Parties are fun — while they're happening. The after-party cleanup, however, can be anything but fun. The best way to avoid post-party chaos is by planning well and having the right supplies before the party even gets started.

For your cleanup list, put down garbage bags (black and white), paper towels, carpet stain remover and all-purpose cleaner. Before the party starts, place trash cans in high-traffic areas and places where guests will naturally congregate in large groups: the dining room, the living room, the deck, the backyard. Having garbage cans conveniently placed throughout the party zone will naturally encourage guests to put trash in, well, the trash, rather than letting it build up wherever they happen to be when they no longer need their cup, plate, or napkin. The more thorough your pre-party preventive measures are, the less exhaustive your post party cleanup will be.

Rather than waiting for the last guest to leave to start the cleanup process, it will go much quicker if you start before the guests have left. This serves three purposes. One, it sends a quiet signal to guests that the party is winding down. Second, it will most likely spur some guests to offer to help. Thirdly, of course, it gets the cleanup underway so there is less to do after the guests leave.

Start by taking garbage bags and going from room to room collecting trash. For ease of separation later, it’s a good idea to color-code the garbage — white for recycling and black for trash. Bring everything back to the kitchen. It’s best to have all the mess in one central place to better contain it, attack it and deal with it. If your living room is party central, think of your kitchen as mess central.

Now that the last guest has left, it’s time to move beyond the light cleanup you started while the party was winding down and shift into major mess removal gear. While you may think your first plan of post-party attack would be to finish the garbage collection, that’s not the case. You must first scout out and eliminate any spills before they become stains. Do a good house walk-through, looking for water marks on tables and spills on carpets or upholstery. Deal with these first, before they set.

For spills on carpet or upholstered furniture, the first goal is to soak up any excess liquid. Take a paper towel (or a few, depending on the size and severity of the spill) and fold it over, then press it into the stain to soak up the liquid. Repeat this process until you can’t absorb any more liquid into the towel.

Now use your go-to stain remover to finish the job. For water stains on wood, use a gentle cleaner and a soft cloth. Once back in mess central — your kitchen — take the white garbage bags filled with recyclables and put the contents into their respective recycling bins and put the black garbage bags where the trash goes. Go back through the house with a dust cloth for wood surfaces. For all other surfaces, use paper towels that have been lightly spritzed with an all-purpose cleaner.

The last step is to wipe down all surfaces in the kitchen and run the dishwasher. Now you can rest easy knowing you won’t wake up to a post-party mess but rather a fresh, clean house.