Freshen Up for Fall

I’m not sure why Spring Cleaning gets all of the attention. Think about it. Your children have been home all summer making messes and trudging them in and out of the house. Holidays are lurking right around the corner. Maybe you are hosting a big gathering or have company coming to stay at your house. If there is a time when your house could use some attention, it’s probably right now.  In the the Fall! 

But if you are anything like me, your Autumn calendar fills up quickly. Scrubbing the house from floor to ceiling may not be in the cards at the moment. Still, giving your home a little attention may help motivate that cleaning and organizing you have been wanting to get around to doing.

Here are some ideas to get you going. If you don’t have time to do this in every room, pick a zone or two to focus on. These are 5 Fall Fresheners that I am either working on now, or have already done, to get my house ready for fall:

1. Put away the summer clothes and decorations/gear. You may be ahead of me on this one, but since we are just getting out of the triple digits in Phoenix, we haven’t abandoned our flip flops yet. However, the more you can clear out the summer stuff, the easier to allow room for the cozy items of autumn and winter to come. Clearing out what is leftover or unfinished from the past season is a good way to make sure you are living in the present and not feeling overwhelmed by the past.
2. Declutter to make way for the holidays. Along the same lines as #1, but instead of just putting stuff away for another season, see what you can actually get rid of for good.             I have been reading the KonMari method book about tidying (I know lots of you have, too), and it is really inspiring me to want to free myself of anything that doesn’t bring me joy. I am in the process of removing/selling several large furniture items. Some items I will replace with things I love more, in time–as I can afford to, but in the meantime I will need the space in my living areas for upcoming family gatherings and for Christmas trees!! Better to have a home that is a little too bare for a little while, than one that is drowning in old furniture that makes you feel cluttered and chaotic.
3. Get the Carpets Cleaned. There are a whole bunch of reasons to do this. And you can hire a professional to do this one! Summer fun left our carpets filthy. Having a little guy exploring in every corner of our house doesn’t help much, either.  There were dark spots and stains all over the beige carpet. We had Zerorez come out and clean the entire downstairs carpet as well as the carpet on the stairs (my least favorite area to try and vacuum). I love that they don’t use harsh chemicals in their cleaning process and they still get great results! They were able to get out nearly all of our ugly carpet stains. It truly felt like a new house when they were finished! You can learn more about them on their website. I highly recommend giving them a call! When you do, tell them that Kendra from My Insanity blog sent you!
4. Aside from having a beautifully clean carpet, clearing the furniture out of a space and cleaning it, helps you see the space with fresh eyes.  It becomes a blank canvas and it suddenly becomes much clearer as to whether you really want to drag that old stained couch back into your beautiful room, or if it has lost it’s joy for good. Does it need a paint job? You may be able to envision a more welcoming arrangement of furniture for that space or decide on the element you need to tie it all together. Even if you don’t have the funds to fully furnish your space the way you want it at the moment, I highly recommend creating a Pinterest board and saving the items and design ideas you love so that you can watch for those things to go on sale or be prepared to purchase items that you will be really happy with when the opportunity arises. This is a really important step to creating the environment you really want in your home. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut with your home decor, because it is hard to imagine that the space could really be something different than it currently is. Clearing out the dirt and the clutter can open a whole new world of possibilities for you.
5. Reposition the furniture you really want in the space and add a few seasonal touches. These can be really simple, like changing out throw pillow covers, or adding some foraged seasonal branches or other elements from your yard. Just a few simple things can completely change the feel of the space. I highly recommend adding some apple cinnamon fragrance in a candle, wax melter or really by any means to invite the feeling of fall into your home (pumpkin spice is nice, too). I was inspired by some artwork I saw at Starbucks and a painted board I had laying around the house to create this sign and decorate a new mantlescape. This was a quick and fun project to do, once I had the supplies. I just used a brown painted board and white and orange Chalk Ink. I looked at some images of calligraphy to help me free-hand the words. And referenced the starbucks artwork in doodling the images around the board. Isn’t this quote perfect for a fresh space for Fall?  My mantle is just Autumnal this year (as opposed to Halloween-themed) so it will last me a couple of months, since my schedule has not allowed me to decorate for every holiday lately, as I like to do when I can.

I love walking in my home now and seeing the clean carpet and the fresh mantle. Still working on the decluttering but I’m feeling more encouraged to keep at it because of the changes we’ve already made. What do you do to freshen up your home for Fall and the upcoming holidays?

Disclosure: I am an blogger ambassador for ZeroRez. I received the carpet cleaning mentioned in exchange for this blog post. I will receive a small commission if you mention my blog when ordering your Zerorez service. This post may contain affiliate links. As always, opinions expressed herein are all mine.