Preparing your home for Autumn

After a scorching hot summer, the cooler Autumn season will come as quite a shock to a lot of us! That’s why we have listed some key things to consider when preparing your home for the upcoming months…

Layers

It is important to remember that we are beginning Autumn – not Winter – so there is no need to panic about the cold just yet! This being said, some extra blankets for the sofa, a throw for the bed or a thicker duvet wouldn’t go amiss for the cooler evenings.

Additionally, draught excluders are a viable and cost-effective option for preventing heat loss from your home through doors and windows. Dunelm and Amazon are good places to look for extra layers this Autumn.

Lights

Unfortunately, the long summer days have come to an end. However, while the weather is still warm, some nice outdoor lights can keep your garden space looking bright and vibrant for the evenings. We recommend LED or solar outdoor lights to be as energy and cost efficient as possible, and there are plenty of outdoor lights out there at stores such as Lighting Direct and The Range which will add to your garden’s aesthetic. Moreover, outside lighting at your front door is a sure-fire way to give your guests a warm welcome, particularly as we get closer to Winter.

As for inside the home, a change to warmer LED bulbs will make the evenings feel cosier as the sun begins to set. Couple this with a mini pendant light and your living room will feel like a snug retreat in the Autumn evenings.

Autumn Fragrance

There is a vast array of rich scents which can create a cosy, Autumnal atmosphere in your home. The main three products to consider when it comes to filling your home with lovely scents are candles, diffusers, and incense. These all have various pros and cons, so we would recommend doing your own research to see which one is best for you.

Indoor Plants

Indoor plants offer a great opportunity to improve the look of your home, but they also offer a wide array of other benefits. In 2020, Healthline published an article outlining the benefits of indoor plants, which included reduced stress, increased productivity, and improved indoor air quality. They also provide a great talking point, because who doesn’t love nature?

Some of our favourite indoor plants include the Zanzibar Gem, the Swiss Cheese Plant (a name like that is a real talking point), and the Sansevieria.

An extra piece of advice: source all your plants, indoor and outdoor, from reputable growers and avoid buying plants which look tired or unhealthy, as they can harbour pests and diseases.

Gardening

Now that we have covered indoor plants, it is important not to forget about the outdoor ones! There will still be plenty of gardening to do in Autumn, with the added benefit of (hopefully) not having to manually water your plants as much as in Summer.

Some key tips to keep your plants healthy this Autumn include raking up leaves to make leaf mould to feed next year’s plants, clearing dead stems and foliage, and clearing spent plants from vegetable plots before they rot and become a source of disease. It is also vital to keep an eye on your gutters to ensure they do not get clogged by falling leaves, as clogged gutters have a number of negative repercussions such as foundation damage, mould, and basement flooding.

A Clean Home is a Happy Home

This is more general advice rather than an Autumn-specific tip, but the new season is a great excuse to give your home a spruce up! Start small by quickly clearing the clutter in each room, deciding whether to keep, bin, or donate each item. Then you can get onto the bigger tasks of dusting, vacuuming, disinfecting, sweeping, and mopping. If you live with multiple people, make cleaning the house a team effort – it will be a lot quicker!

Preparing your home for Autumn seems daunting at the start, but if you tackle it bit by bit you will be happy you’ve done it by the end.

If you would like to learn more about our developments in Kent which have been featured as images in this article, please contact us today.

Got any questions or feedback on the blog? Or maybe a topic you would like to be covered in a future blog? Email caitlin.willis@clarendonhomes.co.uk today, we would love to hear from you!