Your dog sitter is standing in your kitchen at 7am. The dog won't eat. Where's the backup food? Which vet? What's the Wi-Fi? You're on a plane.

Most people solve this with a hasty note on the fridge and a panicked group chat. There's a better way: a self-hosted house manual. One private page anyone you trust can open, no app to install, no personal data leaking to a cloud company.

Here are 4 things to put in it — and how to host it.

1. The 'first 10 minutes' section

Don't dump everything at once. Start with what a sitter needs the second they walk in: alarm code, where the light switches hide, how the thermostat works, and the one thing that will confuse them (the back door that sticks).

Write it like instructions to a stranger. Because it is.

2. The pet and kid routines

Feeding times. Portion sizes. The treat the dog gets after a walk. Bedtime for the kids. The exact words that calm the anxious cat.

This is the stuff you know by heart and forget to explain. Written down, it saves a dozen texts.

3. The 'when things break' page

Where the water shutoff is. The fuse box. The plumber's number. What to do if the router dies. Add a photo of each — a picture of the actual shutoff valve beats a paragraph describing it.

4. The stuff you'd normally text

Wi-Fi password. Trash day. Which neighbor has a spare key. The code to the garage. Keep it all in one place instead of scattered across old messages.

How to host it (the easy part)

Use Dokuwiki or Wiki.js in Docker. Both are lightweight and give you clean, editable pages. If you want dead simple, run Memos — it's a note app that's up in minutes.

services:
  dokuwiki:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/dokuwiki:latest
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
    restart: unless-stopped

Run docker compose up -d, open port 8080, and you have a wiki.

The privacy part that matters

This page holds your alarm code and Wi-Fi password. Do not put it on the open internet. Two safe options:

  • Share access over Tailscale, so only devices you invite can reach it.
  • Or export the page as a PDF and hand it over in person before you leave.

Never email these details or drop them in a shared cloud doc. A house manual on Google Docs is a house manual one leaked login away from a stranger.

Your takeaway

Today, open a blank note and write your 'first 10 minutes' section — alarm, thermostat, Wi-Fi, the door that sticks. That single list already replaces half the texts a sitter would send. Move it to a self-hosted wiki this weekend.