What to put away before the first cold week

There is a fortnight in autumn when everything is still dry and it is not yet cold. That is the window. Things put away in it survive the winter; things put away in November go in damp and come out in spring ruined.

Garden furniture

• Clean it and let it dry completely — a full day, not an hour
• Cushions never overwinter outside, whatever the fabric claims
• Timber: a coat of oil now saves sanding in spring
• Metal: check for rust spots and treat them before storage, not after
• Stack under cover with airflow. A tight cover on a damp chair is a greenhouse for mould

The barbecue

Burn it off, scrape it, and empty the grease trap. Grease left in over winter goes rancid and attracts rodents, which is how a barbecue becomes a nest.

Disconnect the gas bottle and store it outside, upright, never in a loft or a cupboard.

Hoses, taps and anything holding water

Anything with water in it will freeze and split. Drain hoses fully and coil them loosely; drain and turn off outside taps; empty water butts to below the frost line or leave the tap open.

Pressure washers hold water in the pump where you cannot see it. Run them dry.

Mowers and powered garden tools

• Drain the fuel, or add stabiliser and run it through
• Remove or disconnect the battery — a battery left connected over winter is usually a dead battery in spring
• Clean the deck. Wet grass left on steel is rust by February
• Sharpen the blade now while you remember

Bicycles

If they are going into an unheated space, the enemies are damp and flat spots. Wipe them down, oil the chain properly, and inflate the tyres fully — a tyre stored soft develops a flat spot in the sidewall.

Hanging is better than standing, both for the tyres and for the floor space.

Summer clothing

Clean everything before it goes away. This is the one that gets skipped and it is the one that matters most: moths are drawn to the traces on worn fabric, not to clean cloth. A worn shirt put away unwashed is bait.

Store in sealed containers rather than cardboard, with cedar or lavender rather than mothballs if the smell matters to you.

Protecting against damp and rodents

Most winter storage damage is one of these two.

Damp. Get everything off concrete — pallets, battens, shelving, anything for an air gap. Use sealed plastic bins rather than cardboard for anything staying the season. In a garage or shed, a cheap moisture absorber tub is worth having and worth emptying.

Rodents. Autumn is when mice look for somewhere warm. They are drawn to food traces, soft nesting material and cardboard. So: no food anywhere in storage including birdseed and pet food, textiles in sealed plastic, and cardboard replaced with plastic wherever it is holding fabric.

Do the mending now

Whatever is broken goes away broken and comes out broken, at exactly the moment you wanted to use it. A fortnight in autumn is a much better time to replace a zip, a strap, a wheel or a cover than the first warm Saturday in spring.

This is the same principle that makes a twice-yearly rotation work at all: maintenance belongs on the way in.

Note what did not get used

Anything that came out this year, was not used, and is now going back is a candidate for not coming back at all. Write it down rather than deciding now, and look at the list in a week.

Record where it all went

The point of putting things away is that you can get them back. Numbered bins with a photograph of the contents make "where is the sledge" a lookup rather than an expedition, and they mean you can check whether you own something without going outside in January.

Waoo Storage is built for this pattern — bins with printed QR labels, contents photographed, searchable from your phone.

The checklist

• Clean and fully dry everything before it goes away
• Drain anything holding water; stabilise or drain fuel
• Disconnect batteries
• Wash clothing before storing it
• Everything off concrete, sealed plastic over cardboard
• No food of any kind in a storage space
• Fix what is broken now, not in spring
• Write down what went unused
• Number the bins and record what is in them