Party Preparation: To Clean or Not to Clean?

It stands to reason that when you have 20 or 60 of your closest friends over to your house for a party, you want things to be clean—extra clean. Extra, extra eat-off-the-floors kind of clean. Really, you want your friends to be jealous of all the time you have to spend cleaning your house. Well, maybe not that last one. House cleaning generally ranks low on my to-do list on a normal basis, but when there’s a party, I try to make an effort.

Until this last time. Time was short to prepare the decorations, food, etc., and I had no adult hands available to handle a sponge, so I sucked it up and called an amazing house cleaning service, Extreme Gleam, and had them take care of every dirty nook and cranny. Not having to worry about that made for a much less stressful few days before my party. To lessen your party to-do list, you can call in a cleaning service to clean before (or after!) your event as a one-time-only job—no ongoing service required.

When chatting with my friends, who were in amazement at how sparkling everything in the house was, I found people actually took different approaches to cleaning for parties.

Clean before. Personally, with two small kids, there are all sorts of gross things stuck to the walls or floors at any given time (and we won’t even discuss the kids’ bathroom). I want the dried-up cheerios scraped off the baseboards and a lemony-fresh water-closet when people walk in the door, so we do spic-n-span before parties. This is usually a huge load on my husband and me to accomplish on top of all the cooking and decorating.

Straighten up and light cleaning before. This method also makes sense. Honestly, within fifteen minutes of a few dozen people trampling across the floor, it’s dirty, and everything else in the house gets equally mussed, which makes all that cleaning an exercise in futility. Instead of a full-on, whole-house sparkle, sweep up, declutter and do a light dusting and wipe down of any areas in dire need. There will be plenty to clean up after the party.

Clean after. Of course, make sure any dirty clothes are off the floor, but don’t make a huge effort to make things super-gleaming. After the party is the time to call in the cleaning service to take care of wayward dabs of frosting and trash created by all those partygoers!

What’s your party cleaning style?