Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays!

Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays!

The holidays are always a time of the year that we can’t wait to enjoy but once they come they tend to come in like a tornado. Your decorations are out of storage, family is coming to stay with you, there is shopping to do, meals to make, rooms to tidy, all while maintaining your normal day-to-day responsibilities. For example, just having time to make yourself and your home look presentable becomes quite the task around this time of year. So how the heck do all those super-mom’s seem to do it? Well, yes we will say to divide up your tasks so that things become more manageable…in other words have a plan but this is what you will read on every other “Tips for Cleaning” article. We aren’t going to stop there though; we are going to give you actual tips that will help during the whole dang process! Keep reading below for my top 5 tips for keeping clean during the holidays!!

I consider myself sort of an expert on cleaning and organizing (insert laughing here). Seriously though, if my long-time friends and family heard me say that boy would they have a handful of stories and jokes to throw my way! But, seriously, I can only say that I have some serious skills because of my past. My everyday experience has kept me on a full time roller coaster of cooking, cleaning, working, and playing and there is rarely room for error. So to stay on this rollercoaster I have developed some ways to keep clean and organized. So today we will talk specifically about staying clean and organized just through the holidays but look out for more articles on how this inherit messy girl survives the rest of the year trying to be Bree Van de Kamp from Desperate Housewives (What? A girl can dream, can’t she?! Oh, no, now I feel the urge to watch that series again on Netflix, all 180 episodes, see you all in a few months, lol!).

Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays: TIP #1

Get organized BEFORE you decorate and/or move things around.

If your decorations are new, unpack them and figure out how you will store them. Do you need to buy a couple large bins? Figure that out now based on how wide/long/fat/oddly shaped your things are. Use paper towel rolls to wrap your Christmas lights around, buy large cheap portfolio folders to store everything from Christmas cards to paper holiday wall décor to kids art work to pictures. Label a bag or envelope for SD cards or pictures you will print out after the holidays or create a holiday folder on your hard drive, desktop or where ever (just get it started, it will make it easier later).

Don’t have time for all that? Well then at least keep the packaging on any new items! Break down the boxes if you’re short on room but the packages will come in handy in worse case scenarios later.

Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays: TIP #2

While decorating your home, try putting any normal décor in the holiday bins and take those bins back to storage until the holidays are over!

Keeping your home as clutter free as possible will help in so many different ways. Your sanity will be saved for one, but also there won’t be these things looming around, taking up space, and looking like a mess. Make sure you pack room by room so that it isn’t a giant hassle to put things back when you bring these things back out of storage. I always have a giant few bags of bubble wrap that I use for these things also. Wrapping things in bubble wrap can save you time and money later and you can recycle it every year.

Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays: TIP #3

TUPPERWARE!

This may seem like a silly one but it’s easy in the moment, after a big family dinner to wrap up your serving dishes and shove them into any available space in your refrigerator. Well, don’t! Take a little longer to first dish all leftover food into tupperware and label it. Labeling is something you can do all year round but I only choose to do it during tupperware season where I know my fridge will have dozens of the same tupperware tightly packed in my refrigerator. You will also be happy you did all of this in a month or so when it’s time to clean your refrigerator because there won’t be spilt food all over the place from seran wrapped plates and bowls. After getting all the food packed in tupperware, do the dishes, and then wash all your dining surfaces (and floors). Boom, now you’re done! Shopping, serving, eating, and cleaning up after is an easy 12ish hour job where you are barely off your feet. It is not for the faint-hearted!

Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays: TIP #4

Have the right cleaners in stock.

Make sure you have your favorite brand of carpet cleaner on hand during the holidays because someone is bound to drop a candy cane or spill wine on your freshly cleaned white carpet! Whether it’s a store brand carpet cleaner, club soda and baking soda as long as you clean it up right away or at worst, within 24 hours you should be able to make it look like new. And as always dab, don’t rub stains out! Also, if you’re not an avid paper towel user, make sure you have plenty during the holidays, especially if you are hosting family. Just trust me.

Top 5 Tips for Keeping Clean During the Holidays: TIP #5

Menus/Schedule

If you’re not the type to run life by a schedule, trust me I understand, I was once there with you and I have to say it’s slightly more time consuming making the plans but it will definitely save you time overall in the end. Jot down your recipes and then stagger them from longest to shortest prep/cooking times (it’s also wise to think about what the cleanup time on certain dishes). Then before you know it you have a schedule for your cooking. If you want to go above and beyond, try to schedule your cleaning out day by day and be as realistic as possible. For me I know that a deep cleaning of the kitchen (despite how messy or clean it is) is about 4-8 hours and a brief cleaning is more 2-4 hours. Accepting this and scheduling it on a day/night prior to my guests arriving just makes everything flow so much better instead of trying to “do it all” a day or two before hand.

I hope these tips help you stay clean, organized, and most importantly, sane this holiday season!

Check out some of my holiday cooking recipes here!