Hosting in Chicago? Avoid These 7 Costly Cleaning & Prep Mistakes

Hosting a gathering in the Windy City is a true labor of love—but between work, life, and the hustle of the city, finding time to get your space guest-ready can feel overwhelming. If you’re a busy Chicagoan trying to balance a clean home with a packed schedule, you’re not alone. The good news? With a bit of smart planning, you can avoid common pitfalls and create a welcoming environment without the last-minute panic.

1. Don’t Clean the Wrong Areas

Your time is precious, especially before an event. A major mistake is spending hours on areas guests won’t even see. This isn’t the time for a full deep cleaning help project involving baseboards or ceiling fans.

Instead, focus your energy on “guest-centric” zones:

• The front entryway
• Main living/sitting areas
• The kitchen and dining room
• Powder rooms or guest bathrooms
• Any overnight guest rooms

Within these rooms, concentrate on surfaces at eye level. Your goal is visible cleanliness, not perfection. Save the intensive chores for another day—or better yet, let a professional home cleaning service handle them for you.

2. Always Declutter Before You Clean

It’s nearly impossible to clean a messy space effectively. The rookie mistake? Trying to dust and vacuum around piles of stuff.

Here’s a better system:

• Grab a basket, bin, or bag.
• Walk through the room and remove every item that doesn’t belong.
• Take the container out of the room.
• Now, clean the tidy space quickly and efficiently.

Deal with the contents of the bin later. This “tidy first, clean second” method cuts your prep time significantly. To maintain it, make a habit of putting things away immediately when you get home in the days leading up to your event.

Need a Hand? We’re Your Chicago Cleaning Company

If the thought of pre-party decluttering is daunting, remember that help is nearby. Finding a reliable cleaning service near me can be a game-changer. A trusted Chicago cleaning company like Jikas can provide the fast cleaning services you need to reset your space without stress.

3. Stock the Bathroom Like a Pro

The guest bathroom experience sets a tone. Avoid awkward moments by creating a thoughtful, well-stocked station.

• Essentials: Ensure there’s plenty of toilet paper, full hand soap, and clean hand towels (or disposable paper towels for high traffic).
• Thoughtful Extras: Consider adding floss, mouthwash, or period products.
• The Non-Negotiable: PLEASE have a plunger in the bathroom. It’s the ultimate act of host courtesy and prevents true disasters.

4. Banish “Nose Blindness” & Unwelcome Odors

We become immune to our home’s everyday smells. Your guests won’t be. Before the party, walk back into your home and consciously sniff the air. What do you smell?

Target odors at the source:

• Change your furnace filter to reduce stuffiness.
• Weather permitting, open windows to air things out.
• Vacuum soft surfaces (sofas, chairs, rugs) where odors linger. Use an unscented fabric refresher if needed.
• Empty and clean all garbage, recycling, and compost bins.
• For a festive scent, try a stovetop simmer with citrus, cinnamon, and cloves.

5. Master the “Run of Show”

The difference between a calm host and a harried one is a plan. Create a master list of every single task that needs to happen before, during, and after the event. Then, schedule them into your calendar.

This includes everything from ordering supplies to setting the table to timing the main dish. When someone offers to help, be ready! Assign specific, easy jobs like “ice duty” or “garbage patrol.” This keeps you free to enjoy your own party.

6. Manage Temperature & Comfort

With a hot oven and more bodies, your home’s temperature will rise. Be proactive:

• Turn the thermostat down a few degrees before guests arrive.
• Have windows cracked for ventilation if possible.
• For guests who are always cold, keep a basket of cozy blankets accessible.

7. Have a Plan for Coats & Shoes

The first five minutes at the door can set the evening’s vibe. Avoid a cluttered, chaotic entryway.

• Shoes: If you prefer a no-outdoor-shoes policy, kindly ask guests ahead of time to bring indoor shoes. Provide a sturdy mat or boot trays (very Canadian, very practical) by the door.
• Coats: Clear out your front closet or designate a spare bedroom for coats. A temporary coat tree can be a lifesaver. The goal is a smooth, welcoming transition from the Chicago chill to your warm home.

Let Professionals Handle the Heavy Lifting

Hosting is about connection, not exhaustion. If your to-do list is too long, it’s perfectly okay to get support. You can easily schedule a cleaning before your big day. Whether you need someone to clean your apartment or want a comprehensive home cleaning service to handle the details, outsourcing the work means you can focus on being a great host. It’s the smartest way to get your space cleaned without the personal time investment.

Remember, hosting is a generous act that requires time, energy, and love. By planning ahead and focusing on what truly matters to your guests, you can avoid common mistakes and create a wonderful, memorable experience for everyone—yourself included.

If you’re brave enough to host a holiday event, I salute you. That’s hard work. And one thing that a good host knows how to do is avoid costly mistakes. In this video, I’m going to review with you what those costly mistakes are. Because trust me, once you make one of them, a snowball effect, which feels very seasonally appropriate, by the way, takes over and your event can go from amazing in your mind to an absolute disaster. So, let’s avoid that. I got you covered. And if you’re new here, welcome. This is the Clean MySpace channel. My name is Melissa Maker. I’m an accidental cleaning expert, which means I hate cleaning, but I’ve been doing this since 2012 to try and help you find the most efficient and effective ways to get the job done right the first time. It’s helped me, too. So, if you haven’t done so already, make sure you subscribe so you can get your hands on more cleaning, organizing, and decluttering videos. Also, if you want to cut your cleaning time in half, please check out Makers Clean, which is my sister company where we sell all sorts of premium microfiber cleaning tools and so much more. This is researchbacked. I also run a cleaning company, so I know good microfiber when I see it. It is not readily available on the market, and that’s exactly what I sell over at Makers Clean. Okay, let’s get on to hosting. One of the things you’re going to do before your guests come over, and hopefully not the same day, is clean. But you can make big mistakes when you’re cleaning. Namely, you can focus on the wrong spaces and the wrong areas. Now, you have limited time leading up to this party and you want to make sure that you are being efficient and effective. So, if you start focusing on the high up or super low areas or the occasional spaces where guests aren’t really going to be, you are not using your time effectively. Instead, you want to think about those guest centric areas or what I like to call the most important areas. And in this case, that’s going to be the front entryway, the sitting room where everyone’s going to be hanging, the kitchen, the powder room, and of course, the dining room. Now, if you’re having guests stay overnight, you also want to make sure that the guest rooms are prepared and ready to go. But just focus in on those areas. You might even want to make a list first so that you know exactly what to tackle. And then once you’re in those rooms, just focus on everything that’s eye level. You’re not here to do a spring cleaning. We’re not cleaning chandeliers. We’re not cleaning baseboards. We are just cleaning the things that the guests are going to see. And if your nosy aunt Dorothy starts to look around, you can just tell her to sit back down and pass the gravy. One of the biggest rookie cleaning mistakes you can make at any time, whether you’re hosting or not, is not decluttering before you clean or not tidying before you clean. It is so hard to clean a messy space. So, here’s what you need to do. Get yourself a basket or a bin or a bag. go around the room that you’re about to clean and pull everything that doesn’t belong, put it in that basket or bag, get it out of the room. Then you can actually focus on your cleaning. So, we ideally want to start cleaning a tidy space. And then once that’s done, then you can deal with whatever’s in the bag. This is just a quicker, dirtier, well dirty, but like quick and dirty, more efficient way to get this job done. And once it’s done, you will see the difference in the amount of time that you spend getting a room prepared. Then your next job is to make sure that you keep the clutter to a minimum before your party begins, right? Because you don’t want to have to go around the house and do the declutter again. So what this means is when you come into the house, make sure that you’re putting things away as soon as you get there. This is just that one extra step that’s going to save you the day of. You know when you go to a restaurant and you walk into a bathroom and they have that little setup on the counter with all the fancy things? That is what we’re going to do, but to a different degree for our guests, specifically in the bathroom. First up, we want to make sure there’s enough toilet paper. You might want to write this down. We want to make sure that the hand soap has been topped up. We want to make sure there are clean hand towels. You also might just want to swap out your hand towels to those nice disposable paper towels. I’m not generally a disposable forward person, but in a situation like this where you’re having high volume in the bathroom, it might just be a nice thing to do. You also want to make sure that you have supplies in there for people like perhaps floss. I don’t know, I have some food gaps in my teeth and it would be helpful if there was floss in a bathroom. Um, you can also go the direction of mouthwash if you want. Even some like period products if you’re having, you know, women or girls over like in case someone forgets. And please, for the love of God, make sure that you have a plunger in your bathroom. You do not want to be the reason why someone sings the song, I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas. You don’t want to be that person. No one has to know that there was a log jam in your bathroom. Just let them do their thing. Be kind. Be courteous. Put the plunger there. A bad host doesn’t know what their house smells like. Now, hear me out. All of our homes have a smell. Whether it’s a good smell, a bad smell, or a neutral smell, we often don’t even pay attention to this because we’re just nose blind. So, here’s what I want you to do. Walk into your house with a beginner’s nose. Pretend that you’ve never been in there before. And just notice what you smell. Is it stuffy? Is it sour? Does it smell like a pet? Does it smell pleasant? Take note of that. And then I want you to kind of search around your house and figure out what the source of that smell is. because if we can deal with it at the source, we’re going to make the house smell that much more welcoming for when our guests come over. So, here are a few things that you can do. First, make sure that your furnace filter has been changed. Often times, this is going to fix that stuffy problem. Next, you want to, if possible, open your windows. So, weather permitting, just let a lot of fresh air roll through. That’s going to make a big difference. Soft surfaces are another place where odors tend to build up. So, it would be a good idea to vacuum your soft surfaces like your sofas, pillows, dining room chairs, even your carpets and rugs. If you’re noticing that they’re still a little bit smelly or stuffy, you can use something like a fabric refresher. One that I find to be really good for this is Fbreze. And I use the unscented fabric refresher cuz I don’t want any extra smells in my house. If you are going to add scent to your house, you want to make sure that you’re using something that’s sort of light and neutral so that it’s not overpowering cuz some people have scent allergies. You also want to make sure that you clean out your garbage, recycling, and compost bins because those can often be a source of odors. Oh, and the other thing you can do, which is kind of festive, is you can make a little stove top simmer where you’re just basically boiling water and cloves and cinnamon sticks and orange slices. You can go online and find a whole bunch of different recipes for that. But that is a really great idea in terms of helping your house smell really nice and warm and welcoming for the holidays. Just make sure you keep your eye on it. The difference between an expert host and a harried host is someone who plans the run of show. And if you’re not familiar with what that means, it basically means just having a list of the day of events or the events leading up to the day so that you can literally tick everything off. If you’ve hosted an event before and things have gone south, you know it’s because there was one bottleneck. One thing went wrong and then just a whole bunch of things started to tumble after that. and you don’t want to look like a crumbling house of cards in front of your guest. You want to be there enjoying and drinking and eating and like having the best time. What I want you to do, and you can either do this with pen and paper or you can ask ChachiBT to help you with this, is to make a list of absolutely everything that needs to get done before the party and day of the party. You can even include after the party to make sure that you know exactly what to do. Now, if you want to get chat GBT to help you with this, just make sure that you’re prompting it effectively. But once you’ve got this list done, you can then start to schedule things into your calendar. So you’ll know order the napkins, set the table, put the turkey in, organize the front entryway, whatever the things are that you need to do, you’ll have it all in a list. You’ll know exactly when you need to do it leading up to the event. And that way you can feel calm and relaxed and you know exactly what you need to execute each day. The other thing that you can try is, you know how whenever you’re hosting, people always want to offer you help, or at least the good ones do. You should have kind of a list in your head of jobs that are easy to assign or to give out to other people so that when someone asks, you can say, “Oh, John, you’re on ice duty. I always want you to make sure that we have fresh ice. Angela, just uh you’re on garbage duty. Sorry, Angela, but like you have to check when the garbage is full and you have to change the garbage.” Then that way those people, they have one job. This is sort of like a Seinfeld episode if you remember that Seinfeld episode. But people just know exactly what they need to do and like they’re on top of that all night. This one is just kind of a thing we have to accept, but if you are a host and you are not temperature aware in your house, people are either going to be too hot or too cold. Now, if you’re preparing a lot of food, we have to imagine that the oven’s going to be running and it’s going to get hot in there. And if someone’s wearing a turtleneck made out of material that effectively doesn’t breathe, kind of like mine right now, they’re going to be sweating. Also, if it’s a woman and she’s 40 plus, she’s going to be sweating even more. I promise you. And if it’s a man who always runs hot, he will also be sweating. So, you want to make sure that you’re thinking about that ahead of time. Maybe it means that you’re opening windows or you’re turning your thermostat down to account for that extra heat and body count in your house. The other thing you can do for those weirdos that always run cold, that used to be me before I turned 40, you want to make sure that you have extra blankets in the house so that they can feel nice and cozy if needed. Here’s another thing. It’s going to be one of the first things that happen to your guests when they arrive, and this is going to make or break the tone of the whole event, and that is the coats and the shoes. Now, whether or not you live in a cold environment, we’ll leave coats for a minute. Shoes are a thing because you have to decide if you want people to be wearing their outdoor shoes in your house. And if they’re putting a whole look together and they are fashion conscious, they will probably want to wear those shoes inside the house. So, let your guests know ahead of time, hey, if you want to wear shoes with your outfit, please bring an indoor pair of shoes as well as an outdoor pair of shoes. I don’t think that’s an annoying ask at all. I think that’s totally appropriate. So, that way when your guests come, they have their indoor shoes in hand and they can quickly swap them out. You also want to make sure that you have enough places to store the shoes. So maybe just get like a big heavy duty mat or some boot trays. Yes, that sounds super Canadian when I say it. Go ahead and make fun of me and just leave it out in the front area so that people can just park their outdoor shoes there. Now, let’s talk about coats because I live in a cold climate. Think about that front entryway closet or area where people are going to be dropping off their coats. Do you need to get a temporary coat tree? Do you need to clear out your front closet or do you need to have a spare bedroom where everyone’s going to toss their coats? When you first open the door and greet your guests, you want to give them like a positive, warm vibe. You don’t want to give them that like, “Oh god, I forgot about the coats or oh lord, look at the closet.” Like, you want to think that through ahead of time so that way you can just be like, “Here’s where you put your outdoor shoes. Hand me your coat. I’m going to take it to the spare bedroom.” Done. Hosting an event takes so many resources, lots of love, physical energy, mental energy, money, time, and so much more. This is going to help you avoid those mistakes that can take your event from amazing to amazingly horrifying. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, what is one of the biggest hosting mishaps that you have ever made or experienced or even seen in a movie? I would love to know in the comments down below because I am an absolute child for me. I will always find it funny when there is no plunger in the bathroom because I’m just a horribly immature person and I’m even laughing about it now. But I want to know what you think or what you’ve experienced in the comments down below. Now, if you like the work that we do here at Clean My Space, we’re a tight little team. You can support the work that we do by becoming a member. And if you want product recommendations and cleaning tips that are useful and not annoying sent to your inbox every week, you can sign up for our newsletter, The Dirty Dish. And I’ve got a link for that in the description box down below. And if you want to make sure that your house looks beautiful whether you’re hosting or not, you can check out this video right over here, which talks about 12 amazing ways that you can give your home a quick little makeover. And if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time. Oh, and happy holidays.