I hope y’all had a wonderful time last week with family, friends, or whomever you celebrate your holidays with! I was originally going to just take one day off from blogging last week. However, I ended up taking off two days. It was a much needed break with all the craziness of last minute Christmas prep and preparing our home for guests! We don’t have a lot of space in our current home, but I was excited to come up with ways of helping our guests feel at home.

tips for helping guests feel at home

Our kids were really excited about their aunt and uncle staying with us. However, in our little house preparing for house guests is no small task. Someday it’s my dream to have a lovely, dedicated guest room. Until then we just make do the best we can. We have a couple of factors that really help us out. One of those being that our kids love having sleepovers together and love sleeping in sleeping bags even more, so having the three older ones all pile into the same bedroom works great. Our big guy has a great bed from Ikea that can transform from fitting one twin mattress to fitting two twin mattresses, so typically we just do some rearranging and his room turns into a pretty nice guest room.

unique problems of hosting when you have a small space

That being said, I still like to try to make it a special experience for our guests. Even when you’re short on space, there are several ways of helping guests feel at home. After all, we all know there’s no place like home, right? I always like to leave a fresh stack of towels in the room where guests are staying so they don’t have to ask for them. A cute little tag and some candy or mints helps make guests feel extra special!

other things to consider for guests

It’s also nice to think about making guests a little more comfortable in the kitchen. In the winter it’s fun to put together a hot chocolate and tea station for the kitchen counter. That way, anyone would feel like they could help themselves to a warm beverage whenever they wanted. All it takes is putting some mugs and drink mix out on the counter–no fancy dedicated coffee cart required!

| Read: Check Out Our Guest Room/Office in Our New House! |

Here are some more ideas for helping your guests feel more at home:

• Consider leaving a small stack of magazines, books, puzzles, or games in the room.
• If they have small children, plug in a nightlight. Even if children aren’t afraid of the dark, it can help you find your way in unfamiliar surroundings.
• Make sure there are extra blankets and install a ceiling fan. Just kidding! But seriously, a big part of comfort is making sure that they are a comfortable temperature, however you can accomplish that.
• If they’re staying for more than a couple days, try to give them some drawer and closet space.
• Leave them an area map or guide book in their room. Even in our age of tablets and smart phones, sometimes it’s just fun to flip through actual pages. If you’re a AAA member, you can pick these up free at your local branch office.
• If you have a dedicated guest room that doesn’t get used much, make sure that the room and the bed are freshly aired so they don’t smell stale.
• Have your children color signs or cards that can adorn their room when they arrive.
• Leave some toiletries in the bathroom. I always save travel sized ones from when we stay in hotels and keep those in our guest bathroom in a pretty jar.

Did you have any out-of-town guests this past week?