Quick Holiday Hosting/Cleaning Tips

If you follow me on IG, then you’ve probably seen me post about one million Stories that are basically all the same: my dogs sleeping in various positions by my feet as I work from home. We are a dog-friendly household, to say the least! So I thought I’d share just a few quick tips for cleaning or prepping for a holiday party when you’ve got a pet-friendly home like us. 🙂

For this post, we are working with BISSELL and using their new pet-friendly vacuum called the Pet Hair Eraser Lift-Off. I’ll tell you what I love about this vacuum, but first let me tell what I love about BISSELL. The owner started the BISSELL Pet Foundation which assists over 3,000 animal shelters and other pet welfare organizations by helping to reduce the number of pets in shelters (through the support of adoption, spaying and neutering). They have helped over 10,000 pets find forever homes (!!!!). And they will donate up to $10 for every pet product purchased (including this vacuum) to the foundation to help pets find homes. I love businesses that choose to do good things through their work, and I especially love this mission as I am, without a doubt, a crazy dog lady. 🙂

We are one of those houses that basically let our dogs be anywhere—meaning we let them on the furniture and even in our bed at night. So the thing I worry about most when I have guests coming over is if our home smells like dog hair. I am always afraid that it might, but I just can’t smell it anymore since I live in it. However, we give our dogs baths fairly often and keep our house (I’d like to think) at least fairly clean. Still, my number one tip for hosting a party when you’re a pet-friendly house hold is to vacuum up all (or most) of the dog hair.

So now I’ll tell you why I love this vacuum. First, it works well on a variety of floor surfaces. For example, we have both hardwood floors and quite a few rugs around our house. Second, the body of the vacuum lifts off so you can easily carry it over stairs, tight spots, or if you need to get higher (to reach on top of furniture, shelves, or get curtains). It comes with a variety of attachments that work on baseboards (probably the #1 spot in our house that seems to draw dog hair like a magnet), sofas, and other areas in your home. I LOVE that it makes vacuuming our sofas and chairs easier because we let our dogs on everything. 🙂

Second tip, once you’ve gotten your house decently cleaned (or at least mostly dog hair free), I like to up the cozy factor by adding some good smells. And of course there’s lots of options here. You could use candles, essentials oils and diffusers, or even just have a stove simmer going for your party.

And my third tip is a have a plan for where people can congregate. So although our dogs are wonderful and really very well behaved for the most part, they do tend to get super excited while guests are arriving. Because of this, I like it make it clear where people can hang out so that the traffic is more condensed—at least for the beginning of the party—and the dogs aren’t running all over the house, but are more contained to one space. Does that make sense? It seems to work well for us anyway. So a great way to do this is to set out a snack plate, cheese plate, or have a cocktail mixing spot where you want folks to hang out while everyone arrives.

These are what work well for us, but if you have other tips, I’d love to hear them in the comments!

And here’s a couple of “outtakes” of Lovers being Lovers when I took these photos. He might look like I’m using force on his face, but believe me, I’m not. He LOVES a good head or neck rub and he likes to show off one of my favorite of his attributes—his snaggle tooth! Happy holidays from our dog-filled home to yours. 🙂 xo. Emma