Preparing your Home for Winter

Do you use your journal for checklists? Perhaps you create pages to refer to again and again.  If you want to start preparing your home for the winter months, this article will help you create a journal spread to help.

Hello, it’s Alex (@TheJournalCorner) from the Archer and Olive ambassador team.  Today I am going to share how I have created a checklist of tasks to prepare your home for winter.  Every year I find I’m trying to remember certain helpful things to close down the garden for winter or prepare for colder weather. Creating a master checklist you can use each autumn will help make this process efficient and benefit your home.  I have also included a free printable list you can access later in this blog if you don’t have time to create a whole page in your journal.

Supplies needed

For these activities, a Journal and pen will suffice, but there are some extras I enjoyed using if you want to get more creative.

• Archer & Olive journal - white dot grid 
• A selection of coloured pens like these calliographs 
• Black fineliner
• Pencil for outline planning
• Dot Grid Stencil 
• Decorative stickers like these

If you are looking to purchase anything from Archer & Olive, please use ‘Alex10’ to save 10%. This is an affiliate code, so it allows you to support creators like me too.

Winter Weather Considerations

Of course this type of spread will vary depending on where you are in the world and the type of winters you have.  

You may need to consider frost and snow or it may be rain that causes issues.  For most of us the chance of having a mixture should always be considered.  I am in the UK and here our winters can be mild and wet but an icy week and even some snow is still very possible.

Hopefully you know what to expect as you may have already experienced a winter in your home.  However, if you are new to the area it’s always worth researching or chatting to locals about what it may be like over the winter months.

Dividing into Sections

For this winter preparation spread I am going to divide my page into sections.  These could include some or all of:

• Preparing any vehicles for winter
• What to clean/treat outdoors
• Items to put into outbuildings/under cover
• External areas to protect 
• Stock up on winter supplies
• Indoor preparation e.g. insulation
• Garden maintenance
• Fireplace preparation 
• Services to book in Autumn
• Emergency Kit ideas

Once you have chosen which sections you want to include, try to roughly find space for them around your page.  You can use pencil to do this.  

Once happy with their position, you can create these headers.  I have used calliograph brush pens from Archer & Olive. 

Creating your Spread

Under each header you should have space to list your ideas for each section. You could use a fineliner and even colour code this. If you want to create checklist boxes, the Archer & Olive Dot Grid Ruler has a checklist stencil.  

I aim to use this each year so if creating a checklist layout, I would only tick items off in pencil so I could erase this to re-use the following year.

Using any additional space

After I had written my checklists, I actually had some space left so decided to note ideas for an emergency supplies kit.

That way you can refer to this each year and see what you may need to replenish or put into your vehicle.

Adding Decoration to the page

While not essential, if space allows you may wish to add some decorative elements to your page.   Washi and stickers like these can make it a fast and easy way to add decoration.

I have used winter themed stickers from Archer & Olive to fill some spaces on the page which, to me, makes it look more complete.

Winter Preparation Printable 

If you don’t have time to create your own winter checklist, take a look at this printable instead. This will save you time and is still ideal to use year after year.

Summary

I hope you have found this idea for your journal useful and can put it to use this winter. Watch me create the spread here:

For more journal inspiration come and say hello @thejournalcorner. We always love to see your creations, so please tag @archerandolive or use #aoshare on Instagram.

The Archer & Olive blog has several articles that you may enjoy further on this topic.  There is inspiration for a winter bucket list and some seasonal cleaning and organisation.  Instead of stickers you could try decorating your pages with winter doodles like these.