Halloween is over, so it’s time to get rid of those cobwebs you’d saved all year for decoration! There’s a lot to take care of before the holidays, so get started now with this handy home maintenance and deep cleaning checklist printable!

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I published my Home Maintenance & Cleaning Checklist for Spring in April 2015, but never got around to the fall version that year. And I will admit, I didn’t get around to doing much of the cleaning either. Where does the time go??? Anyway, I’ve been away from my blog for a while doing other things, but I’m back and what better way to get back into it than putting together a massive checklist of all the things I should be doing instead of blogging! 😀

I can say that I’ve actually tackled some of the things on this list already. And luckily we are having a very warm fall (we haven’t even gotten a frost/freeze yet so my garden is still going and so are the mosquitoes). So there is still time to get some of these outside tasks done before the cold weather sets in.

I’ve also been trying to get some of the inside tasks done too. One project has been a very deep cleaning of my kitchen. When you clean your tile floors, you mop with a Swiffer Wet Jet or a traditional mop, right? Do you think your floors are getting clean? Think again. The mop glides over the tile surface, but doesn’t get into the recessed grout (especially the Wet Jet). In fact, it pushes the dirty water right into those grooves and leaves it there! Do you even know what color that grout is supposed to be? Next time you wash your floor and think it is sparkling clean, get an old toothbrush and some clean water, and just wet the toothbrush and start scrubbing the grout. Be prepared to be grossed out! I was shocked at how dirty it was when I thought I had done such a thorough cleaning! But the thought of cleaning the entire floor with a toothbrush was overwhelming (although I did think about adding that as an option for punishment for my daughter…).

So instead I tried this new product, Roto Scrub (see inset). I may do a full review and maybe even a giveaway for this product soon. Basically it’s a scrubby pad that mounts to your drill, so it does all the hard work for you. That definitely made this job easier!

Another project I’ve focused on is organizing my laundry area. Oh, how I wish I had a separate laundry room, but my laundry area is in the unfinished part of the basement crammed in with the plumbing and the heating equipment. Not a lot of room. So a couple of months ago I made myself a laundry station. I was tired of the tiny laundry sorters you find in the stores. I don’t have a large family, but we can certainly generate a lot of laundry! So I put together a PVC pipe frame that holds 3 very large sorter bins (I had planned 4 or 5, but ran out of fabric), and is tall so I can hang things to dry on hangers from it, or just throw them over the bar like a towel rack. I haven’t completely finished it. I would like to add a hinged top, so I have a surface to set down baskets, sort or pretreat, etc. I just haven’t decided on the material to use for it yet. Once it is done, I’ll try to post some pics and maybe some instructions.

As with the spring version, I made the checklist all fancy shmancy. It’s a PDF you can print, but there’s more! It’s an actual form, so you can use the electronic form to check off items as you go. And there’s a special button you can click to get more generic room pages too, again, for online use or printing. And I left blanks (with the checkboxes) for things you may want to add. Cool, huh?

As with the spring version, this checklist is MASSIVE. Don’t expect to get it all done in a day, or weekend, or even a week. You may put off some of the things for months. But there are some things that just need to be on your radar, because they have to get done someday.

Here’s a link to the PDF for download. As usual, this is for your personal use only. You may share, but do not upload. Instead, share the link to this post, please.

NOTE: Some people have had trouble viewing the PDF using the PDF viewer in their browser. Chrome seems to be the worst. If what you see doesn’t look like the samples above, RIGHT CLICK on the link above and do “Save link as…” or “Save target as…” or similar (depends on browser) to save the file to your computer and then open it with Adobe Reader.

UPDATE August 25, 2017: Well, blame the hackers… Adobe has added more security “features” to the latest version of Reader that make it difficult to save your edits to the form. It keeps prompting you to save the file to a new location or filename every time you save! You can of course do this, but what a pain! The only other option is to disable the security. I’ve uploaded a new version of the PDF to include instructions for how to do this. This is not a great solution and I will continue to research if there are other ways to fix this.

Try it out and let me know what you think!