If you have trees around your home (yours or your neighbor’s), you have lots of fall cleaning to do once the leaves start falling. The leaves need to be raked from the yard and flower beds, swept off the patio and walkways, and cleaned out of rain gutters.

It’s just as important to take a close look at the inside of your home and do a thorough cleaning. After all, fall is when people start congregating indoors once again. The holidays are around the corner, and you may have guests dropping by to visit.

And with busy summer schedules, you may have cut corners and let some of your housecleaning go by the wayside. If you did, you’re not alone. It happens to the best of us!

But now’s the time to get your home back into “mother-in-law’s coming over” shape. Here’s a checklist of fall cleaning tasks:

• Dust each room from top to bottom. Start from the top because dust will naturally fall as you go, and you don’t want it falling on the surface you just cleaned.
• Take mounted light fixtures down and wash them.
• Clean ceiling fan blades.
• Cobweb every corner of every room. Don’t forget the corners of the floor, especially if those corners are behind furniture.
• Move furniture and thoroughly clean the floors. Get the carpets professionally cleaned, or at least vacuumed with a powerful vacuum. Scrub hard-surface floors on your hands and knees to get them thoroughly clean.
• Clean all of your woodwork — doors, door frames, baseboards, window sills, etc.
• Wash items that have sat and collected dust that has now turned into grime.
• Of course, if you haven’t kept your kitchen and bathrooms cleaned, those rooms need a top-to-bottom scrubbing, too.

Fall cleaning quickly can become overwhelming, but don’t let it! If you don’t have time, physically can’t do the tasks, or simply don’t want to do all this yourself, you DO have options!

One option, of course, is to call Mini Mops and have your home professionally “fall cleaned” (spring cleaning in the fall). Another option is to complete one room at a time yourself until the entire house is cleaned. Yet another option is to recruit friends and family to help with a “cleaning party.”

Whichever option you choose, a fall cleaning gets you ready to face the holidays — and holiday guests — with a smile. So jump in and get it done now.

Mini Mops, Inc. is a professional house cleaning company serving residential and commercial clients in the Fresno-Clovis CA area since 1975. We are currently accepting new clients. Please call (559) 264-6677 for more information.