They say the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year — and it is also one of the messiest. Indulgent meals and festive parties, combined with live shrubbery and colorful decorations in the house, can wreak havoc, leaving behind stained table linens, furniture and carpeting; major messes in the kitchen; and those blasted tree needles everywhere. As a cleaning expert, people are often surprised when I say that spring, with its eponymous cleaning, is not my busiest time of year: The holidays are. The holiday season is, to be blunt, a wreck.
To help mitigate the mess, I’ve rounded up the best products and tools for just about every holiday cleaning problem and tapped some other experts to ask what products they swear by for cleaning up the most common holiday messes, from cranberry sauce to spilled wax.
Holiday dishwashing
Preparing and serving holiday meals leads to a lot of dishes that need washing — including special-occasion items that require delicate handling. If you’ll be hosting a holiday gathering, add these items to your shopping list so you’ll have everything you need to clean up when the festivities are over.
When faced with a lot of dishes, using a premium, grease-cutting dish soap will help make those tough cleaning jobs faster and more effective. Dawn Powerwash Dish Spray is a great option during the holidays for pretreating roasting pans and baking dishes as well as for cleaning the greasy spills and splatters that abound elsewhere in the kitchen during the holidays.
OxiClean is the secret to removing stains from the light-colored interior of enameled cast-iron cookware. Fill the pot about halfway with water, add a tablespoon of OxiClean and bring the solution to a boil. Remove it from the heat, allow it to cool, dump out the solution and wash the pot as usual.
Good dish soap will take you far, but good sponges can also make a big difference in the ease and effectiveness of washing dishes. Do you need to restock your kitchen sponges? Now is the time to do so.
Whether you’re washing something heavy duty or very delicate, using the right sponge can make a big difference. Specialty sponges like Dobie Pads and chainmail scrubbers can be immensely helpful when cleaning special-occasion dishes and cookware.
While they’re not absolutely necessary, chainmail scrubbers bring a bit of medieval flair to scrubbing out cast-iron cookware, making it easier to clean without compromising the layer of seasoning that is so crucial to keeping it nonstick.
One of the biggest holiday dishwashing mistakes people make is not having enough dish towels on hand. Spread them out on a countertop to act as a draining station, use clean ones for drying just-washed pots and pans and have a separate set for people to dry their hands on.
Help for holiday kitchen messes
Whether you’re baking festive cookies or preparing an entire holiday meal, the kitchen sees a lot of action during the holiday season —?which means a lot of messes. These are the products that will help to keep the chaos at bay. For more tips, check out my must-have cleaning products for the kitchen.
The holidays are stressful, so look for ways to make life a little easier. Make it a cinch to keep countertops and other kitchen surfaces clean by placing a bottle of all-purpose cleaner next to your hand and dish soaps, and make it festive by choosing a seasonally appropriate product like Thymes’ Frasier Fir-scented cleaner. It also makes a great —?and highly practical! —?gift idea for someone who is hosting during the holidays.
Ovens and stovetops see a lot of use during the holiday season, which means spills and splatters that need to be cleaned. Make sure to have oven cleaner on hand, and check out our complete guide to cleaning and maintaining ranges.
Odor absorbers made with active charcoal — also called activated charcoal, active carbon or activated carbon — that are designed for the refrigerator and freezer are a much better choice than an old box of baking soda.
Quick cleaning and problem solvers
Hosting during the holidays can lead to messes big and small, and while you can’t anticipate every problem you might encounter, these quick-cleaning products and problem solvers may be worth stocking up on.
These stick-on spray bottle holders keep cleaning products right where you need them when you need them. Use them in kitchens, bathrooms, utility closets and more to stash all-purpose cleaners for quick cleaning. Check out our roundup of cleaning supply storage products for more ideas on how to store cleaning supplies.
Windex is not just a glass cleaner. It can also be used to quickly wipe down countertops, sink basins, stovetops and more.
Illness can abound during the holiday season, and if someone in your household has been sick, you may need to use a disinfectant to prevent the spread of viruses. In our guide to natural cleaning products, expert Cindy LeBow, the founder of Great Green Cleaning & Maid Service, recommends Bioesque when a disinfectant is called for. It is an EPA-approved, hospital-grade botanical-based disinfectant with notes of lemongrass and thyme. “We use this for all deep-touch cleaning and disinfecting,” LeBow says.
The last thing anyone needs during the holidays is a plumbing disaster! If you’ll be hosting overnight guests this holiday season, outfit the tubs and showers with this clever hair-catching gadget that helps to prevent clogs.
If candle wax drips onto the carpet, tablecloth or furniture, a simple trick can remove it: Lay a sheet of brown paper over the wax and place a slightly warm iron on top of the paper. The heat from the iron will melt the wax, and the paper will absorb it.
Having extra trash bags on hand is essential during the holiday season. Hand them out before opening presents and ask people to manage their own discarded wrapping paper. Line trash cans with extra bags so that when one is full, you can remove it from the bin and have another one ready to go. Trash bags can also be used to protect the car interior when transporting Christmas trees and other holiday greenery.
This collapsible garbage bag holder is a smart buy for the holidays. Set it up in the corner of the room when opening presents to keep wrapping paper messes under control or use it during parties so guests can dispose of napkins, cups and other trash.
Holiday stain removers
Of course, food messes don’t stop at the kitchen. Spills and splatters on clothes, table linens, furniture and carpeting are a staple of the holiday season. Ahead, you’ll find the best products for treating common holiday-time stains like cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and red wine as well as tips on how best to use them. For more tips and product recommendations, check out our guide to stain removal.
Brett Parent, a senior chemist for Bissell, recommends treating stains from food or drink spills with an oxy-based stain remover like Woolite Instaclean Stain Remover, which can be used on carpet and upholstery.
Once starchy foods have been removed from fabric, there may be stains left behind. Sweet potatoes, yams and carrots that “have that orange color,” laundry expert Patric Richardson says, “that’s best removed with Amodex.”
Red wine and cranberry sauce are staples of the holiday season — and they also stain like the dickens. Fortunately, Wine Away works not only on red wine stains but on those stubborn cranberry sauce stains.
Another common stain found during the holidays are dye stains from things like wrapping paper, ribbons, paper cocktail napkins, confetti, etc. that have gotten wet and bled. Rubbing alcohol is excellent at removing dye stains from fabrics and hard surfaces.
When it comes to dealing with spills like wine, cola, fruit juices or sauces on carpet or upholstered furniture, Parent says the first thing to do is blot as much of the liquid as possible. “It is best to use a white towel or cloth for cleaning the stains,” he says, “to make sure you don’t have any dye transferred from a colored cloth.” Inexpensive bar mops are perfect for the job.
The starchy foods like mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole or glazed carrots that abound during the holidays become glue-like when they dry, making them difficult to clean off fabrics like carpet, upholstery or table linens. Richardson suggests using a laundry brush to brush as much of the food off fabric as possible before treating stains and laundering.
For bigger spills, or ones that have become set in because you couldn’t get to them when they happened, Parent recommends using the Bissell Little Green portable carpet cleaner. For more information about cleaning carpet and area rugs, check out our guide to carpet care.
Needles, sap and other sticky holiday messes
Holiday-specific messes like tree needles and sap are fairly easy to clean up — provided you know the specific way to handle them and the right products to use.
If you decorate your home with a live tree, wreaths or garland, you will inevitably end up with pine needles everywhere. Because tree needles are sticky from sap, avoid using a traditional brush broom in favor of a rubber one that the needles will not stick to when sweeping them up.
Vacuuming up tree and garland needles is also an option, but you must switch to the hose attachment or use a shop vac, otherwise the needles will become caught in the vacuum’s bristles. Ridgid’s 12-gallon shop vac is our choice for best overall shop vac.
When it comes to removing sticky tree sap from hands, hard surfaces, clothing and other fabrics, reach for something you probably already have: hand sanitizer. The alcohol in hand sanitizer acts as a solvent, dissolving the sap.
Hand sanitizer can be used on almost any surface to remove tree sap, but it’s also worth noting that bug and tar removers designed for use on car exteriors can also be used to remove tree sap.
