Zilker Park is gearing up for two weekends of festivities. Whether you live right by the action in South Austin or you’re hosting out-of-towners up in Cedar Park and Pflugerville, your friends and family members are all flocking into Austin to stay at your house.

Having guests stay over is one of our favorite parts of festival season, but cleaning the house for them is another story altogether. You’ve just endured a long, hot Texas summer. Dust has collected in every nook and cranny, and now you need a guest bedroom, sparkling bathrooms, and groceries in the fridge before music even starts.

Our advice?  Don’t freak out and clean all night before your guests arrive. With the right game plan, it’s totally doable. Below, we’ve put together a room-by-room fall cleaning checklist to prep your home for ACL guests, plus what you can leave to a professional cleaning service like Juany Cleaning Service so you can focus on festival preparations. 

Heading home after a day of sunshine, sweat, and dancing at Zilker, guests will want a quiet, cozy place to recover. Help them unwind.  Here’s how to spruce up the guest room. 

Create clutter-free breathing room.  Empty out some closet space and at least two (or three!) drawers.  Festival-attendees will pack surprise items you never knew they owned: extra shoes, rain ponchos, hydration packs, bins or bags of merch. Letting guests know there is an empty shelf in the closet and some spare hangers will make them feel welcome. 

Dust from top to bottom. Start at the ceiling fan blades and work your way down. Dust ceiling-mounted light fixtures, the tops of door frames, blinds, window sills, and then baseboards. Dusting top to bottom prevents resettling on furniture and floors you just cleaned. This is also how the Juany team cleans – from top to bottom, covering every detail of your home and ensuring nothing is overlooked. 

Change your linens. Clean all bedding, not just the sheets. Mattress pads, duvet covers, throw blankets, and extra pillows can harbor a stale odor when packed away in a closet all summer. Be sure to throw an extra blanket on the bed too, because Austin’s first chilly fall evenings seem to arrive right before ACL. 

If you don’t have time to run sheet after sheet, towel after towel, through the washer and dryer, our Wash & Fold Laundry add-on will take care of that, so your guest bedroom will have a made bed with crisp, folded linens waiting for guests to arrive.

When you camp out for hours on end in Zilker Park, your guests’ first stop will be the shower. The bathroom is the final frontier that can make or break a squeaky-clean home.

Wash your basics really well.  Deep-clean your toilet (under the base, around the hinges) and scrub your tub, shower walls, and glass doors. Don’t forget to clean the grout lines and the soap scum created from Austin’s hard water.

Polish the little things.  Make sure all mirrors, faucets, showerheads, towel bars, and countertops are squeaky clean. Little things like drip-free fixtures make a bathroom feel complete.

Be prepared, so your guests don’t need to ask for anything. Have extra towels on hand, a full toilet paper roll and extras, and a basket with travel-sized toiletries (including shampoo, an extra toothbrush, sunscreen, and after-sun relief). They’ll be thankful you did!  

Showers and bathrooms take the longest to deep clean. Let the pros at Juany Cleaning Service do the dirty work. We sanitize toilets, tubs, and showers. We wipe down sinks/counters and tidy up towels and necessities so you don’t have to spend your Saturday morning on your knees scrubbing.

Once everyone returns from the festival, the kitchen becomes the hub. You’ll swap festival stories of epic sets, plan tomorrow’s schedule, and clean out the fridge at 2 am. 

Give the fridge a good cleaning. Clear out old summer condiments, that half-used jar of salsa, and any unidentified mystery substance lurking in the back. Wipe down shelves and drawers so there is space for local craft beer, sparkling water, fruit, and all the breakfast tacos people will be craving in the morning. Or make it easier by including the Inside Refrigerator add-on from Juany Cleaning Service beforehand. 

Double-check appliances. Wipe down the inside and outside of the microwave, clean off the stovetop, and scrub the oven if it’s been looking lonely. If you’re facing a burnt-on catastrophe inside there, Juany Cleaning Service’s Oven Cleaning add-on is your friend.

Clean + sanitize all surfaces. Counters, kitchen island, cabinet knobs, and the dining table are going to get a lot of traffic this weekend. Give them a good cleaning and sanitizing before guests arrive. Have a spray bottle and cleaning cloths ready for quick wipe-downs throughout the weekend. 

These chores are too large for a quick tidying session. Not only will they make the biggest impact, but they’re also the chores most worth outsourcing. 

Floors/Carpets. More bodies in your home means more foot traffic and footwear that carries in more than just people. Festival shoes are known to traipse in some serious Zilker Park mud. Vacuum and mop all hard surfaces before your guests arrive. If you have carpets, you may want to have them professionally cleaned before your guests arrive and after they leave, to prevent dirt and spills from setting. Juany Cleaning Service offers professional carpet cleaning throughout the Austin area, saving floors everywhere from West Lake Hills to Georgetown.

Let the Texas fall light in. Summer storms, pollen, and dust can really streak up your windows. Clean windows make your whole house feel brighter and more open. That’s the welcoming feeling you want when fall light comes pouring through. Juany Cleaning Service’s inside and out window cleaning takes care of both sides so you’re not balancing on a ladder.

You adore your dog or cat, but your guests might not appreciate their fur on their dark festival outfits or sneezing all night because your fluffy friend makes them stuffy. 

Pet prep checklist:

• Vacuum couches, chairs, and pillows (run lint roller over throw pillows as well!) 
• Wash beds and blankets  
• Store away excess toys/chews/bowls if they’re lying around shared spaces 
• Vacuum cracks where hair loves to hide  
• Have a pet-free guest room if someone is allergic 

We at Juany Cleaning Service love pets. Our pet-friendly professionals will treat your pets like their own while they deep-clean away pet hair/dander from your floors, furniture, and even those hard-to-reach areas.

Preparing for your ACL guests is no reason to spend all weekend polishing baseboards. You should be booking your festival itinerary, circling those can’t-miss sets on your calendar, and figuring out where to take your friends for tacos… not stressing over dust bunnies or spending your weekend scrubbing baseboards.

• Locally owned and women-owned, serving families across Austin, Lakeway, and Round Rock since 2005, with over 20 years in the community
• Upfront, honest pricing with no hidden fees and a 100%, 24-hour satisfaction guarantee
• Flexible scheduling that works around your busy life, including your work-from-home Zoom calls
• A consistent, trusted cleaning team that gets to know your home and how you like it done
• Pet-friendly team members who treat your pets like family

Need a deep cleaning to freshen up after summer? Need a make-ready cleaning to prepare your home to sell? Our Austin maid service can help. 

Wanna enjoy the music and know your house will be clean when you get back? Get your free quote and book your pre-ACL deep cleaning today, or call us at (512) 470-7079.