BETTER LIVING: Get Your House Ready for Holiday Company
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Have you got guests coming next week for the holidays? Or the month after? Now's the time to clear the decks and ready them for the fun (and exhaustion) of visitors. Here are my top priority organizing tips for the two most heavily trafficked areas of your holiday house: the kitchen and the bathroom.
The Kitchen
It's going to be the center of everything for the next six weeks, so let's make sure you're ready. Take the following steps:
Clear out your food storage NOW:
1. Take everything out of your pantry and cupboards. Dig deep in the back of those cabinets! Check dates, and toss everything that is expired.
2. Sort your food. How you classify is up to you, but some common categories are: snacks; canned goods; pasta, sauce, rice and grains; flour, sugar, oils, spices, and other baking needs; and ---(you fill in the blank here).
3. Now, designate a cupboard or pantry space for each category. Arrange foodstuffs neatly on the shelves, so that you can see everything clearly; when you know what you have on hand, you won’t over-shop. Risers or a Lazy Susan are great space-saving options for canned goods, spices, and other smaller items.
4. Go through your fridge and freezer in the same way as you did your cabinets. Sort foods into categories like veggies, dairy, meats, and condiments, and rearrange to make everything accessible.
Take control of pots and pans NOW:
1. Take an inventory. Clear out your silverware drawer, spread out your pots and pans. Chances are, you’ll find that you have duplicates of more than a few items. Do you really need four bottle openers? Seven ladles? Maybe you have six fry pans but only four matching lids. Choose your favorites (only one set of each utensil or gadget, no more than three similarly-sized pans). Same goes for flatware: think about the maximum number of people you’ll be serving at any one time, and base your total number of forks, spoons, and knives on that estimate. If you never have more than ten people over at once, keep twelve of each type of flatware. Same process goes for steak knives, dessert forks, cloth napkins, placemats, etc. Give anything you don’t use to charities like Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or your local women’s shelter.
2. Find your stuff a home. Organizing tools like flatware separators, utility drawer inserts, hanging hooks for large spoons, ladles and spatulas, and hanging pot racks for frequently used pans are all wonderful options. Displaying your pots and pans like art also adds to the ambience of your kitchen.
The Guest Bathroom (or any shared bathroom):
Face it: it's going to be used, and used more than usual, if it's a guest bathroom. If it's yours, you'll need to share, so let's make it shareable.
Tackle the cupboards NOW:
1. I know some women who have bottles of shampoo stashed under their sink that have been there, untouched, for months or even years. Most of the time, it’s because they didn’t care for the product, but keep hanging on because to toss it feels like wasting money. Well, the money's already spent, and these lonely bottles are wasting valuable space. If you know someone who might like the product, give it to them: they’ll be thrilled. If not, dump the product, and rinse and recycle the bottles. The bottom line? You should have no more than three kinds of shampoo and conditioner in your bathroom at any one time.
2. Styling products often accumulate even faster than shampoos. If you’ve recently changed your style, or if your hair texture has changed (for example, if you’ve started coloring), don’t hang on to your old products. Again, swapping products with friends is a great idea.
3. If they’re of the non-toxic green variety (and for your health, they should be!), your bathroom cleaners can be stored pretty much anywhere. If they’re of the conventional variety, cleaners must be properly stored so they don’t contaminate other items under your sink. Powdered abrasives like Comet or Ajax should be stored in plastic bags to avoid spills. Liquids must be tightly capped. Better yet, don’t store cleaners in your bathroom at all.
Once you’ve purged your cupboards, it’s time to put everything back inside. Separate items by using plastic or wicker baskets. Small storage drawers keep small items like hair notions, nail clippers and tweezers neat. Risers (they look almost like steps) make items at the back of cupboards visible and easy to reach.
Final touches:
1. If you’re storing spare towels in the bathroom, make sure that they’re protected from the damp created by baths and showers. A space saver or corner cabinet with doors is a good option.
2. Keep excess décor out of the bathroom. It's tempting at holiday time, but with so much moisture in the air, bathrooms are prone to mildew and molds, and superfluous items make cleaning even more difficult.
3. Keep a separate stash of products for each bathroom. A spare roll of toilet paper, an extra box of tissues, a clean hand towel, a spare bottle or bar of hand soap, and other necessities should be stored in every bathroom, so you or your guests don’t run out of them at an inopportune moment.
Candita Clayton is the founder of Your Life Organized and author of Clean Your Home Healthy. Visit her online, here.
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Want suggestions for wines and other treats for Thanksgiving? Don't miss GoLocalTV's feature on holiday libations coming up on Monday, 4pm, here.
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