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We’ve all been there before. You’re at work and dreaming of a better place. A place on a lake, where the constellations reveal themselves to you, one star at a time.
So, you pack up a bag, throw in a bottle of wine and leave your house at a quarter after nine.
About halfway to Bobcaygeon, you turn on your favorite Willie Nelson album and start to think.
You thought of maybe quitting and leaving it all behind, but then you realize that that was just the sky being dull and hypothetical and that once you completed the journey up to Cottage Country that things would be better.
That your time in your lake-fronted escape would re-charge you and get you through that next night in Toronto when you couldn’t get it off your mind!
Ah, the cottage. Or cabin. Or chalet. Sometimes the camp. Whatever you call it, Summer weekends at the lake is as Canadian as maple syrup, Hockey Night in Canada, and, well, The Tragically Hip (who I honor above by liberally sprinkling lines from their 1998 classic, Bobcaygeon, a near-perfect homage to the idea of weekends away from the big city hustle and bustle).
The only thing bad about the cottage is that, often, you have to close it for the season. Unless you have winterized your vacation home, all good things must come to an end, and you will need to take steps to prepare it to survive our harsh Canadian Winters.
So, with that in mind, here are some tips for shutting down your vacation home for winter.
Often a vacation home can be a bit older and more rustic than a city home. As such, things will get run down. It’s important to give your cottage a thorough inspection at the end of the season. Look at every surface of the house and make note of any repairs that may need to be done.
If you can DIY those repairs, great. If you need to search MoveBuddy to find someone to fix them for you, that’s fine too. Either way, a small repair bill now is much better than a huge bill come Spring, when Winter has made the issue even worse.
Another thing that your vacation home might have that you need to be aware of is the crawl space under the structure. During the summer, this might be where you keep your bikes or life jackets, or…but if you don’t seal this up it might become home to a wild animal during the winter.
And, unless they are paying rent, you don’t want that.
Next, you’ll want to give any fire pits, fireplaces stoves, or barbecues a good cleaning, and then make sure that all the power to the appliances is shut off. Otherwise, you will have a fire risk on your hands.
If you’ve ever had frozen pipes…you will understand that you don’t want frozen pipes. You’ll want to avoid this by shutting down your water pump and then draining the entire system. Finally, you should treat the pipes with an anti-freeze to avoid any surprises come Spring.
Finally, you should look to remove all your valuables from the vacation home for the winter. Although you can store these items in the home itself, you run the risk of theft, weather damage or worse.
So, use MoveBuddy to find a storage facility nearby where you can move things like mattresses, canoes, Jet Skis, and more into storage. That way, you’ll be sure that these valuable and treasured items will be ready for you to enjoy come Summer.
