The holidays can be stressful but getting your home ready for entertaining doesn’t have to be. If you keep up with regular household cleaning it should not take you longer than an hour or so to do the extra cleaning for the holidays.

Make Your Guests Feel Welcome

Do you have guests staying overnight or perhaps several nights? You want them to feel like family but also like honored guests. Just a few extra touches will make their stay extraordinary and make them feel like royalty!

• Leave extra towels, sheets, and other essentials in the room where they can find them and be sure they are replenished every couple of days. Don’t forget to include extra bath tissue and at least one box of facial tissues.
• Make a pretty sign with your WiFi password and hang it in the guestroom where they can easily see it.
• It’s always thoughtful to stock the bathroom with some travel size items like toothpaste, personal and feminine hygiene items, and other essentials that they might forget to bring or run out of. Don’t forget to include some disposable cups for drinking, brushing teeth, etc.
• Add an attractive basket of snacks atop the dresser. You might include fruit, granola bars, assorted snack-sized candy bars, some bottled water, maybe even crackers and individual packs of peanut butter.

Your guests will enjoy their stay and truly appreciate all the special little things you do to make them feel welcomed.

Commonly Overlooked Places We Forget to Clean

We often clean in a hurry around the holidays, just because there is so much to do. Cleaning is often sandwiched in between shopping, laundering guest linens, arranging for travel and accommodations, and the hundreds of other big and little tasks we have to tackle. But it only takes about an hour to make sure that these 7 items are done properly.

Give your fridge doors a quick wipe; you’ll be surprised how much cleaner your kitchen will look! Open some baking soda and put a box in the fridge as well as the freezer to eliminate odors and keep both sections smelling fresh.

• Wipe down your window sills and trim and vacuum the windows’ tracks. You may not notice the dirt on a daily basis but a visitor probably will!
• Take a lint brush to your lampshades. Dust and lint love lampshades and we often don’t notice the buildup until it’s gone.
• Wipe down the ceiling fans.  The blades tend to accumulate specks of dust that eventually turn into ugly tracks of dirt. If you have a few extra minutes, clean the lighting fixtures.
• Give your trash cans a good cleaning. You can often just hose them down and let them air dry upside down.
• Give your plants a bath!  Live plants love having their leaves gently wiped with a damp cloth and silk plants will look like new.
• Use your WizMop with its dry microfiber head to give the ceiling and corners a good going-over for errant dust and cobwebs.

Other than the ceiling fans, all these cleaning chores are suitable for children to do. They will take pride in helping you get the house ready for guests but they will probably also brag about it to everyone!

Don’t Forget to Plan Ahead

• It’s the little things that mean a lot, especially when you need them. Have a cleaning station ready in your kitchen with a vinegar and water mixture in a spray bottle with a clean cloth. If you’re serving wine you’ll want to include another clean cloth and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. These basics can take care of nearly every cleaning emergency. Placing the items in an attractive holiday basket on handy shelf or counter will save time; since everything is in one place you won’t have to rummage through your cleaning supplies.
• Place an extra trash bag or two in your trash cans before you line with its usual bag. Then you can take the contents out of the can and have a bag right there. If you’ve ever come back after emptying the trash to find fresh refuse in the can before you can place another bag, you’ll really appreciate this time saving trick. Do the same for the bathrooms and guest rooms for quick and easy clean-up.
• Use disposable towels in the guest bathroom as well as hand sanitizer and soap dispensers. No one these days wants to use a community towel and it will save you the time you used to take to periodically replace hand towels during the day/evening.

You will enjoy your holiday entertaining more than ever this year with these handy and practical tips!