How to Make Holiday Guests THINK you Spent All Day Cleaning

How to make holiday guests think you spent all day cleaning with out actually doing it.  Here are six awesome ideas for quick holiday “tidy ups” that are simple to perform in an hour.

Clean Builds on Clean For Holiday Guests

We figured this out during the few short weeks before our wedding that we were blessed with a housekeeper.  (Thanks  again Mom and Dad.)  If an area is clean already, we have more of a tendency to keep it clean rather than make a mess.  One clean area looks and feels, great giving you incentive to clean the next space.

Prep Day Holiday Cleaning –  one week out from the holiday.

Pick a day and spend 2 hours and two hours only on the bathrooms and kitchen.  It is unlikely that your drop by guests or dinner guests for the holidays will venture far into the bedrooms.  Spend 1/2 hour on a deep cleaning in each bathroom and an hour in the kitchen. Scrub tubs, sinks, behind the facets and toilets and straighten the cabinets and towel areas.

Laundry– The Weekend before the holiday have laundry fully completed even if it means half loads to take care of everything.  Encourage family members to straighten drawers and closets. Rejoice over clean clothes and sheets/towels that will last a while.

Day Before Holiday Cleaning

During the week, scrub down the laundry mess; focus on picking up areas regularly.  There will be less to move for the final wipe down the day before, if the areas are uncluttered.

Windex and a Microfiber Rag

Just like the father in the movie  My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I do believe that Windex solves just about all surface cleaning problems.  Start top down and wipe all surfaces in main part of house.  Move to kitchen and bathrooms.  Get a clean rag before switching from kitchen and bathrooms  (need about 4 rags to complete the project).

Vacuum All Over

I vacuum everything including the dog.  (vacuuming the dog really does help with shedding.) My Shark Vacuum is a light weight swivel headed dirt & hair sucking machine.  I can take the canister off the main vacuum to do the stairs. Plus, the canister opens at both top and bottom to clean out the hair balls.  No more jamming a knife in the corner of the canister to try to get stuck dirt and yuck out.

This is really cool! Not only is the Shark powerful enough to “sweep’ up hard surface floors, this model comes with a reusable hard floor dust mop.  It is awesome for touch ups; combine this with a Swiffer floor mop and your routine becomes a snap!

Mop hard floors

I hate large wet mops. They drag bacteria and dirt around.  Think about it.  You wipe the floor with a hairy, spongy mop that never gets properly cleaned and then you plunge it back into icky water and start over.  UUuuu!  It is just one big germ dirt bucket slopping a mess everywhere that makes you think the floor is clean.

Buy a Swiffer!  I love Swiffers for small and large areas.  I like the kind that squirt the solution, so I don’t have to keep getting it wet.

If you don’t buy them because you are disposable conscience, I get it.  I don’t like the diaper style plasticity mop pad either which is why I keep a collection of rags that I wash in the washing machine in hot, germ killing water after I use them.  The microfiber rags adhere to the Swiffers’ Velcro strip quite well.

Day of Holiday Cleaning

Wake up, make coffee, push the turkey or the lasagna in the oven, straighten major traffic areas, vacuum high traffic areas and wipe out sinks, if necessary, grab your coffee and sit.  Yes, sit, and be thankful that your clean looking house will make your guest think you spent hours cleaning that morning.

4 Cleaning Items and about 4 hours

Keep it simple.  These four cleaning tools will make light work of your house keeping on a regular bases.  Instead of leaving cleaning to chance, schedule it into your planner.  Remember clean builds on clean so focus for 3-4 hours a week to create a comfortable home for even unexpected guests.

I did add a few affiliated links to help you find things and support the blog.  The Shark and Swiffer are the best cleaning tools I have every used. Truly!