Get your house ready for holiday guests

I dont mean to scare you, but Christmas is only a month and a half away. Thanksgiving is even closer.

Remember how frazzled you were last year?

Holidays bring guests, and guests no matter how welcome bring stress. But with a little preparation, you can reduce that holiday strain before the doorbell even rings.

No, Im not talking about knocking back a couple of shots of Jack Daniels. Im talking about getting your house in shape.

Nows the time to ready the guest rooms, tackle those little maintenance lapses and make sure the house is ready to accommodate a crowd.

Beth Dodson knows how important that is. The co-founder of the home management site HomeZada (www.homezada.com) remembers one holiday when her guests kept spraying themselves accidentally with a kitchen sink sprayer that had an unfortunate tendency to stick. I had a lot of wet people at Thanksgiving that year, she said with a laugh.

Dodson offered a few suggestions for readying your home for the onslaught. Start now, and youll have plenty of time to relax with that cocktail before the guests arrive.

Look for the little problems. Every house has them loose doorknobs, toilet handles that have to be held down, that sink sprayer. We get used to them, so we know how to make them work and hardly even notice them. But guests dont know our work-arounds.

Do them a favor and fix those problems before the holidays, Dodson suggested. It will save your guests the embarrassment of having to ask how to work something or, worse yet, thinking they broke it.

Address plumbing issues. With just a few people in the house, sluggish drains are an annoyance. With a crowd, theyre a flood in the making.

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Get your house ready for holiday guests