Ten Things Your Grandmother Knew About Getting a House Ready for Guests

Your grandmother did not own a single product with the word 'antibacterial' on the label. She did not have a cleaning caddy with fourteen bottles in six different colours. She did not follow an influencer's 30-step deep-clean routine or buy a candle that cost more than a roast dinner to make her hallway smell like a Scandinavian forest.

And yet, when you walked into her house, it smelled wonderful. The surfaces gleamed. The towels were soft. The kitchen felt warm before she had even started cooking. There was a feeling in that house, something between clean and loved, that no amount of modern product has ever quite replicated.

She knew things. Simple, practical, unglamorous things that worked because they were rooted in decades of doing rather than buying. Here are ten of them, adapted for a modern home and a mother who has roughly 90 minutes before the doorbell rings.