How To Get Your Home Ready For Holiday Guests

The Holidays are the time of the year a lot of moms or dads have a love hate relationship with. We love the holidays and our families, but hate cleaning. Once a year we must clean our house from top to bottom before our friends and families arrive to celebrate the holidays.

If you’re preparing for Thanksgiving, split the deep cleaning work for three weeks. The plan I provide at the end of the post will help. It will also help to do a mini declutter before November. So read my tips and start focusing on trying to clean fast. I find cleaning some zones daily or a few times per week will help you learn to clean up much faster.

A little kitchen clutter is typical. Items like bags of chips or utensils may be the worst mess. A basket can help make the kitchen look cleaner. We use dividers for utensils and sometimes the drawer needs to be sorted out. The hard part is removing items wiping under them and putting them back. Or sorting out expired canned goods. Kitchens are easy a few dollar store bins can make all the difference in the organization. Kitchens are easier to declutter and manage long term.

We all end up with extra Tupperware lids and additional cleaning products under the sink. The pantry needs to cleaning once a month mainly checking expiration dates. If you organize food by expiration date that helps. Put the oldest goods up front so someone will use them first. The kitchen is low maintenance.

I also recommend that you purge at least five items from each closet. The reason for that is the holidays are coming. You should make room for new things. You can donate winter clothes, seasonal items, or jackets that no longer fit to a local shelter. With winter coming homeless shelters or thrift stores could use them.

If your closet is a mess, do not worry. The closet will come together. Work on the closet in timed segments.

I get it’s not realistic to do all this extra work. That’s why I emphasize you go slow when you start. Spend a week or two doing these things at least a few times a week until it becomes part of your routine. Some of these tasks are easy and end the need to spend the one day you should relax cleaning your whole home.

If you clean your kitchen every evening or in the morning it can change your life. Take the time to wipe the countertops, wipe the front of your cabinets and drawers. A quick spray and wipe daily on most stove tops makes a world of difference. If you do that daily after two weeks, you can get your kitchen clean so much faster. I also recommend a few times a week spraying cleaner and wiping the sink out.

Two days a week I lift everything off the kitchen of the countertops and clean under them. You will get so fast wiping the counters down it only takes a few minutes.

I recommend wiping the bathroom bathrooms every day. Wipe the counters, sink, toilet, the door if it gets dirty too. Don’t worry about scrubbing out the bathtub and don’t worry about scrubbing out the sink. You can do that once a week.

Dusting is another chore we forget to do. I wet dust once a week and try to dry dust once or twice a week.

Someone should clean the floors every day. Run the vacuum and use bare floor mode on your vacuum cleaner on uncarpeted areas. If you have light colored carpets or your white socks get dirty fast. Sweeping and vacuuming daily will help take care of that.

I don’t focus on picking up toys or things left around the house. Other family members can pick those up. I rather clean the things I would neglect if I let the little messes take up my time. My priorities are to make sure my kitchen and bathrooms are clean. I straighten up my couch at night. I fluff the cushions and pillows for better wear and doing this makes the room look much cleaner. These are things I decided I will give myself a short amount of time to clean.

When most people deep clean their homes they wipe down the cabinets in the bathrooms and kitchen. They’re cleaning the baseboards in their house. If you get a telescopic duster or a Swiffer with an extendable pole, you can clean up dust fast. 

Another option is to use a vacuum attachment on your baseboards once or twice a week. I bought a Spin Mop and found it can clean the baseboards with ease.

I find cleaning every day is better than an entire Saturday or Sunday cleaning the house. Deep cleaning is cleaning things that are seldom cleaned. There is no need for that. We should clean these things more often for our health if not for anything else.

You can download and print a week by week a list of what to clean in November. If you break things up and get your house in order now, the holidays will be less stressful. And your home can and will stay clean. 

Click here to read my post on Speed Cleaning. 

Click here for time saving cleaning hacks. 

This post has more speed cleaning hacks.

Read here how I clean my tubs without scrubbing.