Tips for Keeping Your Home Guest Ready

We recently had guests over to our home. We got the call about 15 minutes before they arrived. While waiting for our friends, I found myself doing the flight of the bumble bee. I was running around hiding clutter and quickly vacuuming up crumbs off the kitchen floor. By the time my guests arrived, I was a little sweaty, but the house looked great!

We don’t have a dirty home, but we live just fine with a little bit of dust and clutter. We live in a home, not a museum.

Today I am sharing tips on how to keep your home ready for guests while also allowing you to live in your space.

GETTING DROP-IN GUEST READY

There are two types of guests: those that come over for a few hours and those that stay a few days. Drop-in guests are less maintenance, but can also provide less notice before arriving. Here are tips for being drop-in guest ready:

1. Know where your guests are going to be in your home. I live in a two story home. If I have drop-in guests, it is easy to keep them on the first floor. Knowing that they don’t even need to go upstairs allows me to focus on what space needs to be guest ready.
2. Keep your entry way clean. Most of the individuals that come to my home are there to deliver packages from Amazon. Keeping my entry way dusted and clear of clutter helps me to feel less embarrassed when they need to bring a package inside.
3. Make sure the toilet paper roll is full. Don’t give your guests a reason to look through your cabinets. Keeping the toilet paper roll full means they are less likely to start opening drawers and cabinets.
4. Clean up messes as they happen. Wash dishes as you cook to reduce clean up time after you are done eating, put your coat away after you take it off, and straighten up the pillows on the sofa when you are done. Cleaning up messes as they happen reduces cleaning that has to be done later when you are tired and want to relax.
5. Have hiding places for the small things you don’t want your guests to see. I highly recommend you never look in the bookcase in my living room.

GETTING OVERNIGHT GUEST READY

We purposely bought a home with 3 bedrooms so we could have a dedicated guest room. This was important to us because we live about 8 hours from our family. When our family comes for a visit, they stay for a few days. It was important to us that we had a comfortable space for them. Here are a few things I do to stay overnight guest ready:

1. Dust, vacuum, and clean your guest room as you would any other room of your home. We don’t spend a lot of time in our guest room, but it does need to be dusted and vacuumed every few weeks. I keep this room on a rotation so it is easy to freshen up should guests announce a trip to our home.
2. Keep clean sheets available. Even if the sheets on the bed are clean, they can get a weird smell if they go unused for too long. Have a spare set that you can quickly swap out.
3. Don’t use your guest room as a clutter dumping ground. Rooms that only have items in them that fit and have room to put items away are easier to keep clean. Additionally, they actually appear cleaner even when they aren’t.
4. Decorate your guest room as you would other rooms of your home. It is true that we are more likely to keep a room we find beautiful cleaner than a room we find hopelessly ugly.
5. Buy a clean smelling candle. Fake it until you make it. One of my favorite clean smelling candles is the scent Clean Cotton by Yankee Candle Company. It will make any room smell like it was recently cleaned.

A FEW THINGS TO NOTE

Although we all want to impress our friends and family with how well put together are lives are, having a lived-in home is not a bad thing. Shoes in the entry way or plates in the sink does not mean that your life is in shambles. It means that you have a life.

Your guests are there to see you. Enjoy your time with them and worry about your house later. Just don’t look in my bookcase.