Cleaning Your Home Semi-Annually & Annually (Fall & Spring Cleaning)
Spring and fall cleaning are the names given to the age-old custom of doing an extensive whole-house cleaning once (or twice) a year. Although this has fallen out of fashion in recent times, there is very good reason to revive these old customs and practices, and we seek to organize, declutter, and clean our houses to make them a home.
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A Brief History of Spring Cleaning & Fall Preparedness
These customs fell during these seasons because the homes of old were very different from our modern ones. After a long season of heating with wood, oil, fat, and gas and lighting candles and torches, a home would be blackened, dusty, sooty, greasy, and grimy by spring. Deep home cleaning after this was necessary for health and comfort, never mind the aesthetics and smell, and immensely practical to do this in the spring.
When it was warm enough and the season for home heating was over, people would clean every surface and object in the house. This complex and unpleasant but deeply appreciated task would occur over several days or weeks. It would have been made easier in the past because families would have been larger and many children would have been available to help.
Related: Create A Practical & Simple Homemaking Schedule That You Will Actually Keep
Even the walls would be washed and painted with lime or whitewashed to remove the black soot marks that could not be cleaned with soap and elbow grease.
During the Fall, cleaning would have involved the crucial preparations for a long winter season.
Spring cleaning is like a detox for your home.
Wood needed to be cut and stacked enough to last a winter. Animals would be slaughtered, and the meat preserved through smoking, curing, drying, and other means. The breeding animals needed a comfortable place to overwinter and plenty of food to survive until spring.
Hard cheeses would be made to preserve the milk as cows dried up approaching the cold. Herbs, fruits, and vegetables would be preserved using the methods available — drying, canning, storing them in the cold cellar, etc.
Winter blankets and perhaps special drapes and rugs would also be brought out of storage. A poorly prepared home in the Fall might mean discomfort or even malnutrition, starvation, or death.
Our lives today might not look like this. Even as homesteaders who take pride in self-sufficiency and doing much from scratch, we stack up wood to save money on heating costs and to enjoy the brightness and cheer of a wood stove, not because we will die from cold exposure.
Our wood stoves don’t leave soot and blackness on every surface; modern versions of these appliances contain that quite well.
I can buy fresh meat, cheese, and even fruits in the grocery store, though the ethics of shipping blueberries halfway around the world so that modern people can enjoy their flavor (what little there will be) in January are dubious.
I think the modern equivalent of spring cleaning and fall cleaning is still an old-fashioned tradition worthy of being revived in every home even though it will look quite different and be much easier.
What Spring Cleaning Might Look Like
Here is what spring cleaning looks like in my home:
First, the winter objects, clothes, accessories, and other items are sorted and put away in labeled storage bins.
This means skiis, snowshoes, ski suits and goggles, boots, hats, scarves, jackets, most sweaters (I always keep some warm, wool cardigans in my closet year-round) and any other winter clothing.
Before I put the clothing away for the season, I will sift through anything belonging to me, my husband, and our children and make a pile of “discard” clothing to be given away or donated.
Things that will no longer fit the children will be put away in a separate storage box, along with other clothing they have grown out of, which might still be used for any future brothers and sisters.
The closets — especially our hall closet, which doubles as a laundry room and storage for many things will then be dusted, neatened, deep cleaned, tidied up, and freshened up.
(The bedroom closets will get the same treatment.)
In my experience, the best way to do this is to remove everything from the section of the room being decluttered and cleaned and make piles of “keep,” “give away/donate,” and “put elsewhere” before cleaning every surface and appliance in the room.
This is a whole-day job but so worth it.
As any room or space is deep cleaned, I see what can be done to make it more efficient and organized. For example, we now have wicker baskets for each family member labeled with our name, full of seasonally appropriate items.
Related: The Simple Strategy For Decluttering Your Home
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Fall Cleaning
In the Fall, those boxes will be filled with hats, scarves, mittens, and similar items. In the spring, I put those objects away. What will gradually go in there will be spring and summer things like sun and baseball hats, spare water bottles, chapsticks, sunglasses, etc.
Before those labelled wicker baskets, we would always search for those objects, as they were scattered throughout the house in several locations—super inefficient and frustrating.
This year, I’ll use that method of labeled baskets to make the laundry room/mud room even more attractive and organized. As we’re still renovating our 1860s farmhouse, that room has been used as a cluttered catch-all for all sorts of objects, and it has been messy and complicated to keep neat.
As the big part of our renovations comes to a finish, it has been so relieving to see my home become neater and more organized again.
Next, the seasonal decor will be put away. One super simple homemaking tip that I love to incorporate into my home to make it more cozy is seasonal decor.
As Fall comes in, I love to swap out paintings for seasonally appropriate ones. I also have Fall and winter bedding, pillows, blankets, and trinkets. And, of course, Christmas. I love a house fully decorated for Christmas. The thrift stores come Fall are a treasure trove of old-fashioned Christmas things, and I love all of them.
The renovations have prevented me from going all out in this regard, and my poor husband has no clue what’s coming!
In any event, the spring and summer art, linens, and fine cotton bedding are taken out and put away in their respective storage bins, which are labeled along with everything else.
Then, I will clean and refresh the bedroom mattresses and rotate them. I will also clean the bed frame underneath and the entire bed.
Every single nook and cranny is cleaned — the baseboards, window sills, windows, walls, and ceilings — all dusted, washed, and mopped. This part is enjoyable and simple as the big job is cleaning out the closet and rotating out the seasonal clothes.
The room will be aired out daily during warmer weather, although we still do this to some extent during winter.
Any rugs will be taken out and beaten, washed if necessary and allowed to air out on the clothing line or hung over the deck as long as no rain is forecast.
The bedside tables will be emptied out and reorganized.
As always everything is taken out and put into three piles: “keep,” “move somewhere else,” and “donate” before he drawers are cleaned and reorganized.
The heaviness of winter is removed and exchanged for the light, airy things of spring and the coming summer. A vase of fresh flowers or some green living plants that do well in lower-light situations is also nice.
Come Fall, the same things are done, but in reverse—the heavier bedding is removed, the winter clothing is removed (and I note what needs replacing or adding), and the sundresses are, sadly, put away.
Everything is again deeply cleaned before being reorganized as needed.
Fall and winter does require more keen organizing as winter items are, by necessity, just bulkier and heavier.
Seasonal Swaps & Cozy Decorations
I’ll save the Christmas decorations for Advent as we have many lovely rituals and traditions for that time of year leading up to the magic and joy of Christmas itself.
After swapping out seasonal clothing, the next big task is readying the kitchen for the seasonal change. While I recognize this might not be applicable for every homemaker and family, it is for me. Some of the things I do during these times make a world of difference in how much actual enjoyment I get from the Christmas season, as that can frequently be a time of year so busy that it can become stressful and overwhelming.
Make The Kitchen a Priority For Less Stress & Overwhelm
I like to keep the meaning of Christmas close to my heart and for my family to experience our lovely traditions with minimal stress, so one thing I do that makes a big difference is reorganizing my kitchen baking corner.
I have a baking corner year-round, but come Fall and the prospect of Advent and Christmas, I make sure to organize it specially for that.
The specialty cookie cutters, bundt pans, molds, and stamps come out. Seasonal spices and ingredients are noted down and stocked up. I make a baking plan for Christmas cookies with ingredient lists for grocery shopping.
Fall is also a season when we stop eating BBQ and grilled meats and dishes that are replaced by heavy use of the oven for stocks, soups, stews, roasts, and braises. I might reconfigure where the heavy pots and roasting dishes are kept so that they are on hand.
The spring lambs have reached the appropriate size, and they will be slaughtered and butchered in our kitchen, so the big butcher block is out.
The summer canning season for jams and high-acid foods is over. After pressure canning some of the vegetables and meat we raised and making sauces and ready-to-go meals in jars, all of that will also be put downstairs until next year.
I will make compound butter from fresh herbs and dry the rest, which must then be stored properly to keep them fresh.
Fall is also the time when my obsession with sourdough bread and freshly milled flour comes back in full swing, so I make sure my baking corner is optimized for a long season of experiments with ancient and heritage grains and long-forgotten bread recipes.
Fall is the perfect time to check your freezers, fridges, pantries, cold rooms, and cellars. If you’re gardening and growing food, you might be storing a lot of crops like winter squashes, potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic.
Take everything out, deep clean the freezers quickly, and rotate whatever you find there.
Be honest, when was the last time you did this? Freezers can quickly get out of hand, especially if you buy bulk meat, raise it, or are a hunter or angler. Rotate the food and make plans to use it before it becomes freezer-burned and unpalatable — or you waste money by buying more of the same thing.
Clean out the pantries thoroughly and note what you might have in bulk (it’s easy to forget if you don’t have this written somewhere), what needs to be bought, what is running low, and what is going bad.
So much food is wasted because we buy too much of it, do not store it properly, or forget about it until it loses its freshness and palatability. Prevent this by becoming a true homemaker, one who runs the household like the captain of a ship, with the entire family working under you as needed and appropriate to their abilities.
Once the kitchen is deep cleaned and its seasonal things rotated appropriately along with the bedroom and its clothing and linens and the closets and mudrooms of their things, you can breathe a sigh of refreshing relief. Spring and fall cleaning feel like renewal, and you will feel lighter — or cozier — by doing it.
If you garden, you know that garlic bulbs are planted in the fall for their nine-month period of growth. Fall is also the best time to add compost to garden beds and grow cover crops or something like tillage radish to improve the soil.
Your home will also be easier to keep clean, tidy, and organized, and these tasks can easily be added to your homemaking and cleaning schedule.
