Halloween is one of the most fun holidays of the year, and you can make your Halloween party even better with decorations and party games. Unfortunately, all that fun can leave you with a mess to clean up after the party’s over. With all the candy wrappers and costumes strewn about, you might not feel too motivated to clean up. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to make getting rid of the mess easier than it has any right to be. You will find out how in this simple guide on home cleaning service up after Halloween. But that’s not all we have to offer.
Did you know there are some steps you could take that would make most of the after-party work unnecessary, or even better, automate most of it? No tricks, just treats! Read on to find out more.
What To Do Before The Party Begins
Before you even begin planning your party, we have some strategies you should adopt to make the clean-up as easy as it can be afterward. Some of these tips are simple and take almost no effort at all, but some may require a bit more planning. Let’s take a look at them now.
1. Hold The Party Outdoors
This is a strategy that’s very effective at reducing the amount of work you’ll have to do when the party’s over. If you’ve got a large enough yard to comfortably host the number of guests you expect to be present, go ahead and do so. Outdoor parties are a great way to let everyone get some fresh air and enjoy all that nature has to offer while creating an enjoyable festive atmosphere for everyone.
If anyone spills some food or drinks outside, well, who cares? You can hose it off later and no one will notice a thing. When you hold your party outdoors, clean-up becomes a matter of taking down decorations and removing the guests’ tables and chairs.
2. Provide Disposable Plates And Cutlery
This will ensure you don’t get six-hour-long dish duty after the party. Simply provide plastic or paper plates, cutlery, and cups for your guests to use throughout the evening and discard them when they’re done. This is one tip that makes clean-up a breeze.
3. Provide Abundant Trash Bins
When there are abundant trash bins placed throughout the party grounds, it reduces the distance your guests have to travel to get access to them. This means your guests are more likely to use them. Some guests may even leave the place cleaner than how they found it (picking up the slack for the more slovenly) which is a bonus.
Home cleaning after your Halloween party
1. Get Rid Of The Decorations First
The party is over, so it’s time to put away all the decorations. Collect all of them and look them over for food stains, damage, and such.
If there are stains, try to clean them off with a piece of dry or damp rag – whichever gets the job done. If you choose to preserve your decorations for next Halloween, they won’t come out of storage looking worse for wear or smelly.
If the decorations are damaged, you can decide to get new ones for next year later. Meanwhile, you have to get rid of these. To do so, you can simply throw them in the trash. More advisable, however, is taking them to your local recycling center for recycling (or you can look for a pick-up service in your area to haul them away for you). Also, consider donating the broken decorations to Goodwill or a nearby thrift store.
Remove any chairs and tables you might have laid out for your guests. If you use tablecloths, fold them up for laundry.
2. Clear Out The Mess
Now you’ve taken the decorations, tables, and chairs out of the picture, notice how much space you have. No doubt that space is littered with candy wrappers, leftover food, spilled drinks, and what-have-you. But now, the mess is much easier to map out and navigate. This is when the true clean-up begins. Equip yourself with a garbage bag or three, sign a truce with your rubber gloves, and get ready for war!
- Start with the trashables
Anything considered trashable should be disposed of right away — this includes any used plastic plates and cups, as well as candy wraps and snack packages. You can recycle those later, but for now, just get them out of the way.
When you’ve gotten rid of the trashables, you can clean the tables or any higher surfaces to get any food crumbs down to the floor. You can get rid of these by vacuuming. It shouldn’t take long to do this part.
- Move on to the drink spills and stains
Since they’re liquid, wipe them up with paper towels before you switch to a damp piece of cloth. Finish by wiping over with a paper towel to make sure the surface is completely clean and dry.
If there are stains, you can scrub them off using soap or detergent and water. Just be careful not to damage the surface with your scrubbing.
3. Disinfect All Surfaces
Covid may be behind us but there are plenty of other diseases going around these days. That’s why it’s important to disinfect all the surfaces in your home that were touched by your guests.
Identify the high-contact spots and take special care to disinfect them thoroughly. Use an anti-bacterial cleanser and follow the instructions on the bottle to get the most effectiveness out of it.
4. Don’t forget the outdoors
No party meant for the indoors ever stays, and that’s a fact. Some of your guests will inevitably step outside for a bit, ostensibly to get some fresh air. The thing is, their food goes with them. After your party, you’ll likely find a fair number of snack packaging and candy wraps strewn about. You’ll have to pick these up by hand and dispose of them.
If you follow these guidelines carefully, you should have your house back in order in no time. And next time you want to throw a party, consider our tips to make things much easier at the clean-up stage. Clean-up doesn’t have to be so strenuous a chore, and you deserve to be able to look forward to your next party.
