Getting Ready For Your Perfect Home Party
If you are one of those people who love to have friends and family during the holidays or enjoy inviting people to your home on the weekends for dinner and wine, then you know that the preparation before the party and the clean-up afterwards can be stressful.
You have invited your guests, developed a menu, stressed over activities, and soon guests will arrive at your home, ready to be entertained. Despite all other preparations, none is more important than assuring that your guests will have a comfortable and clean environment to enjoy themselves.
We all know that we always want to make sure our house is in tiptop shape because we still want others to think the best of us. What if Patricia tells Marie that my home looked dirty?
Pre-party House Cleaning Tips
Taking the time to make your home ready for guests can be intimidating for even the most seasoned house cleaning optimist. Take advantage of the following tips and ideas to make it easier for you as you get ready for your house party.
Evaluate what needs to get done. Write down a quick list of rooms and places in your home that need attention. Do not forget the entry areas and coat closets.
Start with the most important rooms – the rooms that the company will spend the most time in. Sometimes it helps to begin cleaning from the entryway to your home and work your way through the rest of the rooms clockwise.
Get rid of the clutter. Clutter can give a spotless home a messy appearance. Give your guests room to move freely. Try to get yourself jump-started by choosing a small junk drawer and trying the quick-clutter clearing ideas. Do not forget to use the 4-container clutter method to organize any job.
Take shortcuts that work for you. If there will not be any children at the party and your guests will only be in
living areas, do not worry about cleaning and detailing family bedrooms. If the party is informal, make you are serving dishes according to it. Find ways to save time that fit with the party you are trying to have.Prepare for minor cleaning emergencies during the party. Be aware that stains are probably the number one party clean-up culprit. Stock up on your favourite stain removal products. Double-check the stain removal help list. Most of all, do not stress. These things happen and being prepared only shows more of your ability as a host.
Employ help. Use your family or closest friends to help you prepare. Find tips on involving your family in cleaning and use them to mobilize your forces at home. Check out our ideas on making chores fun. For many people, professional cleaning help may be the better choice. If you intend to have help before or during the party, be sure to reserve your place as soon as you have the dates and times you will need them. Especially during any holiday season, help can be hard to find.
Add your final changes. Preparing your home for a party is more than just stripping it of its clutter and dirt. It also gives you a chance to add small touches that make your home comfortable and inviting. Try flower arrangements, photographs, candles, or incense. Try to stimulate the senses of your guests. Do a walk-through after you have cleaned and uncluttered to see how your guests will experience the rooms in your home.
Enjoy the party. Once the guests arrive, forget about the home staying spotless. I have never seen a spotless home after a party. That is when we call the cleaning crew in because we know we will be tired from a night of drinking, laughing and entertaining. Try not to stress over the little things that may seem to go wrong during the party. I once went to a party where the host was a neat freak instead of entertaining her friends and making them at home, she ran around the house like a headless chicken, cleaning up every crumb that dropped. The guests after the party conversed and they all said that they felt very uncomfortable. They all felt like they had to sit with their hands folded. It is up to the host to make the guests happy and at home. Just enjoy the party and worry about cleaning later.
The more involved and complicated the party is, the more time you will have to prepare your home. Last-minute informal gatherings do not require your home to be in perfect order.
Last-minute Cleaning Tips Before The Guests Arrive
In many cases, when we expect guests, we are busy with our usual daily routine, and we do not have the time to get our house ready for the guests. There are a few simple tips which you can follow to get your house sparkle before your guests arrive.
Clean the closet. Create enough room for your guests to hang their coats by removing any jackets and coats you are not planning to wear while they are at your house. You will remove the clutter and give the impression that your home is tidy and have enough space for everything.
Clean the leaves of your indoor plants. Houseplants get dusty even though you might regularly dust your house. Their leaves need to be wiped down from time to time one by one with a damp cloth, and you don’t want your guests to see your dusty plants, do you? It is an excellent time to have them cleaned just before your guests come to your house.
Dust around. Have a damp cloth ready to clean picture frames, skirting boards, furniture and electronics. When these surfaces become dusty, the dust is visible, and you need to remove it to make your house sparkling. Polish all mirrors and glass surfaces, including windows.
Polish all surfaces. Make all taps and porcelain surfaces in the bathroom shine by polishing them with a cloth. Clean all soap remains and limescale. Your surfaces will look cleaner, and your house will be ready for the guests.
Arrange the table. After you have cooked the food and have opened the windows to remove the smell from the cooking, it is time to set up the table. Get the drinks and the food arranged on the table, together with the plates and the utensils. Polish the glasses and the utensils to make sure all watermarks from the washing are gone. It is not very good to have your cutlery stained, especially when expecting VIPs. Make the drinks and the food accessible to the guests as you may have a variety of such, but if you hide them somewhere, your guests will not be able to try them. If your drinks require ice, put some ice on the table as your guests will not help themselves to get ice from the freezer.
Play some music. Having music not only makes a tone for the party, but it also improves your mood and the mood of your early guests. In the beginning, keep the volume low so you can hear each other and later when you are in a mood for dancing, increase the volume.
Check the lights. Before your guests are in, check all your light bulbs and replace those that are broken. As soon as the party begins, lower the lighting and lit candles. They make the atmosphere more relaxing, and your guests will feel the warmth of your house.
Post-party House Cleaning Tips
It’s been a long night, and you’ve been the perfect host. All your guests enjoyed themselves, and you have lived up to your reputation of being the perfect party-giver. Now, the last guest has gone, and you are left surveying the mayhem. It looks like a hurricane had swept through the house. You have a few choices in your course of action:
Pretend there is no mess and go off to sleep – you can think about cleaning up in the morning
Gird your loins and get started on cleaning up right away so that even if you manage only an hour sleep, you wake up to a clean house.
Relax and have a nightcap knowing that you have already booked a company of professional house cleaners to do your post-party clean-up.
The first option is what most of us go in for, and when we wake in the morning and see the mess that has to be 
cleaned up, we curse ourselves and promise never to have another party again – until the next time!
The second option requires both enormous amounts of energy and will power, most often beyond the abilities of most of us.
The last option is, of course, the best one, and London has many house cleaners that offer domestic cleaning services and can undertake all the necessary work. Next time you plan on having a party, arrange for professional house cleaners to come in the following day and do the post-party clean-up. Book the agency as soon as you decide on the party date – the best cleaning services are often booked well in advance. And don’t forget to add the post-party clean-up costs to your party budget.
While you can leave most of the clean-up to the house cleaners, there are a few things you need to do to prevent any severe damage to your furnishings happening before the house cleaners arrive.
Check for smouldering cigarette stubs that could scorch your furniture. Why didn’t you send the smokers outside? Cigarette smoke takes ages to get out of fabric, curtains, wallpaper, etc. Your best bet here is to open all the windows and to use essential oil dispersers to cover the smell. Vacuuming and carpet cleaning can also help to remove any stray traces of ash. Any stray cigarette butts should be picked up by hand (not with the vacuum cleaner) and disposed of in the compost heap. Alternatively, boil the butts up and use the resulting liquid, once strained, as an organic pesticide.
Mop up any spilt drinks – the alcohol can act as a thinner and remove the polish from wooden surfaces. Also, If you’ve only just discovered an old stain, bad luck. Your job will be harder, as you’re supposed to get onto spilt red wine as soon as possible. You can try your best to clean your carpet by sloshing the stain with white wine and letting it soak into the existing stain before blotting up as much as you can. If this doesn’t work, you may have to get your carpet steam-cleaned, or else try scrubbing the stain with warm soapy water, followed by rinsing, until the stain goes.
Mop up any vomit that may be on the carpet. Oh, dear, dear, dear! If you or your guests are likely to get into this state, then strategically placed buckets will make things easier. Your first job will be to get rid of as much solid yuck as you can. Do this by scraping it up with an old towel or a dustpan. Do not use the vacuum cleaner. Now get out the warm soapy water and get down on your hands and knees to scrub up the rest of the mess. Follow this by rinsing, then repeat the process until you can’t see any more. Finally, sprinkle the spot with baking soda to absorb any lingering smells and vacuum this up once dry. Use the same process if an over-excited animal of any species had an accident on the carpet. Please note that the longer you leave it on the fabric, the more chance there is of the acidity in the vomit damaging the carpet material or affecting the colouring. If you live in the UK’s capital I strongly suggest that you hired Anyclean’s carpet cleaning London technicians. As they say, leave the hard work to the professionals.
Other debris: Get out three large containers, one for recyclables, one for compostables and one for other rubbish. Switch on some music, a radio show or a talking book, and start at one end and work towards the other, putting the junk into the appropriate containers. Next, find items that have lost their way home and return them to their proper places, which may include phoning a friend or three to tell them that they left something behind. Finish by vacuuming up the remaining crumbs and fiddly little bits of paper streamer.
