10 Deep Cleaning Chores to Add to Your Fall Cleaning Checklist

To a clean freak, the cooling temperatures and closing pools signal that it’s time to start fall cleaning. Because cleaning the house shouldn’t be relegated to the spring, autumn is the time to sweep out, de-clutter, wipe down, and prepare for winter hibernation. But if you really want to go crazy, below are 10 additional chores to add to your fall cleaning checklist along with a fillable checklist that you can use to make sure you’ve hit every spot in your home.

 1. Light switches

With fall comes cold and flu season, and we immediately seek out all surfaces that interact with human hands. But people forget about light switches. The half second it takes to flick them on or off as we enter and leave the room makes it easy to forget that we’re touching a germ-infested surface.  So, wipe them down or spray with a disinfectant to decrease the risk of spreading germs, even your own.

 2. Remote controls

Whenever I check into a hotel room, the first thing I wipe down is the remote control to the TV. They’re said to be the dirtiest thing in the room, aside from the comforter. Plus, you know that the house keeping staff aren’t disinfecting the place between stays. The same goes for your at-home remotes. Wipe or spray these down to ensure that they’re clean and germ free. The same goes for video game controllers, thermostat, garage door openers, and other items that you use to control the machines in your house.

3. Your car’s interior

This pro-tip is brought to you by my dad who has car OCD brought on from years of working as an auto detailer. He’s a neat freak when it comes to cars, and he keeps an array of cleaning tools handy for frequent clean ups. One tip he recommends is using an old make up brush to dust off your vents. The brush will hit hard-to-reach crevices, keeping your dashboard dust-free.

I also like to wipe down the steering wheel and all of the handles, buttons, and knobs that I touch frequently.

The cup holder gets a special treatment of sprays and wipes to remove the spills and stains. The interior of my seats receive a once over with squirts of stain remover. Once all of the crumbs and dirt have fallen to the floor, I take out my floor mats and wash or vacuum them along with whatever items have fallen in between or underneath the seats. Working from the top down ensures that no dirt gets left behind.

4. Door knobs and handles

Other commonly touched objects in a home that people forget to clean are doorknobs and handles. Front doors, closet doors, bedroom doors, all benefit from a fresh Clorox wipe. Don’t forget the the door knobs on the outside of your house as well. I also occasionally wipe down my mail box to avoid the transfer of germs from the mail carrier.

The same goes for your refrigerator door handle and the flush handle or button on your toilet. In fact, don’t wait exclusively for fall cleaning to disinfect these two items. They are said to be the dirtiest items in your home.

5. Kitchen appliances

I save a real deep clean of my kitchen for fall. Every cabinet and drawer is emptied and cleaned out. Every light fixture is wiped down, and every appliance is scrubbed clean. And I’m not just talking about running your oven through the self-cleaning cycle and throwing out your expired food in the fridge. Here are some spots you might miss.

Drink makers/pitchers

Whether it’s your coffee pot, Britta Filter, K Cup machine, or your tea kettle, the machines that you are using to brew your morning drinks are probably in need of a deep clean. Continuously filling your pots and pitchers with clean water each morning doesn’t mean that they’re clean. Hand wash those tea kettles with soapy water, take apart your K Cup machines, and scrub out those cold drink pitchers.

Replace any old filters (read the directions carefully. You often shouldn’t don’t drink from the first few batches after replacing a drink filter). Run some vinegar  through those machines, and then run clean water through them over and over until you get all traces of vinegar out. Yeah, it’s a pain, but it’s worth it, and you can do it while you clean the kitchen.

Metal stains and spots

You might get the inside of your oven clean with some scrubbing or a self-cleaning feature on your oven, but what about your oven racks? Those grates are hard to get really clean, and those stuck on food on your baking sheets and pots are gross and impossible to scrub off. There is a cheap, effective, yet involved method to get this off. Check out this video from YouTuber Sonyabeonit on how to use dollar store oven cleaner, your stove top, and your sink to make your metal cooking tools look as good as new.

Refrigerator deep clean

Are you wiping down the inside of your fridge regularly? Are you doing it at all? Think of all of the meat drippings, baking soda spills, and rotten vegetable pieces that are just festering on the shelves, growing bacteria like a cold Petri dish.

Empty each shelf, wipe it down, and don’t forget your drawers. Rinse them with soapy water, and dry them completely. And while you’re at it, wipe down the bottom of your fridge where many of the spills drip down from between the shelves.

Don’t get lazy. Do the inside of the door too. Reorder your condiments in an orderly fashion, and put your fast food packets in a place where you’ll actually use them the next time you need them.

If you have the strength and determination, pull your fridge out from the wall. Clean the cobwebs off of the wall, and sweep the dust bunnies off the floor. Consider even mopping back there.

Most importantly, clean off that vent at the bottom of your fridge to keep it from getting clogged. Use the attachment of your vacuum cleaner to really suck up the dust and dirt that accumulates deep inside the vent.

You’re also supposed to defrost your freezer once a year. Make plans to eat up some of your freezer stash beforehand so that there’s less to keep cold while you defrost. This was a quarterly occurrence at my old job where we stored our lunches in a motel-sized fridge that wouldn’t keep anything frozen in its mailbox-sized freezer but sure liked to build up an igloo of rock-hard ice around the outside of it.

One trick that I learned while volunteering to defrost this work fridge regularly was to boil a bowl of water in the microwave and then set it under the ice to help it melt faster and catch the dripping water. Then, I’d take a letter opener to it and start chipping away until it broke off in large pieces. It so satisfying to break that ice off and let out some administrative frustrations while doing so.

6. Shower curtain

While you’re taking down your blinds and/or curtains to wash your windows, you might as well pull down the shower curtain as well. When was the last time you threw it in the washer rather than just sprayed it down with mildew spray? The state of the inside of the curtain will let you know. Run it through some hot water in your washer to disinfect it. While the curtain is out of your way, scrub down your tub, especially that corner where the curtain bunches up when it’s open.

7. Purse, wallet, and keys

You probably wipe down your phone on a regular basis because of the visible dirt that grosses you out. But how often do you disinfect the other items that you carry around daily?

Did you know that the inside of your purse or bag can grow dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella? It sits on the floor of public restrooms, is the victim of dirty hands rooting around for tissues and candy, and stores some of the dirtiest objects of all: money. We all have that stray quarter and penny rolling loose in the bottom of our bag, and there is always a constant build up of crumbs and dirt settled on the bottom.

While you’re throwing out your used tissues and loose Tic Tacs, you should also hit your wallet and keys with some disinfectant. I drop my keys on the ground regularly, and there’s no telling what clings to it afterward.

And your wallet is the place where money is stored along with your credit cards which can’t be much cleaner. So at the very least, wipe down the outside especially before you reinsert it into your newly cleaned purse. And see if there are any expired coupons or used gift cards that you can remove from it and lighten your load.

8. Heat registers and furnace

My brother recently bought a house which contained hidden dirt that had probably been there in the 60+ years since it had been built. Among the visible dust, there was a ton of invisible dust that made itself known as each room was painted and/or remodeled. One of the main dust traps included his heat registers. If you’ve ignored this invisible dust trap, it may be time to do something about it.

If you suffer from asthma or allergies, it’s important to keep the dust not only off of your furniture but also in the skeleton of your home. Remove those registers, and vacuum out the dust. Then, wipe down the metal registers before reattaching to the wall. Use a Wet/Dry Vac to suck up the dust from the vents in your furnace to keep it running smoothly and avoid blowing dust around.

 9. Your fireplace and chimney

If you live in a cold climate and you own a fireplace, it’s a good idea to prep it now if you intend to use it over the winter. Scoop out any ash leftover from the previous winter. Burn one of those chimney cleaning logs to remove any build up inside the chimney itself. Even consider hiring a chimney sweep to really hollow out those hard-to-reach places, especially if you’ve lived there awhile and have done a lot of burning over the years.

When you’re done, make sure you close your flue so that you’re not letting in any excess air as the temperatures fall. Just don’t forget to reopen it before you light your first fire of the season. Once you close the doors, wipe down the metal, and clean off your tools. Then, clean off the brick or stone surrounding the fireplace. Your living room will feel a lot better afterwards.

10. Laundry baskets, washers, and dryers

Laundry baskets hold both clean and dirty clothes. But how often are we putting clean clothes into a basket that just held dirty clothes? Quite often, I fear. So, minimize the contamination of your clean clothes by wiping down all of your baskets. And don’t forget the one that you keep in the basement which never sees the light of day.

It’s also a good idea to clean your washers and dryers. Run a cup of vinegar through a hot water cycle (with no clothes in it of course) to disinfect the inside of your washer. Once finished, wipe it down with a clean towel.

As for your dryer, remove the vent, and pull out any lint that has become clogged to keep the dryer running smoothly and as clean as possible. Rinse off your lint trap, and let it dry fully before reinserting. You’re going to feel a lot better about your clean clothes when you’re finished.

Free download!

If you need help keeping track of your fall cleaning tasks, download my Deep Cleaning Checklist!

For more fall cleaning tips, check out Your Complete Fall Home Prep and Maintenance Plan from Porch.com!

What does your fall cleaning regiment look like? Leave your answers in the comments below!

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