How long can you hold a cache location?

This past week a geocacher (cary1952) posted a couple of "Should be archived" notes for a few geocaches that had been placed by a pair of geocachers from Texas. My thanks to Cary1952, because he called to my attention several caches the Texas tandem had placed in the Iowa Great Lakes area and then disabled last summer. (Originally they explained that they have relatives in the area who would maintain the caches, so that's why I approved them even though they don't live in that area.) However, as I said, they subsequently disabled their caches and said they would relist them "next spring." Well, spring came and is now nearly gone, so rather than keeping these spots reserved with their "temporarily" disabled caches, I archived them. It's not fair to hold these locations, especially when they're along such a nice bike trail in one of the most popular tourist destination areas in Iowa. It would have been OK for them to keep the caches active, provided the relatives who live in the area were willing and able to maintain them. But with creative local geocachers like davyduck hiding caches in the area, it's not like these were the only caches available in the Okoboji area.