screen and, if you choose, to send that sheet to your own printer or save it as a PDF through your browser’s print dialog.

We do not receive, collect, log, transmit, or store the contents of any sheet. We have no database of sheets, no accounts, and no sign-up. The website does not use cookies, local storage, or any other browser storage to keep what you type — reloading the page clears the builders completely.

2. Information collected automatically

Like most websites, SitterSheets is served through a hosting and content-delivery provider (Cloudflare). For security and reliability, such providers may process standard technical information when your browser loads a page, such as your IP address, browser type, and the pages requested, in server logs. This is the ordinary mechanics of delivering a website. We do not use this information to identify individual visitors, build profiles, or track anyone across the web.

3. Advertising and Google AdSense

SitterSheets is supported by advertising, including ads served by Google AdSense. This section explains how advertising cookies work here, in line with Google’s requirements:

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.
• Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google’s Ads Settings. Alternatively, users can opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info/choices.
• Advertising cookies relate only to ad delivery. They have no access to anything you type into the builders, which — as described above — never leaves your browser.

If we add other third-party advertising or analytics services in the future, we will update this policy to name them and explain what they do before or at the time they are introduced.

4. Cookies

SitterSheets itself does not set any cookies and does not use browser storage for its builders or content. Cookies may be set by third-party advertising services as described in Section 3. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings at any time; the builders and guides will continue to work normally.

5. Email

If you email us at hello@sittersheets.pages.dev, we will receive your email address and whatever you choose to include in your message, and we will use it only to read and reply to you. We do not add correspondents to mailing lists and we do not sell or share email addresses. Please do not send us the private contents of a sitter sheet (contacts, passwords, alarm details) — as Section 1 explains, those details are designed never to leave your browser, and email is not a secure place for them.

6. Children’s privacy

SitterSheets is a general-audience site intended for adults arranging care for their pets, homes, and plants. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and — as described above — the site collects no form submissions from anyone at all.

7. Links to other websites

Our guides may link to external resources (for example, Google’s advertising settings pages). We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of external sites; please review their own policies when you visit them.

8. Changes to this policy

If we change how this site handles information, we will update this page and change the “Last updated” date above. Significant changes will be made clear on this page before they take effect. The core commitment in Section 1 — that the contents of your sheets are processed only in your browser — is the foundation of how the site is built, and we do not intend to change it.

9. Contact

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us at hello@sittersheets.pages.dev.