Care instructions for a reptile sitter have one job: let a competent non-keeper run your enclosures exactly as you do, for exactly as long as you are away. Reptiles forgive a changed dog-walker; they do not forgive a week of wrong temperatures or one well-meant, wrong meal. Write the instructions per enclosure, in the order a day actually unfolds.
One page per enclosure
Give each animal its own page headed with its species, name, and a photograph, so the sitter can match page to tank without guessing. Put the daily checklist first: lights and timers checked, water refreshed, temperatures read and compared against the range you have written down, misting done where that species needs it. Keep the language literal, giving the actual numbers the gauges should show rather than an instruction to keep things warm. Under the checklist, add a short what-normal-looks-like paragraph per animal: where it usually hides, when it is active, and the harmless behaviors, such as a hognose flattening and hissing or a gecko licking its own eyes, that alarm beginners. State plainly which animals may be handled briefly if truly needed and which must never be picked up, with the reason in one line.
Feeding and environment specifics
Write the feeding plan meal by meal: what food, how it is prepared (thawed, dusted, or chopped), how it is offered, on which days, and what to do with refusals and leftovers, including the rule to remove uneaten live insects rather than leave them in the enclosure. Spell out the never list in plain terms: no substitute foods, no extra treats, no hand-feeding a species that strikes at tongs. Cover the environment jobs too: misting times, water-bowl cleaning, spot-cleaning waste, and the simple checks that catch equipment failure early, like confirming the heat source is cycling and the timer lights actually came on. Say what drift matters and what to do about it; if the warm side reads low for a full day, the step is to call you, not to improvise with household heaters.
Leave the sitter a log sheet as well as instructions, with a line per day for the temperature readings, what was fed and taken, and anything unusual, and ask them to fill it in at the enclosure rather than from memory at the end of the trip. That sheet is your first read when you get home: it shows whether the routine held, flags the day anything drifted, and turns the sitter's observations into part of each animal's permanent record instead of a doorstep conversation.
If something looks wrong
Close with an escalation ladder. The sitter handles alone: a tipped water bowl, a single missed meal. You get a message the same day for: refused meals twice running, unusual lethargy, or shed skin stuck around toes or eyes. It is an emergency for: an animal found limp or unresponsive, a burnt smell from equipment, or an escaped snake. Include your vet's number, the emergency clinic's, and a reptile-keeping friend as backup, plus where carriers and spare bulbs live. Written this way and shared through KinsLe's Care Pass, the instructions reach your sitter as a clear, temporary handover of the whole routine, readable right at the enclosure door.