Organise the Sheet by the Walk
A sitter does not think in species groups; they walk a route. Write the sheet in the order the enclosures will actually be visited — the order the sitter will walk the room — one block per enclosure, each block complete in itself. Number the enclosures and put the same number on each vivarium door, so sheet and shelf can never drift apart in the middle of a tired evening. Anything that applies to the whole room — lights-out time, the room heater, what to do if a breaker trips — goes on the front page, before the first enclosure.
Plain Words and What 'Normal' Looks Like
Keeper shorthand is a foreign language: write 'mist the leaves until they drip' rather than an abbreviation, and 'half a handful of greens' rather than a weight the sitter has no scale for. For each animal, add one line on what normal looks like: where it usually sits at that hour, how it usually reacts to the door opening, what a normal feeding response is. A sitter who knows normal can spot abnormal; a sitter with only instructions can merely complete them, and the animal with a problem looks exactly like the animal without one.
Feeding, Water and the Never-Do List
Per enclosure, list what to feed, how much, on which days of the stay, and what to do with refusals — usually: note it and move on. Water instructions deserve their own line in every block: which animals drink from a bowl, which from misting, which need the dripper running. Then the never-do list, written kindly and meant firmly: which animals are never handled, which doors are never left unlatched even for a second, which foods in the fridge are not for reptiles at all. Sitters fear doing the wrong thing far more than doing the work; the list that names the wrong things sets them free.
The Emergency Strip
At the very top, before any routine: your phone number, the number of a second person who knows the collection, and the reptile vet's details, followed by the short list of events that mean call now — an animal out of its enclosure, a heat source failed or running uncontrolled, an animal limp or unresponsive, a smashed enclosure. Write what to do in the first five minutes for each: secure the door, switch off the faulty heater at the plug, keep the animal warm and contained. A sitter reading this section mid-crisis has no spare attention for hunting through pages.
Do a Dry Run, Then Hand It Over
Walk the sheet once with the sitter before the trip; every question they ask is a gap to fix in the writing, and the animals they will meet stop being strangers. Then hand the sheet over in a form that is with them at the enclosures: KinsLe's Care Pass gives a trusted sitter temporary, clear access to each pet's care routine and key details while you are away, so the whole collection's instructions live in their pocket rather than in a folder left in the kitchen.