After such a stressful, strange, turbulent, and unsettling last few years due to the global pandemic, many of us are thrilled to be able to spend time with our friends, colleagues, and family members again.
If you haven’t had a chance to catch up with your extended family in years, you may be planning to have an epic reunion so everyone can get together at once.
If you’re hosting this event at your home, though, you’ll also need to put in lots of effort to prepare your home for the incoming guests and festivities. Here are some ways to get ready over the coming months.
Design a Plan and Checklist
You’ll be more efficient in preparing your property if you stop and create a plan before you begin. Think about all the jobs that need doing and when they should be completed by, and put together a checklist that you can tick off one by one as you go. This list is handy for other family members to see tasks they can do to help out, too.
Planning like this is wise if you know you need to do some renovations at your property before the big event. You’ll likely need to organize the purchase and delivery of various products as well as the arrival of numerous tradespeople, which all takes careful scheduling. You don’t want to leave everything until the last minute and then have to pay extra to get express deliveries or have contractors work on weekends or late at night to finish everything in time.
Declutter
It’s also helpful to declutter your home sooner rather than later. When you have a big group heading to your place who’ll assemble in it for a period, a home can soon feel pretty full. As such, you want to free up as much space as possible for everyone and their luggage, pets, consumables, and the like.
Go through each room, especially the kitchen, living areas, and guest bedrooms, and get rid of anything that’s broken, damaged, you no longer need or use, that your kids have grown out of, etc. You may be able to sell some items via Facebook groups, garage sales, or other avenues and use the money you get to buy new bedding, dinnerware, or other pieces you’d like to have on hand for the family reunion.
Alternatively, donate items to charities or recycle or bin things that can’t be repaired or that otherwise don’t have much value any longer. Once you’ve cleared out your house, you’ll find it much easier to see what you do and don’t need to purchase for the get-together, too, and where to best fit everyone.
Clean Thoroughly
Once decluttering is finished, you’ll find it quicker and simpler to give your place a deep clean in preparation for the arrival of all your family members. Do a big, all-over clean around a month to six weeks before your event, and then you can do maintenance cleans to keep the house looking and smelling fresh for your visitors.
There’s nothing worse than trying to do a huge clean in the days before you’re hosting people at your house, so alleviate your stress by getting in and doing this job earlier. In particular, focus on cleaning out the bedrooms where guests will be sleeping and your kitchen (especially your oven), the bathrooms, laundry, and various living spaces. You may want to get the carpets and other flooring deep cleaned, too, or timber floorboards polished if they’re full of scratches.
Plus, don’t neglect the external areas of your property. Clean up the gardens by trimming back overgrown trees and shrubs or removing or relocating those that have become too large for their current spaces. Get rid of weeds and keep your lawns mowed regularly. Also, clean out your yard of any old debris such as rusted swing sets, broken statues or water features, rickety old seating, and the like.
Update Beds and Mattresses
When guests come to stay with you, you want to set them up in rooms where you know they can sleep well. It’s a good idea, then, to upgrade the beds in your guest rooms, basement, attic, den, or other spaces that your family will use during the reunion period.
You might like to invest in natural mattress products or inner-spring, memory foam, or other product types. Test out different mattresses to see what you like and try to pick ones that should suit a variety of sleeping styles, such as back, stomach, and side positions. Take measurements of rooms before you buy so you know what sizes you can fit in different spaces, too, and don’t forget to buy new bed frames if the current ones are old, as you need proper support for mattresses to stop them from sagging.
Hosting family reunions can be fun but are also stressful and tiring, so the sooner you get organized and create a plan of attack, the better. This will allow you to sit back, relax, enjoy the occasion, and make memories with your family members rather than being too busy bustling about.
