Cleaning schedules

The Autumn Cleaning Checklist: The Jobs to Do Before Winter

Updated 20 August 2026 · 4 min read

Spring cleaning gets all the attention, and autumn cleaning is the one that actually matters.

Spring cleaning is mostly cosmetic: light, air, a fresh start. Autumn cleaning is preventative. These are the jobs that are pleasant in October and miserable in January, plus the few that turn into a bill if nobody does them.

The four that genuinely cost money

Everything else on this page is optional. These four are not, because skipping them is more expensive than doing them.

1. Bleed the radiators and run the heating. Do it now, on a warm day, not on the first cold night when every heating engineer in the country is booked. Cold spots at the top of a radiator mean trapped air.
2. Clear the gutters. Blocked gutters in a freeze push water back into the walls. This is the single most expensive thing on the list to ignore.
3. Check the seals on doors and windows. A draught you can feel with the back of your hand is heat you are paying for all winter. Draught strip is cheap.
4. Service the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Heating season is when carbon monoxide incidents happen. Test them, replace the batteries, and note the date.

The wardrobe swap

The one job everybody knows about, and the one most often done badly.

Do not simply move summer things to the back and winter things to the front. Swapping is the moment you have every garment in your hands, which makes it the best decluttering opportunity of the year.

• Anything not worn once all summer goes now, not into storage
• Anything that needs repair gets repaired this week or goes
• Wash everything before storing, because moths are attracted to the marks, not the fabric
• Store in something breathable, not plastic, which traps moisture

If this is the part that never holds, there is a whole guide to closet organisation that survives past February.

Soft furnishings, once a year

Autumn is the right time because the house is about to be shut up for months.

• Curtains: wash or air them, and vacuum the tops where dust sits
• Cushion covers and throws through the machine
• Mattress vacuumed and rotated
• Rugs taken outside and beaten, which is far more effective than vacuuming
• Duvets washed or aired, and the winter one brought out

The window job

Windows are worth doing now and not again until spring. Once the weather turns, they will not stay clean and washing them in cold weather is genuinely unpleasant.

Do the insides properly, the outsides if they are reachable, and the frames and sills, which hold more dirt than the glass and are what actually make a window look dirty.

The outdoor half hour

Everything left outside in October is still there in March, twice as ruined and now full of spiders.

• Garden furniture cleaned and covered or brought in
• Hose drained and disconnected, or it splits in a freeze
• Tools brought under cover
• Pots emptied or raised off the ground so they do not crack

The winter comfort layer

Not cleaning, exactly, but the same weekend.

Find the blankets, check the hot water bottles for perishing, dig out the door snake, and put a box of candles somewhere you will find it in the dark. A power cut in December is far less irritating if this was done in October.

Doing it in one weekend

The whole list is roughly a weekend, split sensibly:

• Saturday morning: the four that cost money, because they are the ones that get abandoned if left until last.
• Saturday afternoon: outdoors, while it is still light and dry.
• Sunday morning: the wardrobe swap, which takes longer than anyone expects.
• Sunday afternoon: soft furnishings and windows.

If you only have one morning, do the four that cost money and stop. The rest will keep.

What helps

• A radiator bleed key, which costs almost nothing and is always missing.
• Self-adhesive draught strip, the highest-return item on this list per pound spent.
• Breathable storage bags for the summer wardrobe, not vacuum bags for anything natural.
• A long-handled gutter scoop, if the gutters are reachable from a step.
• Cedar blocks rather than mothballs, which work nearly as well and do not make everything smell of a charity shop.

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