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

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

Declutter
Clean out all the cupboards and pantry
Get out my Xmas mugs
Start baking!

Its ritual i have a poinsettia on my window ledge in the kitchen and one on the dinner table. I like to spruce the table up with a nice runner and candles. I buy lots of Xmas snacks and treats and we place them on the table to help ourselves when we like. It is Xmas after all.. the only time of the year i don't feel guilty when i overindulge.

We load the freezer with as much food as we can, to avoid having a mad dash about the supermarket close to Christmas Day. We decorate the fireplace and hang Christmas cards in the kitchen so I can look at them while I'm cooking, and we load the speakers up with Christmas songs!

eat as much in freezer to clean out for large xmas food shop.good clean every item,buy extra cling film and freezer bags / foil ready. dont decorate xmas stuff in kitchen just try to steam line all surfaces remove any bits and bobs not needed so to free up extra room for xmas prep,

Hide food wherever it fits and repeat the phrase "don't eat that its for christmas"! turns calendar from October to november

We get the Christmas decorations out, scented candles and a good ol' gingerbread house :P

We don't really have any kitchen traditions, just make sure we eat all of the boring food so we can spend days eating cheese and crackers lol

We run down the fridge and freezer to make as much room as possible. We usually end up plugging in the electric cool box for soft drinks too! As one of our ovens has bust we also have to think quite cleverly about what to cook/timings etc. We usually take legs/wings off the turkey so it will cook quicker! Otherwise the kitchen is the same chaotic mess as it is during the rest of the year 😳

Festive napkins

I like use a nice christmas table cloth, mugs and few bit around the kitchen. As food we start stock up bit from end october, but we keep in mind it is one day so no need to go overboard and have few treats. We enjoy spending the time as family in the kitchen around the table pulling the crackers, so make it nice warm cosy environment away from telly for few hours which is important to spend quality time together

The kitchen gets a deep clean including all appliances before Christmas.
I fill beautiful glass
bowls with clementines, pomegranates and nuts, put my homemade Christmas cake on a vintage cake stand.
Above the cooker I hang bunches of rosemary and sage with red velvet ribbon, the smell is amazing and they are on hand when cooking.

I defrost the chest freezer if needed,( after eating a strange combination of foods for a week to enable us to do it )
Clean the fridge, move shelving if needed.
Clean all kitchen cupboards.
Have a Christmas cupboard, keeps everything together and I don't forget what I've bought because I've hidden it away, (this only works if your family don't eat all the stuff in November)

Stock up on tinfoil, food bags, baking parchment, cling film and kitchen roll, (the snowman one of course)
Buy Christmas washing up liquid, hand wash and hand cream from M+S

Play Christmas cd's at all times when cooking
Put out the Christmas mugs, tea coffee and sugar canisters and cake stand
And finally wash the Christmas hand towels/tea towels to freshen them up and my kitchen is Christmas ready!

And check you local council online when your bins get uplifted as often the pickup days change over the festive season

I'm planning on planning mine as I can't bare to sit in there at the moment let alone Christmas day!!

I'm running down the cupboards and freezers. Not just for the space but money too!!!

Declutter all work surfaces (tiny kitchen) only for them to be piled high with gifts of chocolate and biscuits and other treats you only see once a year! Save it all then get so sick of looking at it that you don’t feel like eating it anyway ( which was luckily because you discover in feb that the teenager carefully stole all the chocolates while making it look like the box had never even been opened!)

Emptying freezer so we can fit yummy goodies in!

give the kitchen a good final clean, empty the fridge...and pack the suitcases....escape to see family (abroad) for 2 weeks.

Definitely deep clean the oven, this year i would love to buy a chest freezer

I do our weekly meal plans based on ONLY things that I have in the freezer (top priority), fridge (second priority) and cupboards (third priority). We have some really interesting meals in the month of November lol. Once that's done, I only buy what we will eat that week to make sure there's plenty of space for the big 'Christmas shop' as we call it, that we do on December 1st.
I also put up some small Christmas decorations on the units and switch out the regular dishes for the Christmas ones.

I clean it and try to get all child-related detritus off the counter, so I have more prep space!

I do clean it, donate to the food banks whatever we no longer need (as long as it is in dates and unopened)

The fairy lights are already up (permanent fixture) but I do a big list on the blackboard and the children and their friends write and draw on the windows with the gold and silver pens.

I make sure there's plenty of room in the fridge and the freezer.

Festive kitchen roll.

Clean the oven, make space in freezer and get our Elf sitting on the mantle!

Declutter the ice cream, making freezer space. Then stand in the emptier kitchen entering competitions I never win in an attempt to fill the void with rich food to over inulge in.

For the first time this year I am hosting DH's family for Christmas. (I've done it for friends in the past.)

We have a second fridge freezer, which I got from ao.com as it happens, so I plan to start filling it gradually. Lots of Christmas food can be prepped in advance and frozen imo so I will be doing just that! On Christmas Eve I will get things defrosting and cook it all on Christmas Day.

My ILs are American so I feel they need a proper British Christmas spread, so I am very glad of the second fridge freezer, there's no way I'd fit it all in the other one!

Making use of my freezer also means I can spread the cost of the festive food, buy when deals are on and take away the stress of representing my country's finest meal with 2 kids under 2 trying to help!

Fairy lights above the units- ours play festive tunes too!

Empty the fridge and freezer in the weeks before, then fill it with stock, stuffing balls, sausages, smoked salmon, good bread etc.

The day before put all spare stuff out of the way. Toaster into the garage, all clutter gone, surfaces all clear.

Have a candle to light to get rid of cooking smells.

Then cook!

I try and eat all the food in the freezer throughout November, then clean out the fridge in preparation for all the yummy Christmas food.