Preparing Your Home For Fall : Fall Home Tips

It’s happening, next week is back to school and you know what that means, preparing your home for Fall. You know I am crazy obsessed about my Spring and Fall cleaning tips, I mean, I even spent five minutes talking about it on morning news on how to get your home summer ready. Well, I can’t believe the three months flew by and now I am sharing my Fall home tips with a few of my blog friends and the amazing Homes.com. We will all be tackling both the interior and exterior of our homes and sharing all of our Fall Home tips to help get you ready for those cold nights ahead.

Thank you to homes.com for sponsoring this post. As always all opinions are 100% truthful and my own.

Preparing Your Home For Fall : Fall Home Tips

Our Chicago summer’s are literally 90 days, more like 75 but who is counting. Anyway, I can’t complain because I do enjoy the Fall in the midwest. The Fall colors are just gorgeous and the brisk air is actually so refreshing after our extremely humid summers. But, because we will be dealing with a strong drop in temperature you do have prepare your home for Fall and I want to share all the Fall home tips I will be tackling in the next couple of weeks.

Inside Your Home

Sharing a few of my own indoor Fall cleaning tips but, if you are like me and are a more visual person, Homes.com provided a great infographic that break it down by spaces inside your home. Check it out below.

1. Deep Clean: You know I take this to the next level. From deep cleaning all kitchen appliances to wiping down all your interior windows. Here is a list of areas you should not forget about.
   1. Inside your closest: Wipe down all shelving / with a swiffer get the ceiling and corners of the walls in your closet. Don’t forget to vacuum too.
   2. Wipe down all ceiling fans, and as homes.com reminds us, reverse ceiling fans to a clockwise direction to pull warm air down.
   3. Besides washing windows don’t forget to wipe down the blinds, if you did not wash your window treatments in the Spring, then Fall is a great time too.
   4. Clean Dehumidifiers and change out filters.
2. Get your HVAC serviced
   1. I also wipe down and vacuum the entire area around my hvac system
   2. If needed, place down sticky spider traps around the hvac room
   3.  Change out all furnace filters
3. Replace Batteries in smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors
4. Flip Your mattress’
5. Flip around all area rugs for reverse traffic wear and tear
6. Just like in the Spring, I wipe down around all radiators (older home)
7. Any faux plants or greenery, wipe them down
8. With a damp cloth, wipe down all baseboard
9. Touch up paint
   1. I like to touch up any paint spots that are needed around the house before winter, because once we have our cold winters we will not be able to open windows for ventilation.
   2. Any old paint, make sure to dispose of properly
10. If needed, seal any gaps in windows or doors
    1. Change out your screen doors for glass if you have replaceable. I have screens for my patio doors and front door for the warm weather months and I change them to glass in the winter

Exterior of Home

When preparing your home for Fall there is a long list of exterior prep, so lets tackle that area next.

1. Always, number 1 on my list is cleaning out the gutters and lawn care
   1. Then, do a Fall clean up at least 2-3 times. I know, 2-3 times? But, yes, keeping up with the yard work in the Fall might be a hassle but you don’t want to save it for November.
   2. Bring in any annuals you want to keep. I bring in a few planters for the winter. They will continue to flourish during the winter months and when Spring comes around you will not only save money from purchasing new greenery/flowers but they will look large and luscious.
   3. Plant bulbs for Spring
   4. Fertilize (even for those spring grubs)
2. I do a deep clean of my garage so that I can easily store all yard equipment, from sprinklers to lawn mowers or planters, oh, and the car.
3. If you have a Chimney, have it inspected
4. Any tuck pointing can be done at this time
5. Make sure to replace any wood steps leading into the home. The harsh winters will deteriorate it quickly and then you can get it replaced until warmer weather.
6. If you can, hose down and then cover your air conditioning unit to protect it through the harsh winters
7. Any broken screens? Have them repaired now so when Spring comes around you are ready to go.
8. Make sure all motion detector exterior lights are working
9. Replace the battery of your garage door
10. Replace the battery of any keyless door locks

 

Decorations

Now for the fun part. You tackled the interior and the exterior, it’s time to decorate. I love Fall decorations. Sometimes even more than the holidays.

1. Add a Fall wreath to your doors
2. Add a couple of hay stacks to your front lawn with pumpkins around and on top
3. Change out your welcome mat to a Fall inspired style, maybe a little PSL saying
4. Add pumpkins, acorns, or mums to your Fall planters and walkway
5. Add extra exterior lighting/lanterns. With the days getting shorter, I like to place out a few extra decor lanterns with all-weather LED candles. It adds a little extra mood lighting for our darker afternoons.

Now, don’t worry, you don’t have to write all this down. Just download the free infographic to help get you through your to – do list.  

And go check out more Fall Tips from other homes.com blog partners

                       

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