5 Tips to Keeping Your Home Clean During the Holidays

Whether you plan to have visitors over or not, the holidays are a busy time for your household. Around the holidays, most family members are present in your house for most of the day. Due to the increase in traffic, your house is bound to accumulate larger amounts of dirt in the holiday period. It is also harder to clean around the house during this period due to the increased population. As a homeowner, you may be wondering how you can keep your home clean during the holiday period. Here are the five tips on how to declutter your home with family around.

1. Keep Everything in its Place

Let everyone know where the appliances, attachments, and personal items go. Have everyone know their assigned closet and desk space. Have everyone organize their spaces before the holidays set in to establish an arrangement. Have the policy to return everything in its place after every use. Encourage everyone to follow this routine as it makes it easier to trace items when they are needed later. Pack up the decorations in labeled boxes and put them away until they are necessary. Any item that is not needed for daily use should be locked up in storage to avoid cluttering the place.

2. Commit a Portion of Your Day to Clearing Clutter

With everyone in the house, not everyone will comply with putting everything in its place. Clutter is the number one enemy to keeping a clean house during the holidays. So, make it a rule to put everything back in its place to minimize clutter. You should then allocate 10-15 minutes of your time to clearing clutter around your house. You can travel from room to room, picking up items and placing them in a big basket to transport them around in. You can make this the last or first ten minutes of your day. This way, you get to declutter without draining.

3. Keep Cleaning Supplies at Hand

Keeping surfaces sanitized at all times is crucial to maintaining that clean, airy look in your home during the holidays. It is important to have your cleaning supplies at hand to ensure any messes are quickly taken care of. With more people in the house, spills falls, drops and breaks are bound to occur. You should be ready to clean up after emergencies. Keep your all-purpose cleaners, dish soaps, vinegar, liquid oil, brooms, and trash bags in a place they can be grabbed in one swift motion. We suggest an under-the-sink storage unit so that anyone can access the cleaning supplies when they need to.

4. Assign Cleaning Responsibilities

While having more people over may mean having to deal with more clutter, on the bright side, you have more workforce. It is a good idea to use positive reinforcement techniques instead of force to get all your loved ones involved in keeping the house clean. Assign chores that are age-appropriate, and everyone will appreciate their roles in the outlook of your house. To create a cleaning schedule that works, involve all your family members in assigning the tasks. Let them have checklists to record the number of activities they have done. You can turn the hassle of house cleaning into a fun game by creating a little competition between members of your house.

5. Adopt a Clean-As-You-Cook Policy

Cooking for a large family can be messy. To help declutter your kitchen, have your family members clean the surfaces and utensils as they cook. Meal preparations are usually a step-by-step process, so it is easy to clean utensils used in previous steps, throw away food scraps, and clean the surfaces used in the preparation. This way, you will avoid the post-meal bomb-struck kitchen.

As you go into the holiday season, these tips can help you keep your home free of clutter. If you want to know whether your home is weather-ready to protect your home during the holiday season, contact Aspen Home Improvements today. We have been performing inspections, replacements, and home improvements in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland for over 25 years. Get in touch for a free quote and inspection regarding your next home improvement project.