When to dust, wash, scrub and reset a Fort Worth home through the year, following cedar season, the March last freeze, the stormy May peak, 100 degree July and August and the long ragweed fall.
Most cleaning calendars are written for places with a real winter and a mild summer. Fort Worth runs the other way. Its hardest season on a house is the heat, its allergy peak lands in January, and its wettest weeks come in late spring when storms roll across Tarrant County.
The calendar below follows the National Weather Service normals for Dallas/Fort Worth and the documented local pollen and pest seasons. Use it to time the bigger jobs, and let a recurring plan carry the weekly work in between.
DFW gets a normal 37.01 inches of rain a year, but it does not fall evenly. May is the wettest month at 4.78 inches and October second at 4.37, while July and August drop to about two inches each. The normal July high is 95.6 degrees, the airport averages 20 days at 100 or above, and those days usually fall between July 1 and August 27.
Winter is short. The average last freeze is around March 12 and the average first freeze around November 22, with about 29 freezes in an average cold season and only 1.6 inches of snow a year. That leaves a long warm season for pests: Tarrant County Public Health treats April through November as mosquito season.
Mountain cedar usually starts releasing pollen in mid December, often right after a cold front, and peaks in mid January. The pollen blows in from the Hill Country and settles on sills, porch furniture and cars as a fine dust.
Indoors, this is the time to wipe sills and blinds often, wash throw blankets and pillow covers, and vacuum upholstery where pollen settles. Change the air conditioning filter at the start of the season and again partway through. On freezing nights, keep doormats inside and out to catch whatever grit cold, wet shoes carry in.
Cedar tapers off toward early March, and the average last freeze is around March 12. Late March is a good window for a spring deep clean: blinds, baseboards, fans, light fixtures and window tracks all carry the winter's pollen.
April leads the Tarrant County tornado record, with 33 of the 110 tornadoes logged since 1880, and March is third. Keep a clean, uncluttered interior room or closet you can use for shelter, and clear patio furniture cushions and loose items before stormy afternoons. Once mosquito season begins in April, sweep porch corners and empty standing water in saucers and buckets.
May is the rainiest month of the year in Fort Worth and second in the county's tornado record. Expect muddy entries, damp pet paws and tracked-in grass. Put a washable mat on both sides of each outside door and give entry floors and the laundry room more attention than usual.
This is also when bathrooms and laundry areas stay damp longest. Run exhaust fans after showers, leave the washer door cracked to dry, and wipe window tracks where condensation and grit collect.
The first 100 degree day at DFW comes around July 1 on average, and the last around August 27. For eight weeks the house stays sealed and the air conditioner runs nearly nonstop. Dust lands on return vents, fan blades, picture frames and the tops of doors, and dry yards send fine grit indoors on shoes.
Dust from the top down: fans and high ledges first, then furniture, then floors. Wipe vent grilles every few weeks and change the air filter at least once in the middle of summer. Water lawns only on your assigned days and never between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. under the city schedule, and keep shoes off carpet after a morning watering.
October is the second wettest month, so the muddy-entry routine from spring returns. Ragweed season in North Texas does not end until the end of November, which keeps allergy households dusting and vacuuming often all fall. Mosquito season runs through November as well.
With the average first freeze around November 22, the weeks before Thanksgiving are a natural time for a deep clean before guests and before the heater runs. Plan any furniture or clutter purge around Fort Worth's monthly bulk collection week, when the city takes one pile per household at the curb.
The questions Fort Worth homeowners ask most often about this topic, answered plainly.
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