How to get your home ready for Christmas guests — fast

Are you are guilty, like me, of fooling the world that your house is Christmas-ready when the reality is rather different? Are you so busy documenting your ribbon-tying, foliage-gathering and fairy lights-stringing that you’ve ignored the fact that in a matter of days people will actually be visiting your home, not just looking at your Instagram pics?

Kitchens and bathrooms will be utilised, and food must be prepared in salubrious conditions. While none of us should be striving for festive perfection, perhaps it is time to step away from the decorating (just temporarily of course) and tick off some of the less appealing tasks on your to-do list? Here is our unholy trinity of pre-Christmas chores.

Let’s start with a job that most of us dread. My oven was not fit for a frozen pizza, let alone a turkey, so I scrolled through TikTok, hoping to find an amazing hack to make the job a doddle. Sure enough, multiple creators had posted videos showing how to clean an oven using only a lemon. The method involves putting a dish of sliced lemon and water in a hot oven for half an hour, leaving it to cool and then wiping the oven with a sponge. It sounded so simple and I wish I could tell you it worked — but it didn’t.

Enter Jessica Turner, a cleaning content creator (@jessicamay_home) who says cleaning the oven is up there with cleaning the bin in terms of terrible (and avoided) chores. “It is one of those jobs that people delay until it looks bad enough,” she says. For a proper deep clean, her tips include using a foam cleaner — one you spray on and leave on for about 30 minutes — before wiping away the residue with a damp cloth or kitchen towel. For the oven racks she has two methods: put them in the dishwasher on a hot wash, or pop them in the bathtub with hot water and a dishwasher tablet. I tried both with good results and only had to do minimal scraping of burnt bits.

What is important, Turner says, is not to leave it too long between cleans: “When you are able to keep on top of your oven, you will enjoy [cleaning] it a lot more.” She also suggests getting an inexpensive liner for the bottom of the oven. “I whip out my liner once a week and wipe it and feel like I have a nice clean oven again.”

The freezer

Next up is making vital space in the freezer. With no room for ice cubes, let alone frozen canapés or emergency milk, I approached Kate Hall, @thefullfreezer, who teaches people how to freeze almost everything successfully (including prepped veg and sauces for Christmas dinner) and also runs a regular freezer clear-out challenge, because it’s impossible to have an organised, ready-to-cook-from freezer when everything is a total mess.

Hall walks me through her five steps to freezer happiness, the first one being to clear everything out drawer by drawer, removing anything that you are never going to eat: “If something in there is horrible, I give people permission to get rid of it,” she says. Hall also suggests removing excess packaging and placing solitary fishfingers etc in freezer bags.

The next step is to itemise the contents, by taking a picture or writing a list. Then everything goes back into the freezer. Next it is time to go through your list and divide the food into simple categories that work for your space or number of drawers, for example, “bakery”, “fruit and veg” or “meat and fish”. Then open the freezer again and put things in their new places, labelling drawers if you wish.

Finally, empowered by your inventory, it’s time to eat. Hall suggests thinking of three meals to cook this week using your existing freezer stash — and it feels a bit like free food. “When people realise just how much food they have already got, it is really, really satisfying to use it,” she says.

The bathroom

Last on the unholy list is a deep clean of the bathroom. This task can feel quite epic, but Lyndsay Gardner, a decluttering and cleaning influencer (@lyndsay.and.the.girls), promises that it can be enjoyable, especially with a good podcast to accompany your efforts. I ask her about sink blockages. She suggests pouring a couple of cups of bicarbonate down the plug before spraying the plughole with white vinegar — let it bubble and fizz then wash it down with a kettle full of boiling water. What about the shower screen? I tell her that mine is permanently covered in a thick layer of limescale: “My biggest tip is to squeegee the screen every single time you have a shower.”

Gardner says that narrow-edged brushes — all the rage in TikTok cleaning circles — are good for getting the dirt out from around the taps. She also recommends a battery-powered scrubbing brush, ideal for those nail varnish streaks that sometimes get left on the bath. Also popular on social media is a floor scrubbing brush with an integrated squeegee, from the Dustpan & Brush Store. There are many videos online of people scrubbing their floors and then using the squeegee to soak up dirty water, ready to be wiped up with a kitchen towel. Oddly satisfying.

My shower screen continues to give me grief, though, and various limescale removers don’t shift the dirt. The miracle cure turns out to be a simple mixture of vinegar, washing-up liquid and water — thanks to @carolina.mccauley on TikTok. McCauley also suggests keeping a “dishwand” filled with white vinegar and washing-up liquid in the shower so you can clean the screen daily. I know I won’t do this but I’m sharing the tip in case somebody wants to make it their new year’s resolution.

Purdy & Figg have released limited-edition Christmas scents: Frankincense & Myrrh, Orange & Clove and Fir & Bergamot. They are available as concentrates that can be added to a reusable bottle and topped up with tap water to make a multisurface cleaner, from £15, purdyandfigg.com

This Lakeland sonic cleaning tool has four different brushes and is ideal for getting into small corners or around plugholes. No elbow grease needed, £22.99, lakeland.co.uk

These between-the-gaps brushes from Lakeland are perfect for cleaning around taps and they also work a treat on the shower screen seal strip, £4.99 for two, lakeland.co.uk

Tiktok’s favourite scrubbing brush has a built-in squeegee blade, £12.99, thedustpanandbrushstore.co.uk

Using a liner, like this Teflon one by Oven Mate, helps to protect the base of the oven from drips and spills and saves on cleaning time, £11, johnlewis.com