Christmas is one of the most exciting times of the year. It’s also one of the messiest. Use Spotless’ festive keep-clean tips, and your house will look all the better for it!

 Clean First, Decorate Second

Polishing around bits of tinsel and vacuuming between holly leaves isn’t fun. Before so much as a bauble goes up in your house, commit yourself to a serious clean (we’re talking the magnitude of a spring clean here). While doing this, you may find certain unwanted items that have amassed over the year. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to hand over old clothes and suchlike to charities that really need them. When the decorations do come out, give them a quick dust-down. For the fragile stuff, use a clean paintbrush, or put a sock over the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.

 Prepare for the Roast

There’s more to preparing for the turkey roast than you might think. As well as deciding if you’re going with Heston’s or Jamie’s cooking suggestions, and making sure you have all the ingredients, you also need to ensure you’ve got all the right equipment to cook with. Pull out all pans, trays, basting apparatus and suchlike a couple of days before the big day, and give everything a good scrub. Especially if you haven’t used some of this stuff since last Xmas, it’s liable to be a bit greasy and dusty. And no one wants a dusty turkey dinner. While you’re at it, clean out the oven too.

 Tree Tips

The centrepiece of any Christmas is a real tree. But everyone knows they can be trouble too. When choosing your tree, make sure it looks healthy. Brush the branch with your hand; if lots of needles fall off, look for another one. Keep your tree outside in a bucket or pot of cold water until the moment you put it up in the house. When you bring it inside, cut off a little bit of the end of the trunk, to open up the pores. Keep the stump submerged in water at all times, and give it a healthy drink daily (two litres should do the trick). Your tree will also shed less needles if you keep it away from heat sources.

 The Clean-Up

It’s the least fun part of Christmas, but it’s got to be done. You’re liable to find stains all over the place. The key to getting rid of them is determining whether they’re protein, oil-based, tannin, dye, or combination. From this, you can work out the best way to treat them. Candle wax can also be cause for a post-Christmas cleaning nightmare. First of all, harden the wax by rubbing an ice cube on it. Chip that off, then melt what remains with an iron. It goes without saying that you should recycle whatever you can. Hopefully, many of the Christmas decorations you have will last a few more years yet. As for the tree, wrapping paper and cards – dispose of these in an eco-friendly way, and head into 2014 with good karma on your side!