Hi everyone and welcome back to the Guelph Maids blog! Cottage season is here, and we wanted to give you some tips on what to clean before you leave home and what to do when you get back.
This is a checklist for your Guelph home, not the cottage. What to do before you head out and what to actually deal with when you get back.
Preparing Your Cottage Season House Cleaning
Cottage season is here, and if you have a place up north, you know how the pre-trip chaos goes. Something gets left in the sink, or the bug spray is in the wrong bag.
Or, somewhere on the 400, you remember you left the back door unlocked, and now it’s all you can think of for the rest of the drive.
For a lot of Guelph families, summer means regular trips back and forth to cottage country. Muskoka, Georgian Bay, the Kawarthas, or Lake Huron. It’s great.
The state of the house you left behind, though? That’s where most people need some help with, to find the perfect balance between cleaning your home without taking too much time and energy.
The biggest mistake people make before a cottage trip is treating the house like they’ll only be gone for a couple of hours. A bit of prep goes a long way, especially if you’re heading up for a full week.
And when you get back, the last thing you want to do is deep clean your home and waste the little energy you have, instead of resting and getting back on track to your usual routine.
Before You Leave: Don’t Let Your House Sit Sad While You’re Gone
Before leaving, try to keep your to-do list to 5-7 items. The kitchen is usually the area that demands more time and energy before you leave, so try to set aside at least 2 – 3 hours for getting your kitchen ready.
Empty the fridge of anything about to go off.
It’s important to prepare a few days before you leave, and try to adjust your menu for the week. Try to work with what you have instead of buying extra food, especially if it has an expiry date.
If possible, adjust your menu to whatever you have open in your fridge, like open yogurt, leftover pasta, or that bag of salad you keep meaning to eat.
Anything with less than a week left on it should be eaten, composted or tossed before you go. Coming home to a fridge that has had time to develop its own ecosystem is a rough way to start a Monday. Take the compost and garbage out while you’re at it.
Run the dishwasher before you leave.
You want to come back to clean dishes, not a machine full of soggy ones that has been sealed shut for five days.
Make sure you run the dishwasher before leaving and, if they’re dry, place your plates and utensils back in the cupboards and drawers.
Wipe down kitchen surfaces.
Crumbs and spills left on counters and stovetops tend to attract ants by day three. Depending on the type of food crumbs, it can also attract roaches. Ontario summers are prime time for unwanted visitors, including pharaoh ants, which are particularly hard to get rid of once they find their way into your house.
We wrote a whole post on how to get rid of pharaoh ants if that situation sounds a little too familiar. Ten minutes of wiping now saves a few days of frustration later.
Take care of the bathroom.
Bathrooms get gross fast when they’re closed up. A week with no ventilation is enough to get mildew going in the shower corners or along the curtain. So first of all, make sure you leave the bathroom doors open before you leave.
Quickly scrub toilet, wipe the sink and if you have time, scrub the shower floor and rinse with plenty of water. Pull the shower curtain flat across the rod too. This way, it dries out rather than sitting bunched in a damp corner.
Bathrooms can be a bit challenging sometimes. Here’s a pro tip: leave a cleaning agent acting on the surfaces for 10 – 15 minutes while you take care of other areas.
You can apply a multi-purpose cleaner on the sink, a gel cleaner on your toilet, and sprinkle some soap and baking soda on the shower. While these products are acting on the surfaces, you can sweep and mop your floors or clean the mirrors in the meantime.
Check the laundry.
Anything damp in the washing machine that sits for a week gets truly awful. Throw it in the dryer or hang it up before you go.
It takes two minutes and you will absolutely not want to deal with it when you roll in tired after a long drive.
Adjust the thermostat.
Don’t leave it cranked to 20 for an empty house, but don’t shut it off entirely either.
Something around 26 works fine for summer. You’ll appreciate it when you walk through the door after a few hours in the car.
That’s the list. The goal here is not a full pre-trip clean. It’s just preventing the kind of situation that turns your Sunday night into a recovery operation before you even unpack.
When You Get Back: What to Do (and What Can Wait)
The drive back from cottage country is usually long. You’re tired, the cooler needs emptying, and there’s a damp pile of stuff in the backseat that needs sorting.
We know this is not the moment for a big cleaning push! Here’s what you can do instead:
Open the windows first thing.
Houses that have been shut up for a few days just smell off even if there’s nothing actually wrong with them. Moisture can speed up the growth of some bacteria, so it’s important to open the windows when you walk in.
Let things breathe for a bit before you do anything else. Works better than any spray or candle, and it’s free.
Get the laundry going right away.
Organize your laundry: beach towels, swimsuits, whatever you wore around the campfire.
This is actually a great task to begin with because it’s going to take some time (usually, at least one hour) for the first load of laundry to be ready, so it’s a good idea to start washing while you’re unpacking everything else.
Check the kitchen.
Empty the compost, rinse the bin and wipe the counters. If you did your prep before leaving, this takes about five minutes. And if you didn’t get around to it, a bit longer, but no judgment.
If you left dishes and utensils in the dishwasher, this is the time to put them back into place.
Give the bathrooms a quick reset.
If you were rushing out the door before the trip, the bathroom probably got skipped. A quick standard clean of the sink and toilet, five minutes tops, and the whole place feels more like home again.
Don’t tackle the deep stuff tonight.
If you’ve been away for a week or more, the house is going to need a proper clean at some point. Just not necessarily the same night you get back. Handle the essentials above, then plan the bigger session for a day when you’re not still unwinding from the drive.
If that bigger session sounds like a lot on top of everything else, that’s what we’re here for. A deep cleaning service after a long stretch away is genuinely one of the best ways to use it. You take care of the basics, we handle the rest.
Conclusion
Here’s a quick version of our tips to clean your home before and after going to your cottage:
Before you go: clear out the fridge, run the dishwasher, wipe down the kitchen, sort the laundry, and crack the bathroom door.
When you get back: open the windows, start a wash right away, do a quick kitchen and bathroom pass. Save the proper cleaning for after you’ve had a night’s sleep. That’s really about it.
Cottage season is supposed to feel like a break. If getting the house back in order after a long stretch away sounds like a bit much, check out what a maid service includes and see if it fits what you need.
Happy cottage season, Guelph!
