The Essential Home Spring Cleaning Checklist

As winter comes to an end, it may be the perfect time to deep clean inside of your home, which can include wiping off or washing the surfaces and items you interact with most, getting rid of items you no longer need and even taking a look at your finances and considering ways you could save money on homeowners insurance.

Keep reading for several spring cleaning tips including a rundown of the areas you should focus on the most as you go through your home spring cleaning checklist.

On This Page

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  1. Spruce Up Your Living Areas

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  2. Deep Clean the Kitchen

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  3. Declutter Your Bedrooms

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  4. Scrub the Bathrooms

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  5. Organize Your Garage

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  6. Review Your Finances

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  7. Clear the Fireplace

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  8. Spring Life Back Into Your Yard

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  9. Sanitize Your Electronics & Check the Alarms

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  FAQs

1. Spruce Up Your Living Areas

Cleaning your living room, sunroom and other common spaces in your home will often involve sweeping and vacuuming your floors as well as dusting shelves, chests, entertainment centers and picture frames.

In order to reach dust and crumbs that have accumulated in hard-to-reach places, you may need to move around or lift up couches, chairs and loveseats as you sweep. In addition, you should be prepared to vacuum fur and dander off of your furniture and carpets if you have pets.

2. Deep Clean the Kitchen

As you prepare to spring clean your kitchen, you should plan on rinsing out and scrubbing your kitchen sink, wiping down hard surfaces like countertops and stovetops and cleaning inside of appliances like microwaves and ovens. You should also throw away old food in your pantry and freezer. Likewise, you should make a habit of regularly cleaning out your refrigerator to ensure you don’t allow spoiled food to stay in your fridge for an extended period of time.

You may also want to consider taking food out of your fridge or moving it around so you can do a thorough cleaning inside of the fridge. Feel free to take out removable parts like shelves and drawers to make them easier to wash. While you should only need to use a rag with hot, soapy water, if you plan on using bleach to sanitize the inside of the fridge after the initial cleaning, then you should make a solution consisting of one tablespoon of liquid bleach per gallon of water.^[1]

3. Declutter Your Bedrooms

You may also want to reorganize your bedroom and throw out or give away items and clothes you don’t need anymore. This could also present you with a good opportunity to update your home inventory and adjust your personal property coverage limit if appropriate.

Meanwhile, you should also send your pillowcases, sheets and blankets through the laundry cycle and then use a vacuum, baking soda or a stain remover as necessary to clean your mattress.^[2] In addition, if you keep a fan on your nightstand, you may want to remove its grill so you can easily access the fan blades to wipe dust off of them.

4. Scrub the Bathrooms

Some of the steps you should take when cleaning your bathroom include sweeping and mopping the floor, gently wiping your mirror after spraying glass cleaner on it and using a damp cloth to wipe down hard surfaces such as your sink and faucet, the outside of your toilet, your tub and your shower walls and showerhead.

Next, you should use a toilet brush and cleaning solution to scrub the inside of the toilet bowl. You may also want to check for leaks or broken pipes so you can prevent water damage before it starts. Finally, experts recommend replacing your toothbrush every three to four months, so you may want to get in the habit of buying new toothbrushes at the beginning of each season.^[3]

5. Organize Your Garage

You’ll also want to reorganize the items you store in your garage, shed or any other structure on your property and throw away anything you don’t need anymore. It may also be beneficial to wipe down hard surfaces, sweep the floor and, if you haven’t been in there in a while, clear away spider webs and keep an eye out for rats and other pests that may have taken up residence in your garage.

6. Review Your Finances

While it isn’t “cleaning” in the most literal sense of the word, you should also make sure your finances are in order as part of your spring cleaning checklist. This may involve reevaluating your budget and looking for opportunities to cut costs. In particular, you should think through what has changed in your life recently and how these things could lead to higher or lower homeowners insurance premiums.

For example, if there has been a surge in home break-ins and other crimes in your area recently, then you may need to budget for higher home insurance premiums once your policy is up for renewal.

However, you could alleviate this by installing a home security system to lower your exposure to theft and potentially earn a homeowners insurance discount.

7. Clear the Fireplace

If you regularly use your fireplace during the winter months, you should take the time to clear away any soot that has built up once spring begins. In particular, you should keep an eye out for and clean up creosote, a gummy substance produced by wood-burning fireplaces that is highly flammable and can cause a chimney fire to ignite and heat up rapidly.^[4]

8. Spring Life Back Into Your Yard

While snow can leave your lawn in poor condition, you can get your grass back in shape by taking steps such as these during the spring:^[5]

• Gently remove leaves and dead grass from your yard using a rake once your soil has started to dry out
• Use an aerator to break up compact soil so the roots of your plants can more easily access air and nutrients
• Add more seeds to account for the grass that died over winter
• Apply lawn fertilizer once the outdoor temperature reaches about 55 degrees
• Mow your lawn once the grass grows to about three inches tall

9. Sanitize Your Electronics & Check the Alarms

It’s also important to take the time to clean your electronics because your personal property insurance won’t cover damage to electronics caused by the progressive accumulation of dust and may not cover your work laptop at all unless you add a home-based business insurance endorsement to your homeowners policy.

Steps you should take to clean your electronics can include wiping your television and computer screens with a dry microfiber cloth and using a delicate dust brush to remove dust from between the keys of your keyboard. While you should avoid spraying water directly onto electronics, you can use an electronic contact cleaner if necessary. If you don’t have any store-bought contact cleaners, you can make your own by filling a spray bottle halfway with distilled water and filling the remaining half with isopropyl alcohol that will help the water evaporate quickly.^[6]

Meanwhile, you should keep in mind that you may need to do certain tasks in more than one room in your house such as sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting and cleaning baseboards. You should also make sure your smoke detectors are working properly and replace their batteries if necessary so you can keep yourself and your family safe in case of a house fire.