Preparing Your Home for Christmas
10 Best Ways to Freshen Up the House Before the Holidays
Nov 4, 2009
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not the time to put your house in order. You'll be too busy with holiday preparations. Instead, start now.
This time of year, before the pressures and stress of the holidays, affords the perfect opportunity to schedule some quality time with your house – to finally undertake all those household projects that you’ve been ignoring. You know the ones – wobbly chairs, sticky drawers, masses of disorganized Christmas wrapping supplies. The good news is that you won’t even need to spend a whole weekend to see results.
Here’s a roundup of ten simple and quick décor updates that can be accomplished in half a day or less. Tackle a few of these now, and come Thanksgiving, you’ll be relaxed and able to enjoy the fun and frolic of the season.
What You Can Do in Fifteen to Thirty Minutes
- To speed up cleaning task, try this super-simple trick to keep cleaning supplies organized and handy - store wipes and sprays on a lazy Susan inside a cabinet for easy access. It will make it easier for you to tackle cleaning over the holidays if all your supplies are close at hand.
- Don’t let Aunt Hazel wobble when she sits down to Thanksgiving dinner. Recycle a wine cork to fix a wonky chair. Just cut a slice of cork horizontally at the top end and then glue it under that shaky leg. If you make a mistake in measuring, try again.
- Ensure your overnight guests don’t have to fight with the furniture. To unstick a tight wooden drawer, rub the undersides with a wax candle or a bar of soap to make sliding easier. Keep a candle stub or a small soap sample in the drawer for future fixes.
- Add a touch of whimsy for guests to any room by using an ordinary item in an unusual way. For example, why not hang up that unused hot water bottle in the bathroom and use it as a vase. Just add some water and a single bloom. It already comes with a hole for hanging up.
- Sparkle up a few plain Jane lampshades with a festive tinsel, or grosgrain ribbon in seasonal colors. Use your glue gun to attach the ribbons or tinsel to the shades in no time, or you can stitch them on by hand. Stitching them will make it easy to remove the ribbon or tinsel after the holidays are over.
What you Can Do in One Hour or Less
- To make things easier and more organized, create a tree-trimming toolbox. It’s inevitable – ornament hooks get lost or broken, or you can’t locate the scissors when you most desperately need them. Keep these and all your other tree-trimming essentials handy to ensure the decorating process goes off without a hitch. Stow supplies in a small toolbox, and store it with your ornaments for easy access.
- Change your kitchen cabinet knobs to more festive ones. You can purchase inexpensive brightly red or green colored knobs at any hardware store. When Christmas is over, you can change back.
HOL 101
The copyright of the article Preparing Your Home for Christmas in Seasonal Home Maintenance is owned by Stefanie Gabrych Fraser. Permission to republish Preparing Your Home for Christmas in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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