Before & After-Vacation House Cleaning Tips
This post is in collaboration with Neato Robotics. Affiliate links may be used, and all opinions are my own.
We’re a few weeks away from our summer vacation and the cleaning has started. Some people clean before a cleaning service comes to the house. I prefer to clean when I have a house/pet sitter coming for a week. We’ve done several family vacations and these are my best tips for coming home to a clean(er) house.
Start early. My husband will start two weeks before the trip and work on all of the spaces our house sitter is going to spend the most time. He’ll focus on the bathroom, then the bedroom, living room and kitchen. The bathroom and bedroom are the two spaces we place most of our attention. We want her to be comfortable, and also not have to survive in filth for the week. (Our last big trip was in 2019 and it was longer than a week!)
Get all of the laundry caught up before you go. I don’t like to leave any dirty laundry in the hampers, so I’ll work like mad the week before our vacation to get this taken care of.
Do all of the heavy duty vacuuming a few days before you leave. I don’t get under the bed or under the couch every time I vacuum, and so much dust builds up. With the Neato D8 robot vacuum, you can get all of those harder-to-reach areas of your home with little effort on your part. The Neato D8 can run up to 100 minutes before it auto-recharges and finishes the job. (It can take me more an hour to vacuum one level of my house if I’m moving furniture around and pushing the vacuum around. A robot vacuum would save so much time!)
Corners are hard to handle even with traditional vacuums. The D8’s unique D shape takes care of this issue! It can fit easily under my couches (and the beds!) My cat retreats to under my bed during the day and there is so much hair under there.
Use the MyNeato app. With the app, you can schedule your vacuum to run – and even determine whether you want it to do just part of your house or your entire home. You can start it remotely and get notifications from the app about the status of the vacuum job. (I have these types of updates from my washer and dryer and I love seeing when things are completed.)
Clear out your fridge. You do NOT want to come home to unrecognizable food. I empty all leftovers from our refrigerator a couple of days before we leave (and make sure the dishes are clean and put away the night before we leave.) I may purchase some groceries for the house sitter, but otherwise I don’t have anything that will expire during our time away. I will order groceries to be delivered to the house within a couple of hours of our return. (Grocery delivery has been my jam for YEARS.)
Empty trash cans. We have small trash cans all around the house. Make sure they’re all emptied and your trash is taken out. Nobody wants to come home to a smelly home.
Upon your return
Unpack within the first few hours of returning home.
Start laundry! Just get it out of the way.
Meal plan and have groceries delivered – and then put everything away.
Run the Neato D8 vacuum again. If you have a pet, you know this needs to be done frequently!
Get some rest. You deserve it.
