Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Texas

First, you should read through your lease agreement to determine how it allocates responsibility for maintaining the rental's condition during the lease period. If any provision or provisions in the lease agreement spell out who is responsible for what, these will generally control.

If your lease agreement is silent regarding maintenance of the property, you should still be able to recover for the cost of replacing the expendables you list. Under California law, which governs with regard to California real estate regardless of where you live, you as the landlord are responsible for repairs caused by normal wear and tear or not caused by the tenant's use of the property. The tenant is reponsible for replacing expendables and for repairing damages caused by his use of the premises beyond normal wear and tear. The expendables you mention fall under the latter category.

In regard to your travel expenses, these you are not likely to recover from the tenant. Whereas a breaching tenant is generally liable for reasonably foreseeable consequential damages resulting from his breach of the lease agreement, absent some specific language in the lease agreement or something in the negotiation of the same that would indicate that the tenant somehow agreed to indemnify you for traveling costs, the court will hold that your cost to travel from Texas back to California could not have been reasonably contemplated as a consequence of the breach at the inception of the lease agreement.