10 Quick Ways to Prepare Your Home for the Holidays
The holidays, whichever you choose to celebrate, will be here before we know it. Halloween candy is already being replaced in stores with Christmas treats. If you’re planning to host a meal or have guests, getting your home in order can feel daunting, but starting now can ensure you have plenty of time to prepare your home for the holidays. Here are 10 quick things you can do.
1. Start with the Guest Room
If you’re going to have overnight guests but you’ve been using the room as a storage unit, take a few minutes to assess the damage. Remove what you can from the room that’s cluttering it up, and make sure you don’t need to buy anything like guest towels or fresh linens. Also make sure there is room in the drawers and closet for your guests to store their clothing.
2. Plan Holiday Meals Early
Whether you have people staying with you or just dropping in to share a meal, now is the time to start planning what you need. Create a separate shopping list with holiday ingredients, separating out what you can buy now (spices, stuffing) and what you’ll need to buy last-minute, like fruit for the fruit salad.
3. Declutter to Prepare Your Home for the Holidays
Even if you can’t deep clean and reorganize every space in your house, you can go through the whole home and pick up clutter, put things away where they belong, and start packing away things you’ll stop using during the holidays. Some people change out throw pillows; others clear their fireplace mantle to be ready to hang stockings or add holiday-themed décor.
4. Assess the Guest Bathroom
Do you have a guest bathroom that will be designated for guests? Do you need to refill hand soap, put out the guest towels, scrub out the tub? Don’t wait until the night before your guests arrive to do the hard work. Do a good scrubbing now, then just wipe it down again before they arrive. To really make the experience for your guests grand, get some pretty shampoos, soaps, and candles for the space.
5. Ding out the Dining Room
With guests coming, you may want to make sure you have access to your dining room table for shared meals. If you’ve been letting the junk mail pile up or have crafts spread out on the table, now is a great time to address the piles. Crafts may need to be packed up or moved. Junk mail should be tossed in the trash and other mail sorted and dealt with. Be sure to add the leaf and round up extra dining chairs.
6. Put Out the Welcome Mat
Take a look at your home from the perspective of someone coming to your front door. Is debris cleared from the walkway? Have you trimmed back bushes and plants for the season? Maybe all you need to do is sweep the front porch and shake out your welcome mat, but if you want to make your home feel welcoming and inviting, it starts before they step through the door.
7. Room in the Coat Closet?
Is there room in the coat closet for guests to hang their jackets? If you’ve been using your coat closet to store summer sports gear or other unused items, now is the time to move those off to another area of the home or garage until next season. When you’re squeezing extra people in for the holidays, it’s a good idea to make sure they feel there is space for them – and their coats – to stay. While you’re at it, take a look at the entry way and make sure you have a space for people to remove and store wet and muddy shoes so that they don’t track into the home.
8. Do a Quick Clean of the Whole House
You don’t have to get on your hands and knees and scrub the floors, but it’s a great time of year to take the feather duster and Swiffer and give everything a once over. As you are going through the house doing a surface cleaning, make note of areas you think need a little more attention so you can get back to them.
9. Dig Out the Holiday Décor
Whether you have bins buried in the garage, attic, or basement, it’s a good idea to get them somewhere accessible. Check early to make sure the Christmas lights are working and that you have what you need. Even if you’re not ready to actually put up decorations yet, you can see what you might need, whether it’s ornament hooks or a new tree skirt. While you’re at it, put together your holiday music playlist!
10. Relax
This is the most important step on this list. Your guests won’t care about clutter. They probably won’t even care what’s on the menu for the holidays. What they’ll want is time with you, and if you’re too exhausted to enjoy it, you might miss the fun of the season. So while these are some quick and easy things you can do to be more prepared, don’t treat this list like something you have to get done in a day or a weekend. Pick a couple of things to do each week. And be sure to relax while you prepare your home for the holidays.