5 Ways to Prepare Your Home for Holiday Guests

The holidays are said to be one of the most stressful times of the year, as friends and family come to town to celebrate together. If you want to eliminate any headaches when hosting guests this holiday season, it pays to prepare your home well in advance to make it more welcoming.

Here are 5 ideas to get you started:

1. Finish incomplete home improvement projects. You definitely don’t want to invite guests into a house that looks like a construction zone. If you’ve been refinishing the interior of your home for months, consider hiring a professional painter to finish the job so it looks beautiful in time for the holidays. This will also prevent guests from tripping over home improvement supplies like paintbrushes, rollers, and buckets that may have been left out.

2. Clean out your storage spaces. Although it can be tempting to store items thrown around the house to keep them out of sight from guests, it’s a good idea to do a complete organization overhaul before friends and family arrive. Cleaning out and organizing junk in drawers, cabinets, and closets will make your home look clean and fresh, instead of cluttered and cluttered.

3. Update your living room decor. If you want to impress your guests with a beautifully decorated living room, a few simple improvements are all you need. You may want to replace old accessories or centerpieces with new items, as well as updated throw pillows, window treatments, and even a rug to tie the theme together. Small changes make a big first impression!

4. Add interior lighting. While you may have considered putting Christmas lights around the house for the holidays, it helps to add lights in rooms that are dark or dimly lit. As a general rule of thumb, most rooms do well with two different lighting sources. For example, your kitchen can benefit from under-cabinet lighting to add brightness while you cook, in addition to lighting fixtures already installed above the kitchen island.

5. Update appliances. If you’ve been meaning to buy a new stove for months, now is the perfect time to get friends and family together for a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal. This is especially critical if you have decided to host one of the big festivities and will be cooking the food yourself. To make the whole process as smooth as possible, you want a stove or oven that can handle a larger volume when you’re entertaining guests. Also, you may want to consider getting a larger coffee maker, microwave, or toaster to accommodate guests staying for several weeks.

If you’re pressed for time this holiday season and don’t have a moment to spare, take the advice of Lowe’s home improvement master and focus on the exterior of your home. A new exterior paint job, updated planters on the porch, or a freshly painted front door will make a great first impression on friends and family visiting your home for the first time.