I made Lydia my Steward at Lakeview Manor. She stepped into my house once, I bought a few resources from her, a couple of extras, and left for a while.

I come back, and she's nowhere to be found. I'm missing a few things, I lost my convenient "buy stuff from" options, and it's overall annoying because I hate losing NPC's. I've gone in and out of the house and circles all around it but the only people out there are the character's wife, the occasional adopted child, and the horse carriage.

Is this a thing?

time to play a game of clue

According to UESP, it's a known bug. It suggests entering and exiting the house several times may restore her. If you're on PC, there's an unofficial patch. Although, did you leave her with any instructions for buying materials or furnishings? I had my steward disappear a few times and come back, but I had left her with instructions. I wonder if she was just out shopping.

I've forgotten at this point, if I left her with instructions.

I'll try doing the enter/exit thing next time I stop buy. I think I told her to furnish my place but since it took so long, I started getting the resources to do it myself. Maybe I glitched her out by giving the code an aneurysm.

Beat to it by Eord--You might also want to try fast travelling someplace else then back to the homestead, I had Lydia vanish on me a couple weeks ago and that brought her back.

Doesn't going off elsewhere and coming back later to have the same effect? I went off to do a majority of the Thieves Guild questline - several days in-game probably went by, maybe more since I had to sleep off days for stores to restock their money and take all my stuff.

My wife once gave me 4900 in income. That's, what, 49 days since I last visited my own damn house?

All that and some more, and I have yet to see Lydia since I hired her.

You hired Lydia as house steward for Heljarchen Hall I presume? You could try visiting during the day, and hang around the house for a while and watch who comes comes in the doors at night, but be quick, Lydia will be in a hurry to rush off for a drink at the local meadery. Do not expect that house to be furnished any time soon. And furnishing it yourself will make no difference, she will still furnish in her own time, whether you built it or not, so do not store anything in any of the containers. When she builds them they will be replaced.

Lydia will sometimes teleport back to the house during the day, but if you cannot catch her, try a short fast travel and return. She should return to the house for a few minutes when she should be going to sleep, but she will promptly rush of on her nocturnal travels to the meadery. The longer you spend at the house, the more likely your tipsy steward will be forced to make an appearance, but still do not expect any furnishing any time soon, she is too tired.

If you absolutely get desperate for a furnished house you can use, become Thane and get the housecarl, save your game at the house, and make sure to keep that save. Kill Lydia make the housecarl your new steward and ask him to furnish the house, you should not need to pay any extra. When the house is furnished, save the game, then reload your previous save with Lydia still alive if your house is not furnished it should be soon, maybe travel away a short while to give her time to settle after her trip to the twilight zone. If it does not work you will be no worse off, you can keep Lydia or return to a furnished house with a Lydia dead. Make sure to do all that in one playthrough, no exiting the game. if you are lucky enough to end up with a furnished house and live Lydia, save! But do not over write either of those previous saves till you are absolutely happy with the result. It worked for me on the Xbox 360, and I actually missed a few things in the entryway which is the only thing I asked her to furnish, she did put the rest of the animal trophies in there in record time. And she stayed around the house a bit more.

I actually killed Lydia because I was sick of her slacking off and wanted that entryway furnished, then after I had finally seen what it looked like with the door mat and bench, felt guilty and reloaded my previous save to get Lydia back. I was surprised to find I got to keep the furnishings, and that Lydia actually did a bit of work for a change. Pretty sure she has never slept at Heljarchen Hall though, she never sleeps, but still does her nightly dash to try and get to the meadery.

Yikes. Mine just wandered off for a couple of days. Sounds like your options are down to go back to an earlier save, or if you're playing on the PC, use the console commands to try and move her to you while you're at the house. If you don't know them, the commands are:

prid 000a2c94

moveto player

I had to resort to that at one point when Lydia managed to get stuck in a rock (her feet were embedded in the rock and she wouldn't move--fast travelling, moving to an interior cell, and telling her to move were all useless).

Umm, no. Read the OP--Zydrate said in the very first sentence it's Lakeview Manor.

Not PC, and the "earlier save" is waaaayy off the table.

Maybe I can eventually build one of the other two and hire another steward.

Sorry so he did, but it seems she is going to behave the same way anyway. I bet if Zydrate was to catch her and do a bit of stalking it would lead to the same problem. I have two characters who have Lydia as steward at Lakeview Manor, one on the Xbox 360 one on the PS3 and she puts in an appearance. Only the two who tried her out at Heljarchen Hall had complaints, but then those two had problems with almost every steward they tried at Heljarchen Hall, so maybe it is a bug you can get for either house.

I wouldn't be surprised if you found her corpse inside a troll's cave... seems like she may have ventured into places she shouldn't have lol

She* (Me).

If this is a problem with all the houses, that's just... annoying. I haven't had this kind of problem yet, at all. It's new to me :/