If you’re planning to host guests in your home, you will be spending a lot of the season cooking and cleaning. Finding time to enjoy your guests can be hard. Creating a plan for the holidays isn’t a bad place to start to avoid extra stress and help you stay in good holiday spirits. 1. Deal with mounting heaps of clutter. Whether you stash your stuff in a hidden closet or right on the kitchen counter, every household can develop growing heaps of clutter. If you often toss extra household junk into guest rooms, closets, or other out-of-site places, pre-cleaning your house is a great place to start preparing for Christmas guests. 2. Create room for extra shoes and coats. Cold weather and house guests bring extra things like coats, hats, and mittens. Giving your guests a place to put these items means you don’t have to max out the coat closet. Add an extra rug for wet shoes, a portable coat stand, and bins for organizing guests’ hats and mittens. 3. Inspect china cabinet dishes. Did Uncle Robert break the gravy boat at the last holiday gathering? It’s hard to remember which items have been lost or broken over the years, so survey your holiday dinnerware in advance and purchase new items to replace missing ones. 4. Evaluate the linen closet. Double check that you have enough sets of blankets and towels for all your overnight guests, and that your linens haven’t been damaged since the last time they were used. You can freshly wash stored linens in advance to help save time later. 5. Stock the bathroom. Guest bathrooms should be stocked with plenty of extra toilet paper, towels, fresh bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion. Although, it may be amusing to see your guest come out of the bathroom in a towel looking for shampoo. 6. Deep clean now and add touch ups later. Cleaning is one of the biggest jobs for holiday hosts. By deep cleaning the house now you’ll get a jump start on holiday prep work. You can follow up with some light dusting and vacuuming the day before guests arrive.
Give yourself a piece of mind with these quick tips to help you to prepare your home for the holidays this year and into the next.
