essentials for holiday houseguests

Living on the other side of the country from my family means one thing for the holidays: an influx of visitors, most of whom end up staying with me. While my loft is the biggest apartment I’ve ever inhabited, it’s not exactly spacious. Often, guests stay on an air mattress in the living room ‘area.’ For this reason, I try extra hard to keep my guests comfortable and content. Recently, I teamed up with Annie from Live Simply and Cottonelle to curate the perfect essentials for entertaining houseguests this holiday season.

Annie had the amazing idea of putting together a basket for each guest, full of all kinds of essentials. A few must-haves:

• a spare roll of toilet paper — no one wants to ask a busy host for a spare roll, right??
• a luxurious towel
• midnight snacks, like fancy chocolates and cute mini bottles of alcohol
• an extra toothbrush
• hand cream
• cozy slipper socks
• a sleep mask (especially if your space is open and bright like mine!)
• fancy soap
• a spare set of house keys

We combined each of the essentials in a cute wire basket. Then, once your guests arrive in your home, you can help them settle in and feel extra comfortable in your home! This is also a great thing to have on hand if you’re an Airbnb host.

Annie was full of other awesome suggestions for welcoming holiday guests, too:

• You can adjust what you put into the kit depending upon who your guest is—that way you don’t overwhelm your guest with things that aren’t applicable to them.
• You might also consider adding things like: a razor, a mini deodorant, other travel sized cosmetics (you’ve been hoarding them for ages, anyhow, so here’s your chance to put them to use), a rogue tampon or two can’t hurt, ear plugs, and band-aids.
• Your guests will likely want to kiss you if you also give them a phone charger (you can’t know for sure what phone they have, but if you’re reading this, chances are high they’ll have an iPhone), and a little card that has the name and password for your wireless network.

Plus, because it’s time to stock up, Cottonelle was kind enough to offer a savings code. Head here for all of the details!

Photography by Meghan Klein. 

This post is sponsored by Cottonelle. All opinions are my own and always will be! Thanks for supporting content that keeps Jojotastic going.

Leave a comment and let us know what you think of this essentials for houseguests tutorial! And if you make a batch, be sure to post a photo and tag @jojotastic on Instagram so we can see.