When you’re having guests over, preparing your home for their arrival is of the utmost importance. Any good host or hostess knows a pristine home is a perfect backdrop for any get-together you have on your calendar. From vacuuming your carpets to organizing coffee table books in your living room, ensuring your home is clean and ready for entertaining can be an ordeal.
However, when a friend or family member drops by on short notice, you won’t be able to prepare for their arrival with a full day of cleaning. If you’re tired of scrambling to find excuses for your messy living room when someone calls and says they’re in the neighborhood, it’s time to change up your cleaning habits.
Make Sure Your Pets Are On Their Best Behavior
While you’re entertaining guests, a frazzled puppy or barking dog can easily disrupt a fun get-together. A house full of strangers can be incredibly stressful or extremely exciting for your pets. Being surrounded by unfamiliar faces can lead to anxious behavior like chewing on furniture or growling at guests.
High-energy breeds like Labrador Retrievers may jump on your visitors as they walk through the door. Luckily, lab puppy training and other training programs can help manage and eliminate your dogs’ problematic behaviors. By taking a DIY approach to puppy training or partnering with a breeder that trains their litters, you can ensure that your home remains inviting, even when a furry friend is around.
Keep Your Home Clutter-Free
A messy home isn’t just an eyesore. When you’re stepping on toys and surrounded by piles of dirty dishes, you probably feel overwhelmed, and when an uninvited guest shows up, your stress levels shoot through the roof. Luckily, keeping your home clutter-free is easier than you may think.
Rather than allowing messes to sit for days until you find the time to conduct a mass cleaning operation, clean up right after you make a mess. Did you spill some crumbs on the countertop? Wipe them up immediately. Did you just bring the mail in? Discard the junk mail and place essential letters or documents in your office right away. You’d be surprised at how quick and easy it is to keep your home clean once you stop procrastinating on your tidying up.
Place Air Fresheners Around Your House
When your guests enter your home, it should smell fresh and breezy. Strange odors and musty smells are off-putting and can easily ruin a party’s atmosphere. To mitigate any scents you may not know of, purchase air fresheners and place them around your home. Incense sticks, essential oil diffusers, and plug-in air fresheners can send a pleasant fragrance through the air, keeping your guests happy and comfortable.
Establish A Cleaning Schedule
Though deep-cleaning can drum up feelings of dread, living around your messes rather than cleaning them up is a one-way ticket to a guest-free zone. If you cringe at the thought of vacuuming and dusting, try implementing a cleaning schedule into your weekly routine.
Start by choosing a day to tackle all of your cleaning tasks around the house. Or, if you don’t want to lose your weekends to Clorox wipes and dish-washing, take 15 to 20 minutes every evening tackling one project at a time. Make sure your cleaning schedule is flexible and works around your daily responsibilities, and you’ll find it easy to stick to.
Designate A Home For Everything
Upping your organization game can help you keep your home perpetually clean. Take a weekend and organize every inch of your home. Find a designated bookshelf for the magazines that always seem to pile up on the coffee table or a drawer for the scissors you always lose. Head to the store and purchase storage containers for items you can’t find a place for already in your home. When everything you own has its place, you’ll find that you don’t have as much clutter around your living spaces.
Purge Your Home Of Extra Items
One way to eliminate clutter from your home is by throwing out items you don’t use in your home. Do you have a set of dinner plates that are never used? Are there toys your kids never seem to play with? Have you read every book on your bookshelves? Instead of allowing unused items to sit and collect dust around your home, consider donating or selling them to people who will use and appreciate them. Owning fewer possessions means fewer items to clutter up your living and entertaining spaces and less to clean.
Keep All Your Surfaces Clean And Clear
While the stack of travel and art history books sitting on your coffee table might look nice, your living room may actually look better without them. Putting away unnecessary knick-knacks and books can give your countertops and tables a less cluttered look and make them easier to clean. If you like to display decorative pieces or trinkets on your tables, put them in a single basket or tray to keep them contained and organized.
Take Advantage Of Natural Light
Proper lighting can transform any room from a dark and claustrophobic space into a light and airy entertaining area. Rather than keeping your blinds shut or your curtains drawn, open your windows and let the sunlight in. Trade out heavy drapes for a simple, sheer fabric if you prefer softer natural light. If your home doesn’t receive much sun, place mirrors around rooms to create the appearance of a larger space and reflect the light that does filter into your home.
The Bottom Line
Entertaining guests, invited or uninvited, doesn’t need to be a headache. While you may wish for a constantly clean house, it’s important to remember that your home is not a museum. Visitors to your home will understand that you live there, and there’s no need to be embarrassed by a stray stack of magazines or some dust on your bookshelves. If you are striving for a spotless space, simply try out a few of these new cleaning habits, and enjoy your fresh and tidy home.
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