Few people escape the house guest experience at this time of year.
So thank god for Martha Stewart who reckons the only real difference between a swanky three room suite at the Hilton and a couple of nights on the lumpy mattress in your spare room is a stack of fresh towels wrapped in white ribbon.
Oh, and a vase of flowers. Preferably some that weren’t wilted by the heat of Christmas Eve or the torrential rain of Christmas night; access to a full length mirror, a stack of spare coat hangers, hanging space and an empty drawer or two.
You’ll also need to replicate a miniature version of the entire contents of your bathroom cupboard in a box on the bedside table (don’t forget the chocolate truffles wrapped in al-foil) and a chilled bottle of water with a saucer underneath so it doesn’t wet your guests choice of holiday reading.
Yep, according to Martha once those several hundred time-consuming, fiddly little items are put in place, it really shouldn’t be too long at all before your house guests are asking for directions to the pool or whether the valet will collect their car from your garage before or after breakfast.
But what if you inhabit the real world and your idea of a fun holiday doesn’t involve spending every waking hour ensuring your “house guests” are ridiculously comfortable.
For people in this category, the only really important thing to get right is the “type” of person you allow to stay over in the first place.
Unfortunately Ms Stewart doesn’t have anything to share on this particular topic, so here’s a quick layman’s guide to selecting the “better kind” of house guest.
Admittedley this method takes some trial and error but it will save you heaps of time in the long run.
Plus, the only real difference between a good and a pretty average house guest always comes down to how they leave their bed on the last day of their stay.
Here’s three to watch out for, add yours below:
The loud mess
Will leave the top sheet and blanket flung to the far end of the bed revealing the crumpled outline of their sleeping person. They’re the guest you’re probably wishing never came at all.
They’ve kept you up much later then you appreciate, drank all your alcohol (including the beer bottles you stashed at the back of the fridge away from them) and they leave wet towels all over the bathroom floor.
The tidy bore
This type of house guest leaves the sheets pulled up to the top of a bed and smooths the pillows of lines before propping them back up where they originally found them.
They take a firm and fair approach to being your guest. While they appreciated the offer to stay they’ve never felt comfortable enough to leave their mark.
And while they’ve also probably had silent, passive aggressive fights with their partner their whole stay, they’re not uptight enough to leave you with a messy room.
The five star
This guest is a rare treat. You’ll find the bed stripped of all its dirty sheets and pillow cases and carefully deposited on the laundry floor. In very special cases the pillows and blankets are shook out and the bed remade with clean sheets.
This person is either a really old and dear friend who doesn’t even have to ask where your laundry cupboard is, or your sister, mother, aunt or some other close relative used to having guests at their own place.
They’ve probably also pitched in with the washing up, hung clothes on the line, poured wine for your other guests and had time for a great chat and a catch up with you.
Needless to say, it’s really only these guests that you’ll be most happy to welcome back next year.
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