Making the Pre-Holiday Clean A Little Less Painful

Christmas comes but once a year, and now that Thanksgiving is done and wrapped up for another year, it’s time to turn the focus to all of the festivities the winter brings. And one part of the festivities most people don’t look forward to undertaking is cleaning. Specifically, deep cleaning. Especially if it’s your turn to host this year.

And while realistically, no one will be looking too closely at the cupboard under the stairs, that doesn’t make you feel better when you have a to-do list as long as your arm and little motivation to get things clean.

This post is going to give some handy tips to help you turn your home from chaos to clean, and you don’t have to worry about your mother-in-law inspecting behind the toilet and judging you when she rejoins the family.

Start With The Places People Actually See

You don’t need to start going into the cupboards people won’t see; you need to start where everyone will be gathering, and the areas most likely to be used when people turn up. This is your living spaces, hallways, kitchen, bathrooms, etc., focus on where feet will trample and where guests will sit. Pull out sofas and heavy furniture, dust the shelves, declutter those who stand by the front door, wipe baseboards, and check under the sofa cushion. These are the places that matter.

If this is too big a job or you simply want to buy to get really stuck in, then hiring a cleaning company like Sparkly Maid for a December deep clean can be your ticket to a clean house and a reduced workload.

Get The Kitchen Battle Ready

The kitchen will become holiday headquarters even if you’re not cooking. It’s where everyone and the dog will congregate — cooking, baking, pouring drinks, letting the dog out, coming in and out of the yard — everything happens in the kitchen.

• Do a quick purge of the cupboards and throw out anything out of date or questionable (give the shelves a wipe down when you do, too, for added peace of mind)
• Remove random mugs or glassware that have multiplied like rabbits over the year.
• Clear out any gadgets you used once and haven’t seen the light of day since
• Clean the fridge shelves and organise the space so when you play “holiday tetris” with your food and drinks, it’s a lot less painful and cleaner. You want the smell of fresh food hitting people’s noses, not expired cheese.

Refresh Fabrics

Soft furnishings will betray you in the blink of an eye. While they might look fine, the fibres will trap all manner of scents, and sadly, you might have become “nose blind” to many of them. Give them a good vacuum and then freshen up fabrics. Put things that can in the washing machine, use baking soda as an odor neutralizer on rugs, carpets, and upholstery, and curtains too. Use products like Febreeze that eliminate rather than mask odors, and if you have guests staying over, check over mattresses — vacuum them too if required, flip them, and give them a spray with something so they don’t smell musty.

Hit High Touch Areas

This one is really important — the high-touch areas are a magnet for dirt, grime, and bacteria, and that’s before we discuss sticky fingers someone just tried to lick clean.

Light switches, banisters, cabinet pulls, remote controls, fridge handles, and door handles. All these are high-touch areas, and all they need — for the most part anyway — is a quick wipe with a disinfectant wipe or cloth, and you’re good to go. It’s that easy.