Holiday Cleaning Tips
It’s the best time of year again! The holiday season! It’s that festive time of year where traditions are celebrated, new ones are made, gifts are given, and we gather round to spend time with family and friends. The holidays are a wonderful time of year, but all that festive cheer also makes a big mess! Here are our tips for a stress free clean up this holiday season.
1. Keep Your Cleaning Supplies Within Reach
Most of us have places in our home or workplace where we hide or tuck away cleaning supplies so that they’re out of sight when guests or clients come over. While that’s an excellent idea most of the year, during the holiday season consider bringing your cleaning supplies out and putting them in a more prominent or easy to reach place. This will help you clean messes as soon as they happen and make it so it’s less of a chore to get the supplies out and clean later. If you still want to hide your cleaning supplies from view while having them in reach, we recommend picking up a festive container or cover from your local dollar store so that your supplies blend in with the décor while making your life easier.
2. Create a Designated Spot for Cards & Holiday Packages
Most of us have a designated spot for mail in our homes and places of work. For many of us it’s the front hall table or the mail tray. One way to make clean up easier and make your home and workplace sparkle is to decide in November or early December on a designated spot where you’ll put holiday cards, festive packages, and regular mail. For some that maybe the same spot as always. For others it might make sense to put regular mail in one pile, holiday cards in another, and packages somewhere else. It’s also good to decide early where and how you want to display all of the holiday cards you will surely receive! Once you’ve come up with a system adding new cards and replicating it next year becomes so much easier.
3. Make Giving and Receiving Easier
Our first tip is to say goodbye to those unwanted gifts! It’s the thought that counts, but don’t let the good intentions of others add additional clutter to your home or business. If you often get gifted presents you don’t use a good tip is to ask party guests and relatives to bring a food item that everyone can enjoy or something you can make later. That way you’ll enjoy the gift and use it, all without adding additional clutter. Holiday cleaning will be much easier without those extra items. Another great tip is to go through the holiday cards you got in the mail and write down who sent them to you. That way you know who to send cards to next year and won’t forget anyone!
4. Make Storing Decorations Easier
When you take down your lights, save yourself sometime next year by wrapping the strings of lights around a piece of cardboard or a paper towel tube to keep them organized and easy to unravel next season. This will also keep you from being the neighbour who still has strings of outdoor lights up on Valentine’s Day or on Easter! Another tip is to buy specialized storage bins for ornaments and baubles and make sure that all of your decorations are labelled by box so that you can easily take them out next year and put them back just as easily. If you change the theme of your decorations from year to year, it’s also a good idea to group your decorations by colour so that you can easily pull out what bins you need in the future.
