How To Keep Your Vacation Home Clean While You’re Away

You own a vacation home so you don’t have to deal with anyone else while you’re comfortably experiencing your vacation.

But vacations end, and you must go back to your permanent home. And since no one else is attending to your vacation home (and you’re too busy or far to go back and clean it regularly), it’s just sitting there. If you’re not careful, it can collect many undesirable things by your next trip.

So how do you avoid the dirtiness of your vacation home overwhelming you the next time you visit? One word: preparation! That’ll be easy to do when you use these tips.

Pick Up Your Stuff

You won’t need to take everything out of your vacation home, but you don’t want to find last vacation’s mess next time you visit. Don’t leave your things lying around!

Put the things you’ve taken out where they belong — especially if they belong in the trash. Wash your dishes and take the trash out of your vacation home before you leave for a long time. Doing those things will prevent unpleasant odors and pest infestations from forming during your time away.

Even though you live in your vacation home part-time, you don’t want it to have traces of your last trip when you’re on your next one. You’ll need to wash your linens and deep clean the bathroom. Mop/vacuum every floor and clean every carpet to get rid of outside contaminants that were tracked in your home.

Keep Mold Out

A simple way to keep mold out of your vacation home is to get rid of things that can collect mold easily — porous things, like sponges, washcloths, dish towels, or wooden cutting boards. Also, don’t put carpeting in humid areas.

Install fans in moist areas, like the kitchen or bathroom. If your entire vacation home is in a humid area or you notice it always feels damp, install a dehumidifier. It’ll dry out the air for you.

Take Care of the Outside of Your Vacation Home

Weatherize your vacation home. You can’t predict the weather and you can’t be at your vacation home 24/7, so you can’t fix every problem caused by inclement weather immediately. Insulate the pipes so they won’t burst. Install French drains in rainy areas to keep water (and mold) out of your home, and clean your gutters so they won’t get clogged and will still work.

No matter how frequently you maintain your yard, you’ll need to mow your lawn and trim the hedges before you go. Your lawn won’t be overgrown on your next trip, and maintaining it will deter pests from making your yard their home.

Consider Outside Help

The point of having a vacation home is to have a place where you can periodically escape the madness of the outside world. Unfortunately, that means you may not get to it that much. Letting a cleaning service do the dirty work when you leave for long stretches of time isn’t such an awful idea — letting your vacation home get dirty and fall into disrepair would be far worse.