Transitioning Your Home From Summer to Fall
As the temperatures start to cool and the leaves start to change, your home should go through a transformation too. Switching up your home decor, preparing it for the colder months ahead, and efficiently packing away all your summer stuff for next year are some of the best things to ensure that this transition to fall goes as smoothly and comfortably as possible!
Switch Up Your Decor
Can’t get enough of autumn nature? Bring it inside! Go for a walk and find some smaller branches that can be bundled together, and tied up with some twine or a beautiful ribbon. You can arrange some pinecones in large glass bowls and use them as a centerpiece or mixed up with decorative rocks and fall fruits such as pears and apples. If you have children, you can bring them along while you go out to collect things and turn it into a fun family-friendly crafting activity! Don’t forget the candles! Nothing says fall quite like a warm candle on a cold night.
Another fun family activity you can do to help transition your home from summer to fall– picking out pumpkins! Most of us have fond memories of going to our local pumpkin patch around Halloween time and picking out one to carve. But you can also use them as non-spooky decorations, no carving knife required! Small to medium-sized pumpkins can make a beautiful centerpiece, especially when combined with the pinecones, decorative rocks and fall fruits we mentioned earlier. Mini pumpkins make fun place card holders and if you carve them out a little they can serve as a votive holder for tea light candles. Also, remember that your pumpkins don’t all have to be orange! Switch it up with white, red and green!
Prepare for the Weather Change
While this part isn’t as fun as going on nature walks and picking out pumpkins, it’s just as, if not more, important! As the temperature begins to drop, you’ll want to be sure that your home is ready for it. Check to make sure that storm windows are down and secured into place. You should also have your furnaces and oil tanks inspected just in case. The falling leaves are going to wreck havoc on your gutters so you should either have them cleaned out by a professional or grab a ladder and get in there yourself. It’s not a fun task but this ensures that water from rain and melting snow flows away from the house to avoid flooding and ice jams.
Got a fireplace in your home? You will probably be using it a lot come late fall so be sure to vacuum or sweep out last season’s ashes. Because ashes remain hot for a long time and can spark potential fires in trash cans, get one that is fire-safe in order to dispose of ashes properly! Be sure to also have your chimney inspected and swept every to every other year depending on how often you use it! Like the look of a fireplace but not the hassle of maintaining it? Opt for a nice candle arrangement instead. You can place a variety of different sizes and shapes around your fireplace to create a similar effect and a beautiful ambiance. This trick also comes in handy if you have allergies or respiratory problems and find that a fireplace can irritate or trigger those symptoms.
Store Your Summer Stuff with Care
If you have something that you are only using once a year for a short amount of time, these items are best packed away somewhere for the rest of the year where they aren’t in the way and taking up too much space. In these instances, we recommend storing them in what we call “deep storage.” This is going to be your basement, garage, attic, or closet you don’t frequently use. You can even put these items in storage if you know for sure you won’t be using them more than once a year. Wherever they go, choose a place that is not too hard to get at! We are all very busy people and, while we love decorating for 4th of July and summer pool parties, if it’s too much effort to get these items out each year, it will become more a chore than something you want to do.
We know we recommend this all of the time but you should also purge after each season! Think about it this way, if you didn’t use an item this year, do you really think you will use it next year? Probably not, and in that case, it is just taking up valuable space.
Looking for more great tips on transitioning your home each season? Or even just how to keep it organized the rest of the year? Buy our book on Amazon HERE!