Marni Stewart's Christmas Tips

If you are like me, getting your house work done at Christmas is overwhelming. This is because you have already spent your energy decorating. Let's face it. By the time you have finished getting all the decorations in and out of storage, finding places to put them ( and finding places for the 'regular' stuff which you don't want out at this time of year) , you hardly have the "get-up-and-go" to grab a cup of tea, let alone get your house ready for the guests who will be coming to visit. And yet, having a dirty, messy house can be a real drain on your energy.

So how does the busy woman balance getting her house clean and decorated? The key is motivation. Once you are in motion to clean, energy will flow. But how does one get motivated? To help you find the answer, I am here to offer you my Steps To Holiday Cleaning.

First, you'll want to put off decorating as long as you can. If you decorate too early in the season, your cleaning will also be done which will eradicate your hard work and your guests will be sticking to the floors. I am speaking specifically here, of decorating the tree. I am assuming you have already put out the red table cloth and that you have one or two well-placed snowmen or angels to give the impression that (contrary to the announcement your son made to his entire school body), you are NOT boycotting Christmas.

A Christmas tree can create a lot of extra work - what with all those pine needles dropping off to be dragged all over the house on the slippers of your loved ones. This is another good reason to wait until just a few days before Christmas to start.

When you arrive home with the tree - having made sure that it is small enough to fit inside your vehicle, to mitigate potential arguments about who will help you cut it down to size - have your son move the video games in the corner to make room for it.

You will have an immediate encounter with the head and arms of the Willow Tree figurine - lost when your son had a wrestling match with the blanket a few weeks back. Your curiosity is now quenched because although you'd found the body when the incident occured, these had not turned up yet. Upon picking them up from under the T.V. stand, you will see that the T.V. screen is very dusty, so you'll do a quick dusting of that part of the room so that when you watch the next Christmas special, it won't look like it is snowing - especially if the setting is in Hawaii.

Dusting the TV will give you the chance to walk over the carpet, which will alert you to the fact that the floor is completely soaked - possibly a result of the water main that burst above the floor because of the cold weather. This affords you the delight of grabbing your carpet shampooer to suck up the water and do a quick shampoo of the area. Voila! A clean carpet! You feel better already!

Once the carpet is clean, you will put the tree in the stand. It will fall over several times before you realize that it needs some sort of brace. So you wil go searching through all the boxes to find the little piece of wood that you know was in last year's leftovers. Along the way, you'll take note of the ornaments that you want to use on the tree. You see! You are unintentionally organizing along the way!

Upon remembering that the little piece of wood finally rotted last year, you will search through your various CD's that you no longer want and nail one to the bottom of the tree so that when you put it in the stand, it will stay and not fall over again. You can now pull out the vacuum and get rid of those pesky needles. You can revel in the fact that after this, you won't need the vacuum until after the holidays.

Next, you will take the container with the dirty water from the carpet to empty into the kitchen sink. You will want to make sure not to hold onto it from the bottom. Remember, your kitchen floor hasn't yet been washed and with all the traffic due in just a few days, you want to get it clean.

No, make sure that you are holding the shampooer container by the top which is not secure. Then let it slip out of your hands and onto the floor upside down. In one easy step, you've dumped the dirty water on the floor, where it will seep under the fridge and out into the hallway. Although it may look unplanned, you've given yourself an opportunity to mop up the mess with your biggest towels (which will be thrown into the washing machine -and dried in time for the overnight guests to use), move the fridge and clean behind it, as well washing the kitchen floor and hallway.

You see how easy it is to do your Christmas cleaning? With just one small decision to set up your tree, you have become so motivated, that not only will the washing the floors, vacuuming and dusting be complete, but you'll find the energy to strip all the bedding and put fresh sheets out for the whole family, the paperwork will be filed, and the house will be cleaned from top to bottom. All because you decided to decorate for Christmas. Easy peasy, lemon (fresh-scent from cleaning) squeezy.