Pre-Vacation Cleaning Checklist

Vacationing can be exhausting–especially if you travel with kids!  Coming home to a clean house is a post-vacation vacation: Drop your bags at the door and collapse onto the couch to catch up on Tivo'd shows and relax for one more night before getting back to business, instead of scrubbing out a moldy fridge.

Memorial Day weekend is the kickoff to the summer travel season.  Here's a checklist of what to clean before you hit the road.

One Week Before Travel:

• Stop buying perishable food:  Now is not the time for a Costco run.  Use up milk, produce, lunch meat, bread, and eggs.
• Eat out of your freezer:  Minimize the risk of loss from power outages and rolling blackouts by planning a week's worth of recipes with the meats, veggies, etc. in your freezer.
• Put your mail on hold:  Don't worry–you won't stop getting mail now.  Go to USPS.com to enter your travel dates and choose the option for delivery after you return. 

Two Days Before Travel:

• Straighten bedrooms and bathrooms as you pack.
• Dust
• Vacuum
• Thoroughly mop floors (you can do a quick spot-mop just before leaving.)
• Wash and dry as many clothes and linens as possible. 

One Day Before Travel:

• Clean Bathrooms
• Water Plants
• Clean out the fridge
• Ice Cube Trick:  Put 2 ice cubes in a plastic bag and place the bag in the door of your freezer (typically the "warmest" part of your freezer).  If the ice cubes are misshapen or melted together when you return, you'll know to throw out freezer an fridge contents.  That hurts, but not as much as food poisoning!

The Day You Leave:

• Clean the coffeepot: Empty grounds from coffee pot; wash carafe.  Leave the lid of your coffeepot open so it will dry while you're gone.
• Wash dishes:  Give yourself enough time to run the dishwasher and put the dishes away after the cycle is complete.  Leave the dishwasher door cracked.
• Empty all trashcans.
• Empty the washing machine and dryer.  Leave the washing machine lid open.
• Set your air conditioner to run about 10 degrees cooler than you expect the weather to be.  Without any circulation, you're inviting mold to move in while you're away.
• Make the beds.
• Hang bath towels to dry if you don't have time to wash and dry them.  Do try to wash kitchen towels and rags–food residue invites pests.
• Do a final quick cleaning:  wipe off counters and sinks, spot-mop floors, and straighten rooms.

Just Before You Leave:

• Flush all toilets.  Pour a cup or so of bleach into each toilet; leave the lid open.  Note:  if you're leaving pets at home, skip the bleach and ask your pet sitter to flush the toilets when she comes to feed the pets.
• Handwash any remaining dishes.
• Double-check that the fridge and freezer doors are closed tight.
• Dump any remaining trash–especially that last diaper!
• Run the garbage disposal.
• Open all interior doors to encourage air circulation.

For more travel tips, check out these articles and videos:

• How to Empty Your Refrigerator Before Traveling video from videojug.com.  Check out the Related section to the right of the video screen for more travel cleaning videos.
• Burglarproofing Your Home from realsimple.com.
• Caring for Plants While on Vacation from realsimple.com.

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