7 Tips For Cleaning Your Home Before A Summer Party

Guest Blog #126, Entry #593, July 20, 2011

Summertime is a great time to gather friends and family over a pool party, summer brunch or even a barbecue in the backyard. Before you get focused on what food to serve, you need to clean your home!

Today my Guest Blogger, Tim Reily gives tips for cleaning up your home before your summer party to ensure an event your guests will rave up for weeks!

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Having a party can be a great social event. Whether you’ve had it planned for weeks or decided to throw a shindig at the last minute, you need to get your home cleaned – and fast. It’s important to think about all aspects of the house that someone can potentially go in – kitchen, bathrooms and common areas. You can always close the door to some areas, but you will always have the nosy guest that looks where they shouldn’t be. Here are a few tips to get your house cleaned before the guests arrive.

1. Start With A List

If you try to wing everything that you will have to do, you’ll never remember everything. Grab a pen and a piece of a paper and go room by room of everything that you need to do. Think about high and low and what people are going to see. Remember that you are going to want to dust and vacuum each room as well as organize anything that is out of place.

Image courtesy of Style at Home

 2. Never Underestimate The Power Of Decorations

If you can’t get to a certain area, then just use decorations. No one is going to move crepe paper or balloons to see that you haven’t organized your entertainment center or dusted the high shelves. So grab a few rolls of crepe paper that go with the theme of the party, twirl it around and tape it up. People will only be commenting about how festive everything looks.

3. Leave Some Details Until The End

Especially if you have kids or pets, there are some tasks that you want to leave until a few hours before the guests are scheduled to arrive. This includes a last minute vacuum over the main area, fingerprints on glass doors and maybe even the mirrors. You want everything to look pristine when people walk through the doors and the only way to achieve that is to polish a few things at the end. You can still take care of the bigger issues earlier on in the week.

4. Spend Time In The Bathroom

People aren’t going to remember what kind of dip you served or what kind of music was playing. But be assured that they will talk about the condition of your bathroom for weeks later. Clean the toilet, go down the base and even clean your shower. Just because you have a curtain doesn’t mean people won’t look behind it. Remember – people can invade your privacy. This goes for the medicine cabinet, too. If you have medications you don’t want your neighbors or friends knowing about, take them out before the party starts.

5. Check The Bedrooms

If a guest is even going to have to walk past a bedroom to get anywhere, make sure it’s at least cleaned on the surface level. This means that it looks great at quick glance. Your bed doesn’t need to be made to perfection, but at least throw the comforter over it and toss the pillows on tip. When it comes to the floor, pile up all of the laundry and get it into your hamper or throw it in the washing machine. The last thing you want is for people to talk about your unmentionables that were on the floor.

6. Keep Your Kitchen Organized

No matter what kind of party you have, people always gravitate into the kitchen. It’s where the food and drinks are. This means that you need to make sure your counters are wiped down, the garbage can starts off empty and everything is shiny. Consider cleaning out your fridge, too. People often help themselves to ice and drinks in a party atmosphere, so you want to make sure you don’t have spills on the shelves or any “mystery” leftovers lurking in the corner next to the soda.

7. Enlist Help

Don’t try to clean the entire house from top to bottom on your own. Involve the kids, a significant other and anyone else you can think of. Depending on how important the party is, you may want to think of hiring some help, too. If your carpets are trashed, don’t worry about crawling around on your hands and knees with spot treatment – hire a steam cleaner to come in. They are inexpensive and can save you a major headache.

Tim Riley is involved with a vacuum bags project at work, where he reviews things like Miele hoover bags.

For more ideas for summer entertaining on Stagetecture, click here.