Party planning stress - need to tidy whole house and garden before guests arrive!

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I’ve got 20 guests coming over for a barbecue party the weekend after next. The problem is, my house and garden are a total tip. Think big garden with flower beds full of weeds, plants with a ton of dead branches, house that is dusty and dirty with stuff scattered everywhere.

How can I get things looking acceptable before they arrive? Help!

Well. Do you have any time or money? What you will do depends on both those things.

Get a gardener to do outside and you start decluttering the inside. Get a cleaner in when everything is in the right place.

I have no budget for a gardener or cleaner sadly.

You'll need some help then! Who can you rope in? Any teenage kids you could pay to help?

Do you have time or do you work FT? Even an hour or two every evening should be enough. It’s amazing what a difference you can make in a day in the garden.

Get some green waste bags. Mow the lawn, trim anything dead. Cover everything with bunting. Scrub the garden furniture. Fairy lights. Throw junk into a bedroom and shut the door. Scrub the loos. Loads of booze and good music.

Okay so given the time constraints I'd pick a room in your house where guests are unlikely to go and sacrifice it.

Put all of the clutter and crap in there. Take anything obvious out to the charity shop but if you're short of time consider leaving that till you get it out.

Get to savers and invest in some proper ecocidal but nice smelllng products, wiped and cloths and blitz as you go.

Set 15 minute timers and do small consecutive bursts - it's amazing what you can get done in a high energy 15 and the brief time slot makes you feel able to work harder.

Re the garden how bad are the weeds? Plenty of 'weeds' have lovely flowers and foliage.

Keep an eye on the weather as if it's good and it's a bbq you'll mainly be outside anyway.

Buy some cute bedding plants / hanging baskets for instant pops of colour.

You can do this!