The holidays are upon us, which means we’ve officially entered the most wonderful time of the year. There is so much to do, such as decorate, wrap presents, cook, and bake, and maybe even welcome some in-laws or relatives to the house. How do you organize your home for all the hustle and bustle of the holidays?
Try these clever home organization ideas to prepare your home for the holidays:
Start with the rooms that will be used the most and work your way to the ones you use the least
Put special focus on the kitchen and bathrooms
Make closet space by winterizing your wardrobe
Create a gift-wrapping station in your home office
Tidy up the garage or basement so you can store decorations
Schedule a day to clean each week and stick with it
Keep reading for more information on each of the above-recommended tips. The earlier you get started organizing your home for the holidays, the less stressful this special season will be, so you’re not going to want to miss this article!
Focus on the Rooms that Get the Most Foot Traffic
Between November and January, your home will be the fullest it is the whole year. If time snuck up on you and your in-laws are coming in three days but you have yet to begin cleaning and organizing your home, don’t panic. As mentioned before, starting early is good, but here’s a little trick you can follow if you get a late start.
Tackle the rooms you and your fellow guests will use the most versus those you use the least. For example, the living room? From post-turkey dinner football-watching to opening presents under the Christmas tree, this room is going to be one that people spend a lot of time in. Thus, make sure you organize it first.
Here are some quick living room organizing ideas you can try today:
- Find a home for the kids’ toys that’s out of the way, such as in a hall closet or even in a storage basket tucked under the couch. You don’t want your guests tripping over plastic toys during that middle-of-the-night bathroom trip!
- Use a remote control organizer that you put on your coffee table so no one has to go flipping couch cushions to find the clicker.
- Decorative trays look great atop living room tables and can hold small odds and ends you might not know where to put otherwise.
Tidy Your Kitchen and Bathrooms
Speaking of rooms high on your organization priority list, the bathroom and kitchen should be way, way up there. Your kitchen is the central hub for all Thanksgiving and Christmas cooking. It’s where you’ll baste your bird, stuff him, and prep your homemade pumpkin pies with the secret family recipe.
The bathroom is a place every member of the family will venture to at some point, especially if they’re staying at your house for days or weeks. It must be tidy and easily accessible so family members of all ages can find what they need when they need it.
Let’s start with the kitchen. How do you clean it up? Here are some tips:
- Remove all food from your fridge and pantry , taking the opportunity to clean these spaces now that they’re empty.
- Discard expired food and consider donating un-expired foods that you don’t think you’ll eat.
- Reorganize your pantry and fridge based on what expires first or what you’ll use the most over Thanksgiving and Christmas.
As for the bathroom, here’s what you can do to spruce it up:
- Empty your medicine cabinet and remove everything old and expired, leaving room for family members to add their creams, serums, medications, and the like.
- Keep a steady supply of toilet tissue close at hand so no one has an awkward situation where they run out.
- Use a guest basket for keeping other toiletries and bathroom essentials so your family doesn’t necessarily need to rifle through your bathroom items.
Reorganize Your Wardrobe for More Closet Space
Your kids are at the house, of course, as are a few young cousins. You would hate for your kids to stumble upon their Christmas gifts early let alone your relatives to do the same, so you’ll have to hide the gifts very well this year.
The closet, especially a master bedroom closet, may seem like an obvious solution, but it’s a tried and true one for a reason. To make room for all of the boxes, packages, and bags that are your family’s Christmas gifts, you need to reorganize your closets.
First, let’s start with your clothing. Did you forget to switch your spring and summer wardrobe over to a fall one and now a winter wardrobe as well? Although summer clothes are often thin and wispy, that’s each garment individually. Stacking rows of sundresses or piles of tank tops does create bulk that you don’t need in your closets.
Consider also using a custom closet system or organizers for more neatly stashing your essentials. For example, tie racks will keep your ties crisp and straight, belt hooks will ensure your belts never get lost, and folding stations make it easy to keep clothes in shipshape. There are lots of different accessories that you can use to keep your clothes organized. Custom Closets of Houston notes Nine Noteworthy Accessories that can better assist in straightening up an overall cluttered closet.
You can try something like an accessory organizer or a jewelry organizer built into your closet via drawers. Storage baskets and boxes can be used for keeping bedroom odds and ends like blankets or hats. You can also keep those Christmas gifts hidden in the storage boxes and baskets. No one will suspect it! If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of custom closets, check out Save 25 Minutes Every Day With Better Closet Organization .
Use Your Spare Room as a Gift-Wrapping Station
You want to keep the illusion of Santa alive for the kids, which means they absolutely cannot see Mom and Dad wrapping their gifts under any circumstances. Once again, having more people in the house complicates things, as you have less privacy and thus fewer options for where you’ll be able to wrap your holiday gifts.
Why not reconfigure a spare room like a home office into a temporary gift-wrapping station? The kids won’t be inclined to go into a space like this because it’s a boring adult room. Another benefit is that if the rest of the family thinks you’re getting work done in there, they’ll be disinclined to bother you. That will let you wrap in peace.
Do make it a point to go through the whole house to gather all of your gift-wrapping supplies. Everything from bows to wrapping paper, labels, ribbon, and stickers needs to be in the same place. This will help you get your wrapping done more covertly. Also, ensure that you have a flat surface to work on so each gift you wrap is Instagram-worthy.
Clean Your Garage or Basement to Keep Decorations and Supplies
You go big when it comes to Christmas, and you prefer it if the house is decorated before Thanksgiving. Yet every year, wrestling out your giant plastic Santa, light-up reindeer, strands of twinkle lights, and other holiday décor is a pain. Your decorations get shoved throughout the garage or basement, being pushed further and further back for your lawnmower, summer beach chairs, and outdoor Halloween décor.
Make this the year you finally tackle the clutter in your garage or basement. This will be an all-day, if not a weekend-long project, so prepare accordingly. There are a ton of different ways to tame your garage clutter . You’ll want to go through your garage and remove everything. Then, make categories. For instance, the lawnmower and beach chairs would go in the summer category, as would those deflated pool floats. The Christmas décor would be in the winter category.
You might even make sub-categories such as winter decorations versus winter equipment. If you have the room in your garage or basement, you can make each of the four corners its own seasonal area. That should leave a lot of space in the center for everything else that ends up in your garage that might not fit into one of the above-mentioned categories.
Taking down Christmas decorations is sad, but when that time comes, you need to make sure you keep all of your décor together in that winter corner. If you follow this organizational rule throughout the rest of the year, then by the time you pull out your Christmas décor next year, you’ll know just where to find it.
Maintain a Neat Home by Cleaning Every Week
Woohoo! Your home looks neater and more organized than it has in years. You couldn’t be prouder. You have a picturesque living room, a den that sparkles, squeaky clean bathrooms and kitchen, and spare rooms that look like something out of a bed and breakfast.
Don’t get too excited yet. You know how cluttered things can get when it’s just you, your partner, and the kids at the house. Now that you’re adding relatives to the mix, especially more kids, your picture-perfect home might not stay that way for very long.
You must make it a point to tidy up every week. You don’t have to do deep-cleaning as discussed in this post, but a little bit of surface cleaning here and there will go a long way towards maintaining all the organization you worked so hard to achieve.
Conclusion
The holidays are about togetherness, which is why you always welcome extended family to your home. Instead of missing the holidays in a blitz of rushing around and cleaning up after people, organize as soon as you can. Make sure you keep at it, cleaning the house about every week so it’s neat and ready for holiday fun. Good luck!