The coziest time of the year is upon us, where we spend most of our time at home, sheltered from the harsh cold outside. After the spring, our homes collect germs, dust and dirt, and with winter near, it's time to spruce up your living space one more time before the end of the year.

While winter cleaning requires as much elbow grease as its spring counterpart, the pre-holiday cleanup focuses mainly on disinfection and sterilizing, as well as some organizing to get your home ready for winter entertaining (and quiet relaxation alike). Ensure you focus intently on scrubbing and brushing all the hard to reach areas of your home, including door tops, behind and around artwork, behind the fridge, and inside your trash cans. Following a few easy-to-understand steps ensures that your holiday cleaning is effortless, efficient and constructive.

Additionally, now is the time to take stock and consider adding organizational pieces before you entertain for the holidays. A storage bed can help make the most use out of limited bedroom space. It’s a great solution for cramped guest bedrooms that will be used during the holidays! A storage ottoman can be a stylish and functional addition to your living spaces, and can even serve as temporary extra seating for your holiday parties.

Winter Cleaning Tips

Create a Winter Cleaning Checklists

Before diving in and fervently brushing, scrubbing and wiping every nook and cranny of your home, strongly consider creating multiple checklists to ensure a smooth and productive winter cleaning.

The first checklist should revolve around areas to clean; it's wise to go beyond listing broad locations, "living room," "bedroom," "dining room," as an example, and be more specific, "behind the sofa in the loft," or "around and behind the family portrait," are great examples of particular cleaning locations. While this process may seem tedious, this checklist will mitigate the chances of missing any crucial areas filled with germs and debris.

Your next winter cleaning checklist focuses on the supplies you'll need, this list ensures you'll save time with only a single trip to the store to stock up. The supplies you'll need will vary wildly from homeowner to homeowner, but there are a few materials that everyone should consider stocking. A broom, dustpan, and mop and bucket make up the necessary tools of hard floor cleaning, while a carpeted home may benefit from a professional wet vacuuming. Learn more in our flooring care guide.

Always keep a bottle of all-purpose cleaner on hand for dealing with counters and other hard surfaces. Also, a box of baking soda and white vinegar make for great homemade cleaners that can deal with everything from scrubbing bathrooms to cleaning windows in cold weather. For managing small areas, a small brush and sponge will do wonders for achieving a deep scrub.

Though a little tedious, listing areas to clean, the supplies you'll need and a handy schedule will make your winter cleanup swift and simple. However, planning to do, and doing are very different; next, we'll look at an excellent tip for streamlining the cleaning process.

Don't Clean Your Home Alone

A sure-fire way to simplify winter cleaning, working as a team with your family cuts the cleanup time significantly and helps create good habits in kids. It's preferable to pre-assign work by taking stock of everyone's skill set and ensuring that the job they do is a job with which they are familiar. With preparation, comes success, taking stock of everything your family can and will do ensures a painless winter cleaning. Also, you may want to determine a reward for everyone’s assistance, like a trip for ice cream or a movie night.

Clean from the Outside in

Notoriously unforgiving, the snow and cold can cause damage to your home come spring if you forget to keep up the outside. Proper lawn care, winterizing, as well as storing outdoor furniture provides a protective coating to your outdoor living space, preserving the area for the cold winter.

Raking leaves, mowing the lawn one final time, storing non-weather resistant patio furniture for the season, scrubbing and washing your doors and siding, and cleaning windows before the coldest weather arrives make up the primary duties of outdoor winter maintenance. Learn more about winterizing your home (Link to blog) and winterizing your outdoor living space (link to blog).

Though the extra work as the temperature turns over won't bear fruit immediately, your efforts will keep your outdoor living space fresh, green and beautiful come spring. Raking leaves helps prevent yellow-spots, keeping your lawn green and fresh for the following year. Mowing prevents long grass from folding over, trapping cool moisture under the snow resulting in grass killing fungal diseases. Storing and covering your resistant outdoor furniture prevents the furniture from freeze/thaw damage. Vigorously scrubbing down and washing every surface, paying particular attention to windows and doors, helps mitigate ice build-up and prolonged glass and wood damage.

Creating a checklist ensures you never lose focus and don't forget any nooks or crannies, getting the family involved makes the process many times faster, and remembering your outdoor living space ensures you won't face a dead lawn or damaged furniture in the spring. Following these steps will make your winter cleaning not only go quickly but efficiently and thoroughly.