If you’ve got visitors staying over the holiday season, now is the ideal time to get your guest room in order before you welcome them into your home. However, if you’re like me, you might be shocked at what's stored in the room while it’s unoccupied.
So, rather than giving the room a quick clean and changing the sheets, give yourself time to get it properly organized, making it a welcome retreat where guests are happy to stay without outstaying their welcome!
A guestroom can quickly become a dumping ground for a mismatch of personal, seasonal and bulky items that don’t have a home elsewhere. But it can make the room feel unloved and your guests unwelcome. Here are 5 items you should never store in a guest room if you want your visitors to enjoy their stay.
1. Family photographs
It’s usual to have family photographs displayed around your home. They make a house come to life and tell a story of the people and wider family that inhabit the space. These personal memories add character to your home and make it unique. One large photo might be framed on a living room wall, a gallery of smaller images along a hallway, or frames dotted about on tabletops. However, it’s best avoided when it comes to including personal photos in a guest room.
Even if you aspire to create a cozy vibe in your guest room and want to steer away from a boutique hotel design, personal photographs can make guests feel uncomfortable, and as if they are stepping inside someone else’s private space.
2. Items you’ve decluttered
Congratulations if you’ve been tidying your home, especially if you cleared out your clutter before Black Friday to make space for new purchases. It’s a tip we’d also recommend before the festive season, so that your home is clutter-free before the holidays.
However, one decluttering mistake that could put guests off from staying for long is storing your unwanted items in boxes and dumping them in your guest room. There’s nothing like the here and now to get a job complete instead of thinking, ‘I’ll deal with those later’. So instead of leaving those unwanted items to clutter up your guest room, donate them to your favorite charity.
3. Seasonal clothing
Many of us will sort our seasonal clothing so it’s easier to find what we’re looking for when we get dressed each morning. It’s time-consuming to search through a rail of summer clothing when you’re looking for a winter wooly, and there’s seldom enough space for year-round garments to be hung up without being cramped.
The solution is to divide clothing into what you wear by season to make it easier to find what you want. The guest room often becomes the handy place to store these seasonal items. But your guests won’t be too pleased if they open up the closet to find your summer outfits filling up the whole space.
One way I’ve created more storage in my guest room is to invest in a storage bed, and unless your guests are particularly nosey, they are unlikely to lift up the mattress to see what’s underneath. They are excellent spaces to store clothing, spare bedding, and a whole lot more. But, if you don't want to swap your bed, you could opt for an ottoman, such as this 40-inch upholstered storage ottoman bench, for $102 at Wayfair. The added bonus? It doubles-up as a seating area.
Whatever you decide, it’s worth discovering how to declutter a closet like a pro, to get your guestroom storage reorganized in time for your visitors.
4. Exercise equipment
Unless you’re trying to encourage your guests to get fitter, it’s best to remove any exercise equipment from the room. A hefty spin bike or one of the best treadmills takes up significant space and will also cause an unwelcome trip hazard, especially if your guests are unsteady on their feet.
While weights and rolled-up yoga mats are less intrusive, they will still interfere with the room’s main purpose, which is for rest and relaxation. The last thing you need over the festive season is to end up in the ER because Grandpa has had a tumble with the exercise ball!
Removing exercise equipment will also free up space for storing luggage or creating a cozy reading nook for your guests to take a moment or two on their own away from the hurly burly of the holiday season.
5. Appliance boxes
Unless you have an attic space, your guest room might be filled with appliance boxes, you just don’t want to get rid of. And even though I am a dab hand at decluttering, my guest room can quickly become overrun with empty boxes.
So what’s my excuse? I review lots of products for Tom’s Guide, from kitchen gadgets to cleaning appliances and garden tools, and those boxes have to go somewhere. So, instead of looking as neat as it once did when I first revamped my guest room, it can quickly become a graveyard for empty boxes.
However, if you want to hold onto boxes rather than discard them, it’s not too difficult to fold the boxes flat and cut through any sticky tape if needed. They can then be stored without taking up as much space.
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