How To Put Together Your Home For Cold Weather?

Even though spring cleaning takes all the attention of responsible homeowners, home cleaning in fall is equally important. Just like spring cleaning, you need to do it to prepare your house for the upcoming weather. The intensity of fall cleaning is lower than the spring cleaning, but its importance shouldn’t be judge through its intensity.

Here are some things you must include in your fall home cleaning checklist. Go through these and maybe print these to avoid forgetting these.

What to clean throughout your house?

Before you tackle every room or section of your house individually, you should fix the major things you need to do throughout your house. Those are:

1. Clean the windows. Due to the dusty weather in summer, windows must be filthy and even if you don’t want professional window cleaning, you should just clean those with regular cleaning solutions and products.
2. Once you clean the windows, ensure that all the window treatments are also cleaned. What I like to believe is that you enjoy the beauty of the cold weather from inside. No one loves the winter while standing in the teeth-shattering cold. Right?
3. Replace the drapes with heavier ones. I am not sure if you do that, but a lot of people change their drapes according to the weather. In summer, lighter and thinner shades are better, and they keep your home cool. But in winter, heavier curtains helps to keep your house warmer (if you don’t forget to pull off the shades during daytime).
4. After these three tasks, you should start working on electrical fixtures. There are mainly three things you need to clean – fans, bulbs & other light fixtures, and covers of the electrical fixtures. Go through your entire house and clean every single fan. Then work on cleaning the lamps, lanterns or whatever kind of lighting you have. It’s very light and quick-to-do task as if you do the regular home cleaning, all you need to is take the dust off these things. They will come clean right away.
5. Now is the time to work on the doors. Dust all of them. Clean the dirt from the top of the doors and don’t forget to clean the door knobs. You should, in fact, desensitize them if possible. You’ll be amazed by the amount of dust that gets trapped on the door knobs. Do you the famous actress Cameron Diaz uses her elbows to open the doors instead of touching door knobs?
6. If your home is very new, you may not feel the need of doing this task but if you have been living in your current home for a few years, start oiling the door hinges to keep them in a good smooth working state.
7. Last but not the least, declutter your house. It’s important to maintain the appeal of your home as well as to retain the peace of your mind. Tuck away all the summer related stuff. Don’t forget to store it properly if you intend to use it in the next season.

Now it’s time to tackle each of the rooms one by one. Let’s begin!

In the kitchen

1. Clean the refrigerator: I have already talked about how you can maintain a refrigerator to make it last longer. Cleaning the fridge is a must for that. It also helps to maintain a healthy atmosphere inside that ‘box’ where the majority of your food items are stored. Deep clean your refrigerator in Fall. Take out all the products, wipe off the shelves and then use baking powder to remove all the scents of food items. Clean the fridge from the backside as well. The coils at the back should be free of dust.
2. Clean the oven: It’s the holiday season, and you must be doing a lot of baking and cooking in the oven in next few months. Make it properly clean before that season begins.

Don’t forget to clean the kitchen cabinets. It’s not necessary as you must have done that during spring as well. But if you have the time, go ahead!

In the Bathroom

1. Clean the tiles: I believe that if you wipe off the bathroom tiles just after you finish taking a bath, you’ll never need to clean the tiles again. But let’s be real. We are too busy to do that. And that’s precisely why you need to clean the tiles now.
2. Clean the shower curtain: Another bathroom cleaning task we don’t do daily is cleaning the shower curtain. You should either clean or replace it in the Fall.

In the Bedroom

If you’ve more than one bedrooms in your home, go ahead and perform these tasks for each of those.

1. Begin by cleaning all the blankets; pillow covers cushion covers and bedsheets.
2. You should also wash the pillows as they trap a lot of dust and can cause skin problems and migraines.
3. A lot of people have mattresses that have sides supposed to be used for a certain weather. If you have one of those mattresses, flip the sides.
4. Change your wardrobe. Pull out your summer clothing, store it well and put back the fall and winter dresses in there.

Let me include the one thing you need to do in the laundry room. As we’re talking about the clothes and wardrobe, I thought it would be appropriate just to mention the point here – clean the dryer vents and remove any lint if it’s there. Lint can ultimately ignite a huge fire in your house. Google the facts if you don’t believe me. Don’t let it happen.

You should also not forget to check out some fall maintenance tasks that involve appliances like your HVAC system.

Outdoor home cleaning

1. Begin with proper gutter cleaning. Dirty gutters get clogged and ultimately, lead to burst pipes. You certainly don’t want that to happen.
2. Close your pool.
3. Clean all the patio furniture and ensure it isn’t placed in an area where it will get covered with snow. It’s always better to store it in the garage or basement for more protection. If it’s not possible, just change the position of the furniture to save it from damage as much as possible.
4. Empty all the garden hoses. It’s crucial to be careful with that as water that stays in the hoses can lead to frozen or burst pipes.
5. Clean the driveway.

These are the fall home cleaning tasks that you need to perform. There are other maintenance tasks that I have mentioned in my previous post. You might want to check it as well for additional information. I hope you enjoyed reading the post and found some useful information through it.