October: Getting Ahead of Holiday Hosting
The last comfortable month of the Central Texas year, and the only sensible time to do the heavy work you will not have time for in December.
October is the only month in the Central Texas calendar where the weather cooperates with cleaning. It is not 100°F, cedar has not started, oak is nine months in either direction, and you can open a window without regretting it.
That combination happens twice a year here, in a narrow window in spring and again now. Spring gets used for spring cleaning. October usually gets wasted.
The argument
Everything you do in December is done under time pressure, in a house full of decorations, with guests arriving. Everything you do in October is done in an empty, ordinary house with six weeks of slack.
The tasks are not interchangeable. Some genuinely have to happen the week of, because they undo themselves. Others take four hours, hold for months, and are the exact tasks that get cut when the week of arrives.
Do the second category now.
| Do in October | Leave until the week of |
|---|---|
| Oven interior | Floors |
| Refrigerator interior and coils | Bathroom surfaces |
| Guest room deep clean | Kitchen counters |
| Baseboards, door frames, vents | Glass and mirrors |
| Blinds and light fixtures | Bins and laundry |
| Grout and shower descaling | Guest bed made up |
| Under and behind furniture | Entry and porch |
| Windows, interior and exterior | Bathroom restock |
The left column is roughly a day of work. The right column is roughly two hours. Most households attempt both in the same two hours in the third week of December, and the left column loses.
The oven, specifically
If you host at Thanksgiving or Christmas, the oven is the one item that has to be done early and is most often done late.
A dirty oven smokes when it runs at temperature for four hours. That smoke sets off alarms, smells, and gets into a house full of people. Cleaning it the night before does not help, because oven cleaner needs dwell time and the residue needs a burn-off cycle you will not have time for.
Do it in October. It stays done.
The guest room
The room that has been a storage annexe since March is the room your in-laws sleep in. It needs more than a wipe:
- Linens that have sat folded in a closet for eight months smell like a closet. Wash them, do not just put them on.
- The vent in that room has not been touched since the last guest
- Under the bed, which has been accumulating undisturbed
- The window and its track
- The guest bathroom’s drain trap, which has dried out and is letting sewer gas back up. Run the taps and flush the toilet a few times, weekly, from now until they arrive.
Doing this in October rather than the day before means you find the problems — a dead lightbulb, a broken blind, a leaking supply line under the sink — when there is still time to fix them.
Windows, once
October is the correct month for glass. No oak, no cedar, no summer dust storms, and mild enough that the exterior work is pleasant.
Wash them once now and they hold until March, when oak season makes the question moot again. Doing them in January instead means doing them a second time in April.
Filters and vents
The HVAC has been running continuously since May. The filter is loaded and the returns are dusty. Changing them in October means the system going into cedar season clean, which is the season when it matters most.
Check the filter now and set a reminder for four weeks rather than twelve. December to February is not a normal load.
If you are booking help
A whole-house deep clean of a typical 1,800 sq ft three-bedroom runs $230 to $280 as a one-time visit, and covers essentially the left-hand column above. Booked in October it is an ordinary appointment. Booked in the second week of December it is a scramble, and there are only so many working days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The general rule, whether you do it yourself or not: the heavy work belongs in the month when the weather is on your side, and in Central Texas that month is October.
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