Summer is drawing to a close, with a burst of autumn colour ready to decorate your garden. But with cold, wet weather and dark nights just around the corner, now is the right time to get your home and garden prepared for the next six months.
The experts at leading developer CALA Homes know that ensuring that your home is cosy (while being energy efficient) and neat and tidy is important to a person or family’s wellbeing. They have created a list of ways that you can get your home ready in plenty of time for autumn and into winter.
1. Get outside and cut back that greenery
There’s nothing worse than watching your garden fill with dead leaves and unruly trees and shrubbery. And come the winter, it’s too cold and hard to really get stuck in and tackle it.
We are now at the stage that if you cut back a hedge, the grass or some bushes, they won’t grow back quickly enough to become a problem area. It also means that once it becomes time to start again in preparation for spring, the job won’t be half as difficult.
So if you don’t want to have a garden full of brown leaves, or a jungle to hack back in spring, take the time now to trim your foliage and get it to a manageable state before the cold weather hits.
2. Bring in your beloved plants
This is connected to the number one on our list – protect plants and flowers that are more vulnerable to the elements by moving them indoors (into either a greenhouse, shed or even your house) or covering them up.
But before you bring them in, give them a good check for pests, such as aphids and mites, because they could spread to your houseplants.
And take a look at how the plant has grown over the summer – this might be the ideal time to repot it (into a clean pot to stop your home from getting tracked with dirt).
3. Test your detectors and fire safety equipment
It may be obvious, but we use more heating in autumn and winter. Because of that, we need to make sure that our homes and are families are safe. Once you have had the boiler serviced or your chimney swept, it’s about remaining vigilant. And smoke and carbon monoxide detectors can be one of the safest ways to keep your home and your family safe.
Make sure your detectors have fresh batteries (if they need them) and do a couple of quick tests so that you know that they are still in good working order. Smoke alarms in particular can benefit from a light vacuuming to make sure there’s no dust inside.
Scottish Fire and Rescue offer good advice on their website for fire alarm fitting and maintenance.
4. Check that you are going to be warm this autumn
Imagine waking up one morning and realising that it’s suddenly gotten quite cold outside, so you decide to go and switch on the central heating, only to discover that nothing happens. This happens a lot, which then has the knock-on effect of leaving you having to wait for a heating engineer to find space to fit you in.
Beat the rush and get your heating checked now – a boiler service, getting your chimney and fuel-burning stove cleaned or getting the radiators bled can save time and ensure that you and your family don’t have any chilly nights.
5. Invest in ways to keep your home energy efficient AND cosy
It’s not just a healthy heating system that is important to have in place for autumn and winter – considering ways to stop the heat leaking out of your house is vital too.
While many new homes come with the latest glazing and insulation, there are still some simple steps that can be taken to keep your house cosy, including investing in some good quality thermal curtains (they are often thicker and lined, also making them good as black-out curtains), buying – or even making – draft excluders for those gaps under doors and keeping the doors to colder areas of the home closed.
Not only will these ideas keep you warm, they could also have a knock-on effect on your energy bills, saving you money.