Before I begin today's post I wanted to say thank you to all of you for your patience while I blogged on my phone for the past couple of weeks. My new computer arrived today, and I am happily setting it up. Some things are exhausting, but we do them anyway. Blogging by phone was one of those things. That's life. So, thank you, friends. And if anyone had an issue with the newsletter last week, please email me, and I will send out a new copy. (I can do that now again, too!)
So here we go . . .
On my walk this beautiful day after Labor Day, I could feel a distinct shift in the air. There was a slight crispness in the morning. Then this evening, the light faded just a bit earlier. My focus is naturally winding up the outdoor chores and harvest and turning toward care of the indoor spaces.
Some time this month, lifestyle, home and garden blogs and websites will flood their space with overwhelming checklists for "Fall Deep Cleaning." Our grandmothers did this every fall. They dismantled the entire house to get every corner cleaned and refreshed, then put it all back together again. My nana felt that everything must be done before the first frost arrived. She washed every wall, emptied every closet, scrubbed the baseboards, gave the kitchen the deepest clean of the year, tidied the furnace room, took the loose rugs outdoors to beat out the dust, vacuumed the upholstered furniture, swept under the beds, dressers, end tables, sofa and chairs, and gave the kitchen floor a shine to beat all shines.
I get dizzy just thinking of the work she put in every fall. A simple change of season became an enormous and exhausting chore.
But just like we talked about recently with our budgets, I’ve realized that seasonal housecleaning doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing endurance test.
Your home doesn't need to be pristine to be peaceful. Instead of falling into the trap of a rigid checklist, I like to focus strictly on functional stewardship—tackling the small, intentional tasks that will actively protect our comfort and our budget before winter sets in, while politely skipping the chores that simply don't matter for our daily life.
Here is a look at how my own realistic and reworked post-Labor Day cleaning list looks this week:
The "Yes" List: What Matters Before Winter
These are the few, high-impact tasks that focus on preparing the home for a cozy, efficient cold season:
- The Window and Track Reset: Before closing the windows tight for the next six months, I love giving the sills and glass a quick, clean wipe down. It lets the beautiful, low autumn sunlight stream in without catching summer dust.
- The Heating with Efficiency Clean-Out: Just as I replaced the furnace filter in August, I also must give some attention to the actual duct vents in each room and the cold air returns. This takes just a few extra minutes when vacuuming a room or hallway. I detach the hose from the base suction on the vacuum and clean out the first foot or so of the duct just beneath the vent cover. I also give the cold air returns a good vacuuming while I'm at it. It's so simple, but it adds comfort and saves money on our winter heat bills. It improves air flow, eliminates musty smells when the furnace first comes on, and removes trapped allergens. Vacuuming the cold air returns protects the furnace filter and helps maintain proper system airflow.
- The Deep Kitchen Filter Clean: Since the kitchen will soon be full of simmering soups and cold-weather baking, taking five minutes to run vinegar through the coffee maker, put a lemon shell through the disposal, and wash the stove hood vent keeps our hard-working appliances running seamlessly and smelling as they should. I'll also auto-clean the oven, wipe down the backsplashes, brush away any crumbs lurking behind countertop appliances, vacuum the grille at the base of the fridge, and give the floor a good mopping.
- The Spot Cleaning That Matters: I don't do a thorough steam cleaning of our carpets, but I do spot clean stains and spills. A spill-free carpet looks clean enough for winter. After a season of mud, that's when I bring out the full-sized cleaner. The other "spot" that gets a good clean is the baseboards. We have white painted baseboards throughout our house. Dirt and dust is O.B.V.I.O.U.S. I begin in the most public parts of our house and work my way to the private spaces. All it takes is 10 minutes on the floor with a damp rag to get all of the baseboards in one room spotless.
- The Cobweb Sweep: While I don't wash walls, I do attach a dusting cloth to the end of a pole to snag every cobweb that has been spun along the ceiling's edge. Doing this just makes the room look cared for.
The "No" List: What I Am Contentedly Skipping
These are the traditional deep-cleaning tasks that I am choosing to skip because they consume an immense amount of time without adding real value to our peace of mind or wallet:
- Washing the Walls: Unless a spot is actively dirty, a full wall-scrubbing sprint stays off my list. Life is too short to scrub surfaces that look perfectly fine under a cozy lamplight.
- Vacuuming the Furniture: Unless one of us is experiencing allergies when using particular pieces of furniture, I don't routinely vacuum the upholstery in fall and spring. Instead, I occasionally give the sofa and an easy chair or two a once over with the brush attachment of the vacuum once-a-year as a rainy day project. I might also make a pass over the drapes with the vacuum when I have time while vacuuming individual rooms in the house on some random day of the year.
- Waxing the Kitchen Floor: Most residential flooring these days are labeled no-wax. A simple mopping with warm water and a neutral pH floor cleaner or mild all-purpose cleaner is all most residential vinyl flooring requires.
- Emptying and Sorting Every Closed Cabinet: If our storage spaces are organized enough to find what we need, they don't need a total overhaul just because the calendar flipped to September. I wipe out kitchen cupboards and drawers as the mood strikes throughout the year and sort the rest of the closets on an as-needed basis.
- Flipping the Mattresses: All of our beds are single-sided, meaning they have a firm, supportive core underside and a pillow/cushioned upper side. Flipping the mattress would defeat the purpose of buying one with a pillow top. Many of the newer mattresses are single-sided. What I do do is rotate the mattresses, head to toe. This evens out wear and prolongs the time until we need to replace them. And I have to say, rotating a mattress is a whole lot easier for a person alone to do than flipping.
Dropping the pressure of an all-or-nothing cleaning routine is the difference between me making a large and substantial list that remains on my desk, or me actually getting the important stuff done. List-making doesn't clean. Me getting up and moving does. Housecleaning, then, is no longer a guilt-driven obligation, but instead it is a quiet act of home love. By focusing only on the routines that protect our comfort, we keep our energy intact, our homes calm, and our afternoons free to sit down and enjoy a warm cup of tea and a good book as the seasons change.
How do you feel about fall housecleaning?
- Is this something you do, or are you focused in another area of life right now?
- Do you choose an abbreviated cleaning list for now and work on some of the extra tasks throughout the year?
- Or do you prefer to get it all done in one fell swoop?
