I’ve discovered that I have several books that have gone missing in my house that I believe someone who house sat for me have taken… And I even discovered a library book from Indiana on one of my shelves, which made absolutely no sense. Do I have a poltergeist? Wondering if anybody else has had problems with possible theft by housesitters? It really disturbed you when I discovered this, but since I didn’t discover things missing immediately, it was hard to know who might’ve taken them.
If you say it’s hard to know wĥo’s taken them, then why do you assume it’s the housesitter?
Apart from asking them, I’m not sure the THS community can be of a lot of help…
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We’re sitters and we don’t put any of our belongings ‘away’ in normal places like bookshelves, I can’t imagine any other sitter would do that either, they’d never remember to remove it. Unless they had no space in their luggage and left it deliberately.
We wouldn’t dream of taking things either, books or whatever, so I wonder if maybe you’ve had a couple and one half ‘thought’ it must have been the other halfs book if they were reading, and so it ended up being taken. Although we sit as a couple, and we pack our own bags, books, etc, so that wouldn’t occur for us.
I would just simple ask.
We had a house sitter for 2 mths it was ‘a friend’ their house was having an extension built and we were downunder travelling. So it seemed a perfect fit. When we returned they’d not cut the lawns in 2 mths it was knee high grass! But the worst of it was the wife had left a note informing me that she’d ‘borrowed’ 20 paperback books as she’d not got around to reading them…I asked 6 mths later for the books she told me she’d given them to other people because she didn’t think I’d want them back….
Audacity is the only word here
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Sometimes the only appropriate emoji response to a post is 
-
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The wife ‘informed’ me that people only read paperbacks once so it was her policy to pass these on once read, she imposed her values onto me. Unfortunately 3 of the books were ones I’d borrowed from a friend….so I had to replace those. I invited the wife to compensate me for this ££ outlay, she didn’t. The whole thing was awful.
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@BonnyinBrighton that’s outrageous! So it turned into stealing rather than just unauthorised borrowing. And her later response to you… Shame on her…
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And I just bet she made herself seem oh so generous when she gave away your stuff
Oh this story has ‘long legs’ as I was telling it a few years later in the village pub, and a village neighbour heard about it and quietly gave me one of the books that’d been ‘borrowed’ and passed onto her! Village Life eh?!
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@Sakinah I understand why you posted:
But I’m left wondering if you are going to pursue and ask any sitters about the books and the library book.
Eek. I do pass along books I’ve read and am explicit in saying “I don’t need it back” UNLESS it’s a signed copy (and then I’m unlikely to pass it along anyway).
I had a library book go missing from my building pool area last summer. I had to replace it at the library. Months later, they called me, laughing, saying some man randomly found it dropped in his open top car one day.
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Seems like an odd thing to steal, but no one actually knows where the books went. And if you didn’t follow up soon after and maybe there have been others in your place, I’d skip it.
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I must confess that I have taken a book once. I had started reading it, sometimes in a café etc, and I forgot to put it back on the shelf.
Thirty years ago, just a pocket, but it still weighs on my conscience. And on a bookshelf.
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If something like that weighs on you, seems easy enough to donate money in its place to a worthy cause. Like buy a few books for needy kids when Christmas rolls around.
Various bookstores and nonprofits have such donation initiatives every year. I donated via Waterstones when in Scotland for a sit during the recent holiday season and have done likewise in the U.S.
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