In April a house lets you know how it was closed in October. Usually your nose finds out first. The linen room smells damp. There is a dark ring on a silver tray. The lemon tree spent January outside, because everyone assumed someone else had moved it. Nothing dramatic, and all of it avoidable on one quiet afternoon six months before.

This is our checklist for closing a summer house. We use it on the Italian lakes and among the shingled houses of Martha’s Vineyard, where shutting up after the season is close to a local sport. Change it to suit your house. A villa on Lake Como does not get through winter the way a Maremma farmhouse does. There is a version to print at the end.

Three weeks before the last guest leaves

Book people early. In October the pool company, the boiler engineer and the gardener are wanted by every house on the lake, and they all seem to be wanted on the same Tuesday, so the calls go out in September. The laundry and the dry cleaner go on the same list. Nothing goes into storage dirty: moths find soiled wool long before they bother with clean.

Then a conversation with the family, ideally over coffee and not on the doorstep with the car running. What stays in the house and what goes with them? (Clothes, jewellery, papers, the good wine, the dog’s bed.) Is anything happening over the winter, a bit of building work, a repair, a rug away for cleaning? And who will look in on the house while it is shut, and how often? Write the answers down. By April nobody will agree on who said what.

Order supplies now as well. We order more than seems reasonable, because we always run short: tissue (acid-free), cotton dust sheets, garment bags, polythene bags for the silver, silica gel, moth traps, labels, and tape that actually sticks. While you are at the desk, dig out the insurance policy and look for the bit about unoccupied houses. Some insurers want the water turned off, others want regular visits, and they mean it.

For the last week, the menus are planned around emptying the fridge. The chef usually enjoys that for about two days.

Room by room

Kitchen and pantry

Fridges and freezers are emptied, cleaned and switched off, with the doors propped open. If a freezer has to stay on, somebody needs to know why and check it. Anything opened leaves the pantry: a half bag of flour or rice is how mice and pantry moths spend their winter. Give the dishwasher and the washing machine one last empty run and leave their doors ajar. The coffee machine gets descaled and drained.

Bedrooms and bathrooms

Strip the beds and give the mattresses a day of air before they go under cotton covers. Not plastic, ever; it holds the moisture in. Whatever stays in the wardrobes is cleaned first and hung in covers that breathe, and the dry cleaner’s plastic bags go in the bin (the Canadian Conservation Institute would say the same). Bathrooms get cleaned and dried. Toiletries come out (half of them leak, some freeze) and the toilet lids go down.

One small job people forget: batteries. Take them out of every remote control, clock and torch. A leaking battery sounds trivial until it has eaten the inside of the television remote.

Drawing rooms, rugs and furniture

Upholstery is vacuumed, and rugs on both sides. Get under the sofas especially, because that is where the trouble starts: clothes moths like wool and dark corners and dislike being disturbed, and in a shut house nothing disturbs them for months. After that the dust sheets go on. Fireplaces are swept and the dampers closed once the last fire is out cold. Paintings can stay on the walls, unless a wall is damp.

Linen, silver and fine fabrics

This is the part that shows most in the spring, and the part people most often rush.

  • Table and bed linen: washed and completely dry. Skip the starch; silverfish eat it. Tissue goes in the folds, and each year we fold a piece a slightly different way, otherwise the creases set for good. Cotton bags or boxes, shelves lined with tissue. Bare wood gives off acids that turn linen yellow, and no, a cedar chest is not the answer either.
  • Cashmere, wool and silk go away clean, sealed in bags or in boxes with lids. Moth traps in the wardrobes and the linen room will tell you whether moths are there, though they won’t get rid of them. A piece you are worried about can go into a sealed bag at -18°C for two weeks, which will.
  • Silver: washed, dried, wrapped in acid-free, unbuffered tissue and sealed in polyethylene bags, with a sachet of silica gel if the house is damp. Rubber bands, rubber gloves and wool felt give off sulphur gases, which is what tarnishes silver, so keep them well away from it. We once unwrapped a salver that someone had tied with a rubber band. In spring its outline was still there on the silver, printed in black.

If you want the long version, it is in our guide The care of fine things.

Outdoors

Get the gardener to write the winter plan down. Pruning, mulching, feeding, what gets wrapped and when: on paper, not in a chat on the terrace. The lemons in pots go into the limonaia (or under fleece) before the first cold night. After it is too late. Terracotta left outside should be emptied or raised on feet. Wet terracotta and frost don’t mix, and the pot loses. In places that freeze, the irrigation is drained and blown through. Everywhere else, at least switch off the timer. Otherwise it will cheerfully water the lawn in the middle of a November storm.

Cushions: wash them, then dry them for longer than you think is needed, then bring them in. Furniture covered, parasols tied, the barbecue’s gas bottle disconnected, boats to the boatyard, tennis nets down. Gutters are the awkward one. They need clearing after the leaves fall, which is usually after the family has gone, so give the job a date in the diary rather than a good intention.

Shutters are a judgement call. Close every one and the rooms are protected from sun and storms, but the whole lake can see the house is empty. Some families would rather leave a few as they would be on any weekday, with lamps on timers behind them.

The pool

Don’t drain it. An empty pool can be lifted by groundwater and wet soil. In France, some owners who drained too early found their pools had shifted several centimetres overnight. What the pool company normally does instead is drop the level to roughly ten centimetres under the jets, balance and shock the water, add a winter product, and put the cover on tight. Wait until the water is down to around 12–15°C before you start. Whether the pump runs on frosty nights is for the pool company to decide, and their answer goes in writing. Pool chemicals are locked away, with chlorine stored well apart from acids.

Systems and utilities

A closed house has two ways of keeping its water from freezing. One is frost protection: the heating stays on low, which costs fuel and electricity and means someone has to keep an eye on it. The other is to have the plumber drain everything, pipes, boiler, water heaters and cisterns. What you cannot do is neither. A drained house also needs non-toxic antifreeze in the traps, so they neither freeze nor dry out. A heated one needs the winter visitor to run each tap and flush each toilet every time they come.

Then the fuse board. Off goes everything that doesn’t have to run. What has to run is usually the alarm and cameras, the dehumidifiers and sump pumps, cellar cooling, the heating controls, and the router that half of those rely on. Label each switch. Dehumidifiers should drain through a hose into a drain, because left to fill their own tank they stop within days. In the houses we close we keep relative humidity under 60%, the level the US Environmental Protection Agency gives for keeping mould away, and we try to avoid sudden swings, which old furniture minds more than any particular number. Leak sensors under the boiler and the sinks cost very little and will warn you long before the ceiling below does.

Get the boiler serviced now. You want its problems to show up in October, not on the first cold morning in April.

Inventories and the House Book

Before closing, count. Silver piece by piece, linen by type, the cellar bottle by bottle, and a photograph plus a line on condition for anything of value. If anything leaves for the winter, say the rug to the cleaner or the dining chairs to the upholsterer, write down who has it and when it is due back. Then the House Book gets its update: what was closed, how it was done, where things went. Whoever opens the house in April may not be the person who closed it. The inventory sheets we use are in our House Book kit.

Security

Run an alarm test with the monitoring company. Check the call list too; at three in the morning the call should reach somebody who can actually get in a car and come. Keys come back from summer staff and contractors, and anyone who keeps one goes on a list. By the end of a summer of guests, staff and suppliers, half the village knows the gate code. Change it, and the alarm code with it. Valuables either go in the safe or go home with the family. Finally, put a name to the winter visits. Every fortnight at least, and after every storm, with a few written lines each time: leaks, smells, damp, the post, the alarm panel.

What to leave for the spring opening

Leave a letter on the kitchen table saying what was done and what wasn’t, where things are stored, what was sent away and when it comes back, and which supplier to ring first. Next to it, spare bulbs, the boiler manual and a set of bed linen in a sealed bag, so whoever opens the house doesn’t spend the first night on a bare mattress.

Book the pool company and the gardener for the opening now; by March everyone else will have. At the top of the opening list, write “water first”. Water that has stood all winter is where legionella grows, so the hot water is brought up to temperature (the UK Health and Safety Executive gives 60°C or more for stored hot water) and every tap and shower is run before anyone uses them. Last of all, write down anything the family mentioned in passing in August. They will remember it in April, and so should you.

The checklist

Print this part, give it to whoever closes the house, and ask for it back initialled and dated.

Three weeks before

  • Pool company, gardener, plumber, boiler engineer and chimney sweep booked
  • Linen, curtains and clothes sent for washing or dry cleaning
  • Agreed with the family: what stays, what travels, winter works
  • Winter visitor named, frequency agreed
  • Tissue, cotton covers, polyethylene bags, silica gel, moth traps and labels ordered
  • Insurance clause on unoccupied houses read

Inside

  • Fridges and freezers emptied, doors open; pantry cleared of anything open
  • Dishwasher, washing machine and coffee machine run, drained, doors ajar
  • Beds stripped, mattresses aired and covered in cotton
  • Clothes cleaned and in breathable covers; moth traps placed
  • Toiletries cleared, bathrooms dry; batteries out of remotes and clocks
  • Upholstery and rugs vacuumed, under furniture too; dust sheets on; fireplaces swept
  • Linen washed, unstarched, folded with tissue, stored in cotton
  • Silver cleaned, wrapped and bagged, away from rubber and felt

Outside and the pool

  • Gardener’s winter plan received
  • Citrus in the limonaia or under fleece; terracotta emptied or raised
  • Irrigation timer off; system drained where it freezes
  • Cushions stored, furniture covered, gas bottles disconnected, boats at the yard
  • Gutter clearing booked for after the leaves fall
  • Pool lowered (not drained), treated and covered; chemicals locked away

Systems and security

  • Frost protection on, or water system drained by the plumber
  • Fuse board labelled; only what must stay on left on
  • Dehumidifiers on hoses to drains; humidity below 60%
  • Leak sensors, cameras and sump pumps tested; boiler serviced
  • Alarm tested, call list updated, codes changed
  • Keys counted and listed; valuables in the safe or gone
  • Post redirected, deliveries cancelled

For the spring

  • Inventories, photographs and House Book updated
  • Letter on the kitchen table; bed linen sealed for the first night
  • Pool company and gardener booked for the opening
  • “Water first” at the top of the opening list

In most houses the closing falls to the house manager, one more line in what a house manager actually does all day. If you hire seasonal staff, put the closing in their contract; what household staff earn in Italy and Switzerland covers the terms. To hand the whole thing over, opening and closing houses is our seasonal residences work, with grounds and systems under estate management. Write to us before the last guest leaves.

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