Pre-Christmas House Princessing

[RoseyPeas]

Is there a thread about sorting out house for Christmas?

We had been planning a quiet Christmas and now have relatives coming and while I'm excited to be hosting, the house needs a lot of TLC.

So I want somewhere to record my house and garden princessing achievements. It may be some decluttering, some cleaning, bits of DIY, and eventually doing Xmas decs. Anyone else need motivating?

Yesterday I finished curtain repairs and rehung curtains.
Today I'm aiming to put bark chips mulch on beds in front garden.

I have put the rooms back together but I have a lot of items that don't have a space so I'm leaving them aside for now. I'm seriously thinking about doing a car boot sale with these items. The money would be handy for Christmas so I will see how thst goes.
I have a houseful for Christmas so need to be organised. I have a lot more to do. For the next few weeks I won't get much done so am glad I've made a start. Nice easy relaxing day planned for tomorrow.

Right, I'm sorting out the kitchen cupboards today - wish me luck

Ooh can I join? We'll be at parents / ILs for the whole Christmas period, but the builders will be at ours doing some renovations in the bedrooms and loft, so I need to get organised for them and also do a few general jobs that I've been putting off. In no particular order my list includes:

Buy shelving system to organise piles of junk currently in shed
Clear out / organise junk currently in shed
Pack up non-essentials from bedroom and move into shed
Clear out / organise under-stair cupboard
Make front hallway presentable incl. some kind of shoe storage
Have a baby
Paint hallway between kitchen and bathroom
Plant spring bulbs in garden (any gardeners know if I've already left this too late??)

Today I'm going to tackle the under-stair cupboard and plant some bulbs. Thanks for the motivation, OP!

Oh god I should join! Somehow "can't face travelling much with a little baby" has become "hosting Xmas". I think I'll be lucky to hoover the stairs, I'm not very efficient.
I started making a set of curtains last January, definitely want to get them finished and up.
If I do that, get a few pictures up on the walls (we moved errr over 2 years ago...), sort a couple of mystery boxes from the spare room, and sort out guest sleeping arrangements I shall feel like the queen of everything!

@JonnyPocketRocket now is the perfect time for planting tulips, and I'm sure you will get away with the others too! Snurk at "have a baby" on your list...

Good Morning!
My goal for this week is to declutter my kitchen presses. Kitchen is the dumping ground for everything so I would like to get some order to it before moving on to the rest of the house

Morning !

May I join please , I'm travelling home from visiting family at the moment but when I get home I'll have a look round and see what needs to happen before the Christmas decs go up ! The list maybe long !! I did spend the last few weeks sorting out toys and rearranging the playroom so Santa's presents had somewhere to go which is possibly the biggest task completed.

I'll join too please. Need the motivation.
I like the light bulb idea I am going to do that today. I get to stores, see light bulbs and think I don't know which ones and so it goes on. So will list and buy spares tomorrow.

Safe trip back Tidy

May I join too?
I really want get some decorating done before Xmas,and gardens dreadful state...

Sorted out DD's clothes today - summer clothes away in a suitcase, outgrown clothes passed on, and some new ones bought and put away.

Hello to all new people!

I have been so busy house princessing.i haven't kept up with this thread!

Clearly there are a lot of people like me who want to blitz the house/garden in the next few weeks.

I've decided that I'm not buying new decs til Dec, so for now I'm focusing on decluttering, cleaning and gardening. Nine of these come naturally to me.

Today I've been tidying up the front garden. I want to put up lots of outdoor lights this year, so I'm thinking about that while clearing, and that helps me keep going.

Hope you're all having a productive day too!

I washed the Halloween costumes and put all of the Halloween stuff into the attic. It made the entrance hallway much neater and hopefully I'll remember what I've put up for next year!
I won't get a chance to do much this week but I am going to make a detailed to do list and try to tick things off it one by one.
Well done everyone - a lot was achieved this weekend!

I’m in! We are having ‘surprise’ attic conversion as routine work revealed issues with bodge job previous renovation... everything out of big attic store room and into corners, storage unit etc... I had just just got our fixer upper fixed up more or less and was going to be focussing on tidying little bits and doing odd bits of painting.

So focussing on the garden! Did some leaf sweeping today and weeding, put down some wool compost. Want to plant proper winter pots, weed the two front borders and put down leaf mould and bark mulch. Also finish sorting the kitchen (only room currently unscathed).

HOPEFULLY I will be ordering new carpets for the attic, a bedroom, all stairs and landings before crimbo but who knows!!!!!

Enjoying reading all these.

Prize to Johnny PR for "have a baby" on to do list 😂, somehow I missed that on first reading.

@Jesuisclaude - I'm not much of a gardener, do you put leaf mould down and then bark on top?

Love these lists - quite glad I don't need to add 'have a baby' to mine! I'm also going to continue to neglect the garden.

Today's sort out was behind the sofa - withered balloons, DH's gym equipment and some dusty cat toys are now all Away. I also cleaned the living room window frames so they're a little less Miss Havisham-my.

I cleaned and polished the work tops and the kitchen window and door. It will need doing again but at least it will be half as much dirt. Lots of dead tiny flies when we turned the window. DH had to show me how as I have never turned it and we have had them for about three years. i don wipe it but stand on a chair. Much easier the way he does them especially when he went outside turned it and carried on cleaning.

I bought all my Christmas cake ingredients for two cakes and I am planning to make them tomorrow.

Can I join?! We are part way through a bedroom renovation which means the house is in complete chaos. Everything had to be removed from our bedroom, en suite and a box room. Builders have just left and its now been converted to bedroom, dressing room and ensuite. I can't finish it yet because the bathroom fitters are not coming until the end of jan but its a perfect opportunity to go through the piles and piles of stuff that came out of the bedroom and make sure they don't all just go straight back in. Plus there are lots of wardrobes to be assembled etc.

Today I am giving myself two hours to assemble drawers for the new wardrobes. I'm hoping that if I do the drawers then DHG will be motivated to do the carcasses and they could potentially start to go up at the weekend.

I've also just had a delivery of the curtain poles for the dining room (which means that the curtains we didn't manage to get up for last Christmas might be up for this Christmas )

I had a big clean up of the kitchen... it wasn’t too bad before until the entire contents of the attic had to be redistributed around the house! Plus I have young kids and preschoolers, Halloween mess!

Tonight: the sitting room.

Welcome to all newbies.

I had a good sort out of some junk last night and hid more of it in the shed!!

Really it just needs to go, but with a DP and 3 young kids it often seems impossible.

Tonight will be busy with kids clubs but will aim to do a bit more tidying in my bedroom.

Good luck everyone - love hearing what everyone is doing!

One more thing - I found myself looking at paint for kitchen cupboard doors last night, and very nearly bought some.

But I need to be realistic - there's not enough time to redo kitchen so I'm going to make good the rooms that can be good easily and ignore the rest at the moment.

Of course if I suddenly have time in December, I can do kitchen then

I can recommend fusion mineral paint for cupboards. Much better finish than others I've tried.

I'd love to join in, this is the kind of motivation I need!
We will most likely be hosting my DH family on Christmas Day and I need to declutter living/dining room and the playroom (so it can be filled up again with all their Christmas gifts!).
I'm on mat leave as just had baby number 3 so hoping to have enough time to do bits in the day and will tackle the garden with DH and the older kids on the weekends.

That's the plan anyway 😄

Managed to clear out half of the kitchen cupboards this morning and got rid of a load of out of date stuff! Will do the rest tomorrow morning.

Hi all!

I travel home from funeral today, it’s going to take about 6 hours though so I probably won’t get much done when I get home.

I have ordered the garden fleece so that the plants don’t die over the winter. I’ve also planned which plants are going to go in the “winter” planter beside the front door.

I’d quite like to get the under bed storage boxes sorted at the weekend, they’re full of junk and I need the room to store bedding. Silly question but how many sets of bedding do people own? I think I need to reduce mine to one spare set for each bed but not sure if that’s really enough.

We have loads of bedding. Really I think you're right though and its far better to have two sets for each bed. That's always going to be enough. Dog shelters will generally take anything you don't want.