We have it in our lease that the tenant cuts the grass and shovels the snow.

This is reflected in higher rent to cover that cost.Finally to many renters, having to do their own yard maintenance and shovel snow is a negative.

Again, encapsulation would be a huge job (possibly costing as much as what I paid for the place) in that you would basically have to shovel dirt into buckets and walk it out of the open 6x8 room in the crawl space, the re-set all the piers supporting the joists...not an easy task

Neither do it, and both claim to be incapable of cutting the grass and/or shoveling snow.  

I won't go into what I would do to someone like that, but I would have to buy a shovel. 

Also a few vintage Japanese tea cups thrown in an attic.Some clown left their crack pipe in an outdoor electrical box once.Just found about 20 rakes, shovels, and assorted yard tools in the crawl space of the house I'm rehabbing now.

It was actually just a bad slope towards the house, so I grabbed a shovel and just dug a path diverting the water away, filled it with some crushed stone and it never happened again.

By then the market will have recovered significantly and I'll have missed out on the best period for buying real estate that I'll see in my lifetime.So now we've come back to the basic option of "You're not cut out for this," where I'm being told to just give up, that there is nothing I can do but shovel my paycheck into a depreciating savings account or some pitiful returning mutual fund.

That covers replacement parts and lawn mowing, shoveling, etc.

Kitty litter will soak it up and you can scoop it off the floor with a dust pan or shovel.