The holidays are a time of joy and warmth, but preparing your home for the holidays can be stressful, especially if you are hosting a party or family get-together. You want your home to be warm, well-decorated and full of friends and family, but you know that you’re going to have to work to get your home ready for company!

Don’t worry; you still have time to prepare! Just follow these tips to transform your home into a cozy, holiday haven:

1. Delegate Tasks Preparing for the holidays is a fun way to bring the family together! Many holiday prep tasks, like decorating and preparing traditional dishes, are best enjoyed with family and friends. This year, instead of feeling like you have to plan and organize everything yourself, assign specific tasks to your family members to oversee. For instance, if one of your children is great at wrapping presents, why not give them a whole stack to wrap? Children enjoy having a sense of responsibility, and they’ll be proud to know that they are helping to make holiday magic!

2. Check your appliances Is your home ready for the holidays? Check all of your appliances well before company comes over to make sure that everything is ship-shape! You don’t want to be caught unprepared if a kitchen appliance breaks or your heater goes down!

If your furnace is old or on the fritz; a new, more energy efficient furnace is a gift that your family and guests will appreciate. Let Welter Heating, the Minneapolis home heating expert; give you the gift of peace-of-mind this winter with the gift of a new furnace. Before Welter Heating begins a furnace installation, we will complete a thorough analysis of your home and offer you options that provide the best outcome for your heating needs. After the furnace installation, we’ll leave you with instructions and best practices for taking care of your new furnace!

3. Menu Planning For a stress-free holiday, plan your menu two months ahead of the celebration. Then make a list of ingredients so that you can keep an eye out for sales and buy what you need when prices are low! Keep in mind that beverages and dry goods can be purchased well ahead of the event! In order to make sure that you’re not stuck in the kitchen for the whole party, make as much food as you can the day before the event and designate someone to help you in the kitchen.

4. Cleaning Cleaning your house room by room is too daunting of a task, especially when your family musses up the room that you just cleaned! Instead of tacking one room at a time, divide your house into “zones” and make each member of your household responsible for keeping their zone clean in the days leading up to the part

5. Decorating Don’t expect to decorate everything in one day! Instead, designate a day to decorate the outside of your house (lights, lawn decoration, etc.) and another day to decorate the inside of your house. Establish these dates 2 weeks ahead of time to ensure that your family will be home and ready to help you decorate!

What does your family do to get the home ready for the holidays? Leave a comment below with your tactics for tacking the holidays!

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