"I would spend the whole of my in life traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home." — William Hazlitt

My poor home. I felt almost unkind as I pulled the door shut behind me on Christmas morning and left it all behind. Sad and empty.

I had pondered long and hard as we planned the trip about what the right thing to do with my house was.

Should I let it out?

The advantages of this would have been

• Income (The rental from my property would have covered all the running costs and mortgage while I was away and would have left some spending money over at the end)
  
  
• Security (leaving a house empty for weeks on end isn't the best idea)
  
  
• If a pipe burst while I was away I wouldn't return five months later to a huge flood

The disadvantages

• We would have had to pack and store all our belongings
  
  
• We would have had to find tenants looking only for a short let (6 months was the shortest period of time any agent would consider and we were away 5) so we would have had to find somewhere to stay for a month when we got back
  
  
• If something had happened while we were away we would not immediately have had a home to come back to
  
  
• I would have had to advise my mortage lender and my insurance provider that I was letting out the property and may have incurred fees and penalties here
  
  

In the end the disadvantages outweighed the advantages of letting out and we decided to leave the house empty. I asked a family member if he wouldn't mind popping by every now and then to water the plants and make sure everything was safe.

If I was to do it again

I would extend the holiday by an extra couple of months and let the house out. It would have been great to have the extra income and not a huge hassle, all said and done, to store all my personal belongings and we could have let the house furnished.