Opening Day: A Spring Checklist for Your Lake House

There’s a morning every spring when it happens. You pull into the gravel drive, roll the windows down, and the lake air hits you before you even open the door. The house has been sitting all winter — quiet, cold, probably a little dusty — and now it’s yours again.

But before you pour that first drink on the dock, there’s work to do. Not the stressful kind. The satisfying kind. The kind that turns a closed-up house back into a home.

Here’s how we open ours, every year, in roughly the order it needs to happen.

Walk the Outside First

Before you even go in, walk the full perimeter of the house. You’re looking for anything winter left behind: fallen branches on the roof, cracked window seals, gutters packed with leaves, any sign of animals getting creative with your foundation or crawl space. Check the dock if you have one — look for loose boards, shifted posts, or damage from ice. This ten-minute walk saves you from discovering problems the hard way later in the weekend.

Turn Things On (In the Right Order)

If you shut down the water in the fall, now’s the time to reverse the process. Turn the main water supply back on slowly and check every faucet, toilet, and hose bib for leaks. Run the water heater. Flip the breakers. If you have a well or a pump, let it prime and listen for anything that sounds wrong.

The key word here is slowly. Rushing this step is how pipes burst in May.

Air Everything Out

Open every window and every door. Let the house breathe. Winter air gets stale and musty, and no amount of cleaning will fix what fresh air can do in an hour. If you have ceiling fans, turn them on. If you don’t, this is the year to install one.

While the house is airing out, strip every bed. Wash all the linens — even the ones that were “clean” when you left in October. They weren’t.

Deep Clean, Top to Bottom

This is the big one. A proper opening-day clean means:

Starting with ceilings and light fixtures — cobwebs, dead bugs, dust. Then walls and windows. Then floors. Work your way down, not up, so you’re not cleaning the same surface twice.

The kitchen gets extra attention: wipe the inside of every cabinet, check for any expired pantry items, run the dishwasher empty with vinegar, and clean the fridge inside and out. If mice visited over the winter, you’ll know. Deal with it now.

Bathrooms get the same treatment. Run every shower and flush every toilet. Check under sinks for leaks. Replace any towels that didn’t survive storage.

Check Your Systems

This is the boring stuff that prevents the expensive stuff. Test your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms — replace the batteries regardless. Check your fire extinguisher. If you have a septic system, make sure you know when it was last pumped. Look at your water heater’s age and condition. Test the sump pump if you have one.

If anything feels off with the HVAC, call someone now. You don’t want to be making that call on the Fourth of July.

The Outdoor Reset

Power wash the deck if it needs it. Hose down the patio furniture or bring out the pieces you stored in the garage. Sweep the porch. Check the grill — clean the grates, check the propane, make sure nothing nested inside it over the winter.

If you have a boat, this is its own checklist. But at minimum: charge the battery, check the oil, inspect the hull, and make sure your registration is current before you launch.

Stock the Essentials

Your first grocery run should cover the basics that make a lake house feel ready for guests at any moment: coffee, olive oil, salt, dish soap, trash bags, sunscreen, bug spray, a decent bottle of wine, and something easy for dinner that first night. You’re not trying to cook a feast. You’re trying to exhale.

Keep a running list on your phone throughout the weekend of anything the house needs — a new bath mat, a replacement bulb for the porch light, more hangers in the guest closet. Order it all on Monday when you’re back home.

The Last Step

When the cleaning is done and the beds are made and the fridge is stocked, do the thing you actually came here to do. Take a chair to the water. Sit down. Look out.

The lake doesn’t care that it took you four hours to get the house ready. It’s been waiting all winter too.

Welcome back.

— Sarah Waverly, Editor-in-Chief