Share with AO.com how you get your kitchen prepared for Christmas! £300 voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

[EllieMumsnet]

Christmas can be a time to be with family, indulge in all your favourite foods, share gifts and have some well needed relaxation. However it can also be quite hectic, particularly within the kitchen all that food has to be stored and cooked somewhere! With that being said, AO want you to share how you get your kitchen ready for the Christmas period.

Here’s what AO have to say: “At AO we’ve got Christmas wrapped up, helping take the stress out of the festive season. We know that Christmas is more than the decorations and the presents, your home has to be ready too. Don’t risk a kitchen disaster when you're elbow deep in sprouts and cranberry sauce!

So deck your kitchen out with our fantastic deals. Think large capacity ovens and cookers for the BIGGEST turkey and all the trimmings, fridge freezers for stocking up on all those snacks and drinks and dishwashers to make that post-Christmas clean up a dream. You can even buy now and pay nothing for 12 months on selected appliances, so you can cook, toast and feast to your heart’s content.

When you shop with AO, you can rest assured we'll make it easy for you, with 1000s of appliances to choose from, delivered and installed in time for the big day. So you can concentrate on planning the best Christmas, ever!”

Do you decorate your kitchen to give it a Christmassy feel? Perhaps you have an ‘eat up everything in the fridge’ dinner to clear some space for the Christmas food? Maybe you buy extra kitchen utensils to ensure you’re not short of anything on the big day?

Whatever you do to get your kitchen prepared for Christmas, post it on the thread below and every MNer who posts will be entered into a prize draw, where one lucky winner will randomly selected to receive a £300 voucher of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

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I clean from top to bottom, hang homemade advent calendars and fill any other available space with fairy lights.

We eat up out of the freezer to make room and the second fridge in the garage which usually has drinks in is used for overflow festive food!

Nothing. Don’t celebrate it. Just another day in my household

Have a good decluttering session in September. Meal plan around the cupboard/freezer oddities that have built up over the year.
October is clean out to to bottom. November is oven clean and begin baking.
Also start to buy little bits in the supermarket to spread the cost and store on a specially cleared shelf (see September and October)
December full throttle to the big day. Freezer used to the max for pre prepping food.
After Christmas review my list of must get, nice to get and don't bother as no one wanted it ready for next year

Christmas themed teatowels, sparkly stick on snowflakes on the window, a poinsetta, a major clean of the oven, a tidy of the cupboards. From October its clear space in the freezer time... that means a few random odd dinners for a couple of months.

I don't! i go to my mums every year and she has made it quite clear that the family all stay out of the kitchen so I help by obeying her!! :)

I autumn clean and give the oven a deep clean in early December

Defrost freezer, clean oven, tidy up dry stores. Don't usually decorate this room.

I sprinkle a bit of tinsel about & hang up cinnamon sticks & dried orange peel to make it smell festive 🎄

Clean through. Clear one shelf of the fridge specially for the Christmas food, the kids aren't allowed to touch this shelf. That's about it really. But we don't have space for a table in our kitchen so there's no point decorating it or anything.

Currently looking for some nice new Christmas tea towels as we don't have any! This is the first Christmas I'm really going all out decorating every room. Recently had a big clean out of all the cupboards and a defrost of the freezer which was long overdue! We don't host but I'm excited to get all the festive food in, in particular Ben and Jerry's winter edition!!!

Poinsettias on the window sill but that's it really!

I sort out the spices and restock festive ones. Buy lots of ginger for Christmas cookies. Clean it thoroughly. This year i bought a cordless vacuum so I'm ready and waiting :)

We always decorate the table and I love buying new bits and bobs for the dinner table like Christmas candles. We always try to clear the freezer out the week or so before Xmas so we have plenty of room in it!

Paper snowflakes on the windows - these are ones the kids made years ago and I laminated them because they get damp with steam on the windows. And of course the lamination also meant they could be put away at the end for the following year. I love how they are all wonky.

I also put Christmas fairy lights up and a couple of Christmas signs on the door. we have a few of the spode Christmas tree mugs and side plates which come out on December 1st. No tea towels yet, but maybe this year.....

We give the kitchen and the oven a deep clean. Similar to others we gradually eat the frozen food and we then replace it with Christmas food.
Declutter the cupboards of old plates or rusty old baking trays.
Get out the red Christmassy tablecloth, we use our fancy cutlery.
We having matching Christmas aprons - our children loves these and are not at all embarrassed when we wear them
We have some Christmas lights and we drape them around and we have the retro style paper decorations hanging from the ceiling.
The result probably isn’t Pinterest style but we like it.

Elf on the shelf makes an appearance too

Don't specifically decorate, but I'm a sucker for festive fairy liquid/hand wash and bring out the festive tea towels and oven gloves. I order a big stocking up grocery shop to be delivered, with stock cubes and gravy etc and pick up nice pickles and chutney nearer the time. I love mulled wine, and once halloween is out the way, there's usually a pot on the hob!

I like everything cleaned and decluttered, I run chopping boards, cutlery trays, basin and drainer, utensil jugs etc through the dishwasher to sanitise, and organise the cupboards.

I love this time of year, but when we get home from word chilled to the bone and or soaked through... I like to sometimes rely on convenience food or the slow cooker, so having a back-up store cupboard and freezer is a must.

I start running the freezer down from late October to make space for homemade sausage rolls, cranberry sauce etc. The baking cupboard gets a severe edit and scrub ready for Christmas ingredients as does the dry goods cupboard. The kitchen and fridge get a good general clean. For decorating i usually put a wreath in the kitchen a special candle on the table and occasionally the odd bauble on cupboard door handles. We also have Christmas tea towels (red print holly for example) and place mats

A few years ago I decided to spend November preparing for Christmas so that December can be spent enjoying it. So my goal is to have all Christmas gifts bought and wrapped by November 30th. If you are a procrastinator about Christmas, this might sound crazy, but it is SO nice to have it all done so you can go to parties/activities without stress. Plan out my decor. I used to have a bunch of red decor, but have slowly been taking it away and going more neutral. This year I will be using my theme- Let it Glow and creating some fun items. Making a wishlist for me and a baby . Also I created a board for Christmas and will be using it to keep track of my budget.

This year my cooking obsessed daughter wants to get involved so we are tidying up cook books, finding the best recipes and checking that we've got all the right pots and pans. We hang about in the kitchen a lot over Christmas so fill it with loads of twinkly lights, candles, gorgeous paper stars and family heirloom Danish decorations.

Well for four Christmases it involved building it! Just about done now but hopefully will have the last cupboard doors by this year.

Otherwise we keep things quite simple and just try to run down freezer contents to have enough space.

We clean the oven, make sure we have pots and pans, the steamer still works, I sort out the fridge so that there is plenty of room for the turkey, we have a christmas stash we store in a separate cupboard.

I leave it to its own devices and go to someone else's house 😂

I have a tiny galley kitchen so no decorations, however a few days before Christmas we clean all of the clutter from the counter tops, clean the microwave, prep the oven, clean out the fridge and polish all of the silverware, so that we don't have any issues on the big day.