With Christmas on the way, houses up and down the country will be preparing for family arriving upon their doorsteps from all four corners of the earth. It’s also the time when panic sets in about where to fit everyone and everything!

Here are five pointers to help those households which are rather short on space to make the most of the area available and have a simple, stress-free Christmas.

Sleeping arrangements
It is always difficult trying to make so many people comfortable when they are all crammed into your house, and let’s face it you want your family to feel at home as much as possible. One solution is to build an extension for such an occasion…a slightly easier and cheaper alternative could be an investment in a good sofa bed. This also doubles up as a place for friends to stay for a New Years Eve party.

The sofa bed in many houses is used to accommodate extra guests, so they are invaluable all year round as well as Christmas time. Furniture Village has a good range of sofa beds including the Havana sofa bed, which is affordable, a decent sized double bed and rather festive looking!

Wall mounting
As the days of a television that is as deep as it is wide are long gone, if you have a flat screen television it might be worth thinking about a wall mounted screen such as these at www.AV4Home.co.uk. No more ugly television table, as well as freeing up valuable floor space to put other things… Christmas trees perhaps? There are many kinds of wall mounts for flat screen TVs these days, and a lot of them you can rotate to keep everyone happy while watching the James Bond repeats on boxing day… well almost everyone!

Shapes and Sizes
Another common problem is not thinking about the size of your tree to fit the room, vertically and horizontally. A good balance for a Christmas tree is the key, big enough to sit nicely in the corner, while not taking over the whole room. Christmas Forest in London, for example, has a range tree types and sizes. Something else to think about is whether you want needles falling out when your tree starts to die. There are many types of tree that do not lose their needles, helping in the taking down of the Christmas decorations and keeping the house relatively tidy.

Tables
Some of the most memorable moments of the festive season will be laughing around the dinner table, so getting the right one, that’s big enough for everyone to sit around is important. Having a folding table which can act as a breakfast table, as well as a full dining room table for the epic Christmas time feasts for the whole family can be a great idea if space is short. Try Furniture Village for a selection. If you are planning an intimate Christmas, and fancy doing some DIY there are options for tables that can be fitted into your kitchen cupboards, which is especially helpful if you are in a smaller house of flat.

Entertainment
Keeping the troops entertained is a must, so planning some activities in advance will help when you’re short of time over the Christmas period. Local carol singing or Santa’s grottos are always a crowd pleaser so have a look to see what’s on in your town before your guests arrive at www.wherecanwego.com.

If it’s too cold to go outside and you’re looking for entertainment indoors, then an investment into a games console could be the answer. Gone are the days of only having shooting games available; now there is so much choice on offer and something to please all the generations of the family. From a nostalgic point of view, the classic board game Monopoly has been brought to life on the Wii, with a modern twist that allows you to unlock new locations from good old London, to the Arctic, plus it also includes mini games such as racing trains and breaking out of jail.

For a general knowledge edge, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is an interactive play at home version of the television competition. You can even go on a rather seasonal family ski holiday, without getting cold with the Family Ski and Snowboard game. The Wii also has great longevity, as it is the new generation of consoles and is really geared up for family fun. It is easy to put away and doesn’t involve thousands of board game pieces to get lost in the sofa!