At long last, I am listening (with great pleasure) to Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. The whole book is fascinating and enjoyable, but one part so far that’s stood out to me was about entertaining. Ina is talking about how she loves to entertain – and she shares a lot of fun “lessons learned” over time, like don’t make individual omelets for every person at the dinner party – and at one point, she mentions that she spends the day after entertaining lying on the couch, exhausted, swearing she will never have another dinner party again. Relatable much??? If even The Ina Garten gets worn out by entertaining, well, that makes me feel a little better about how I feel about having guests.
At the ripe old age of 44, I continue to struggle with the conflicting desire to be social and be solitary. Specifically, I would really, really like to be the type of person who entertains… but entertaining stresses me the eff out.
We have a great house for entertaining. We have a great outdoor space. We have plenty of room for people. What we don’t have is ease and comfort with bringing people together.
My husband and I have family friends who are exactly what I would like to be, in terms of hosts. They seem to always be hosting parties or get-togethers. They do marshmallow roasts and pizza nights and cookie baking parties. They host an annual Christmas celebration. They invite us over frequently, often the day before or day of the event, and I don’t know if we’re an afterthought or if they simply decide in the moment that they’re having people over that evening. When we do go – and we always say yes or no, not maybe – there are typically several other families there as well, who come and go at varying times. There’s always an abundance of food, drink options, children running in and out and around the house. The hosts often cook while we’re there, assembling pizzas, grilling meat, making sauce on the stove while guests chat at them from the other side of their kitchen island. It’s chaotic and noisy and people always seem to have a good time.
I could never. It’s just not in my nature. Spontaneity is not my strong suit in general, but when it comes to having people over to my house… no. And so very MANY people? Just. No.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I made an attempt at semi-spontaneity. We invited friends over for snacks and drinks; they accepted. “Snacks and drinks” is my idea of easy, because – as I have posted before – I fret intensely and at length about what to feed people. We picked up some beer and a bottle of margarita mix. We bought a bunch of fruits and veggies, cheese, crackers, deli meat. I washed all the veggies in advance and then put together a couple of trays with everything on it so that the food would be ready to go when our guests arrived. I did a quick tidy of the house. And then the friends didn’t come over.
It was FINE. We had Snack Dinner, just the three of us, and watched a movie. But it was kind of a letdown. (Maybe “snacks and drinks” doesn’t sound like enough of a plan to be worthwhile?)
This kind of thing happens, I know it does. I’ve read many articles and memes and blog posts about how millennials and successive generations don’t RSVP and opt out of things at the last minute. I also know that things happen; things come up, kids get crabby, the dog tracks poop through the house and suddenly your Saturday is spent deep cleaning the carpet.
We had a similar thing happen last weekend. My husband asked if a friend might want to bring his family over to swim, and the friend said yes. We bought food that would be good to eat by the pool, washed and prepped veggies and fruits, cleaned the pool, etc. And then they didn’t respond when my husband reached out.
This most recent disappointment, I think, was because we tried too hard to be too spontaneous. Saying, “Hey, why don’t you come over this weekend to swim?” is fine, but my husband’s approach was to get in the pool and then text the friend and say, “we’re in the pool, come over” while my approach was to pick a day and time in advance so everyone can PLAN. We ended up doing a hybrid of these things, where he reached out the morning of and said, “we plan on hopping in the pool around X time, so come on over.” The friend got back to my husband several hours after X time, and said, “Oh, hey, we ended up doing something else.” Which is FINE, I get it, but also we sat around all day not knowing if or when they would show up. I think that could have been avoided if we’d had specific plans.
I hope this doesn’t come across as complaining. (Truthfully, I was relieved, in both instances, that the plans didn’t pan out.) I am using these two examples to show how impossible it feels to invite people over. You plan, and it doesn’t work out. You try to be spontaneous, and it doesn’t work out. Or sometimes it DOES work out and there’s a flurry of planning and prepping and cleaning and the stress of having people in my space and do they think my house is clean enough and is the food I made good enough and is everyone having fun and why does every word that comes out of my mouth sound stupid and are they staying too long/long enough etc. etc. etc.
What I think would be WORSE would be to have spontaneous plans and not be prepared. Okay, I wrote that sentence, read it, thought THAT IS RIDICULOUS you cannot be prepared to be spontaneous, deleted it, then put it back. Because that is my problem in a nutshell. I don’t typically have things on hand to be able to be truly spontaneous. Do you? Like, if you were at your kids’ baseball game and you ran into friends, could you say, “Hey, come back with us to our house!” and then have them over without any sort of pre-planning? I don’t think I would have food. I mean, today I do, but that’s because I have all the veggies and deli meat and cheese we bought for our failed spontaneous swim day. That’s not normal. Or, on a normal week, I might have a bag of cut-up cauliflower and a pint of tomatoes and a pint of blueberries… but that doesn’t seem like enough to feed people if they randomly show up at your house.
Jill linked to a post by Katherine Goldstein about “deep casual hosting” that I read with keen interest. The article gives eight tips for how you can entertain while spending more time on connection and less time on preparation. I love that framing. That is, after all, WHY I want to entertain. I want to spend time with dear friends, deepen friendships, and create new relationships. Does a part of me want people to comment, after the fact, about how beautiful my home is or how delicious the meal was? Of course. But when I think about what I really want people to think and feel after they spend time with me, I’d much prefer they say, “Suzanne and Husband make us feel so welcome and comfortable.” One of the most complimentary things I feel about a person is that they are easy to be around, and I don’t think I am particularly easy to be around. Something to strive for.
Goldstein’s most appealing and simultaneously most terrifying suggestion is the one to embrace last minute invitations. The idea is that people will have a more concrete idea of their plans at the last minute, and that the spontaneity of the ask will set a low bar for expectations. Goldstein also mentions a bonus, which is that your friends may feel less intimidated about reciprocating.
A friend I haven’t seen in ages texted me one Thursday saying, “Hey, I know it’s last minute, but are you free this weekend?” We were free on Saturday, and asked her and her spouse to come over. Because it was such a quick ask and because we’d had plans on the Friday night, I felt zero pressure to do anything. We drank wine and chatted and then the guys went and picked up takeout and it was very low-stress and simple and enjoyable. In retrospect, it feels like it worked out because we’d had plans the night before, so the house was cleaner than usual, and because they are already very good friends whom I don’t feel the need to impress. But maybe it worked out because that’s the ideal way to entertain.
The thing is, I don’t know that I can engineer future experiences to happen in the same way, because a) the exact confluence of factors that made it so seamless may never happen again and b) trying to engineer a similar outcome is the same as planning which is the very thing that causes stress.
Yet I keep coming back to that same ridiculous thought: how can I plan to be spontaneous? Surely there are ways to do that. Keeping my house tidy enough that I won’t be embarrassed by guests is one strategy. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just neat enough. But what about the food? Goldstein’s tip is to keep it simple; she focuses on making more of what she’s going to cook anyway. What does that MEAN? Does that mean running into a friend at camp and saying, “Hey, come over tomorrow night” and then going out and buying more of the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner, whatever it was going to be? I have no trouble ordering pizza or picking up sandwiches or whatever once in a while, but I also don’t want to do that on the regular. I have some “go-to” meals I feel fairly comfortable serving to guests, but I also get tired of them and don’t want to serve them every time. My freezer is full of ingredients, but that requires work (not to mention creativity) which seems antithetical to “deep casual hosting.” And also I hate cooking in front of people; now THAT’S stressful.
And what about the guests who DO expect a more elevated experience? One friend and his husband are always putting on elaborate dinner parties, where they assign seating and make gourmet food… He’s assured me he doesn’t expect the same thing, but… is that really true? Or what about my parents and my in-laws and their friends, whom we occasionally entertain? Maybe “deep casual hosting” doesn’t have to extend to Every Single Time You Have Someone Over???
As usual, I am wildly overthinking this. There’s nothing to be done, I don’t think, aside from being an entirely different person.
I would take the pressure off yourself to be this spontaneous plan maker and instead try to embrace the attitude of a spontaneous host. Think about what matters to you when you have a meal at another person’s house – I bet it’s not the quality of the food or how unique it is, it’s the conversations/spending time with others/etc. I grew up in a household where my mom loved to host large groups of people (she was 1 of 8 so it was in her DNA) but she would get SO STRESSED OUT AND WAS SO UNPLEASANT IN THE DAYS/HOURS LEADING UP TO THE EVENT. So I have tried to be as different from her as I can. That means our meals are not impressive and sometimes we even get take out. Or we buy the guac instead of me making it from scratch (because we know how freaking hard it is to buy avocados that are ripe at exactly the right time). And no one cares.
We do not do spontaneous plans, though. I don’t know how that is possible when you have children. Weekends get so scheduled and are filled with activities/social commitments/etc. So we plan at least a week in advance. Once in a blue moon, a friend will text and say they are having people over. I think the trick to a spontaneous gathering is that the person needs to be reliable about texting back. I have friends that I know will text back promptly so I will try to set up spontaneous “hey we are going to the park, want to join us?” Then there are the people who are terrible at responding to texts and I will not make spontaneous plans with them. There is a very short list of people I make spontaneous plans with and often it’s the couple on the block and the plans are not meal-related (it’s more so – hey the boys are in the front playing with stomp rockets, come on over).
All that said, we do not have many social plans and I’ve come to accept it. We are in a different stage of life from many of our friends with kids that need to be in bed earlier. This has been hard for me at times because friends will go to a local lake at like 6:30 on a week night and ask us to come and there is no freaking way we can do that when our kids have to be in bed by 7:30/8 so we can leave the house at 7. I don’t know of many people whose kids need to be up as early, so their bed times are later than ours and that makes get togethers tough. So TLDR – it’s very complicated and we do feel a bit lonely at times but I’m hoping things improve when the kids are older.
Oooooh yes, I definitely also get stressed out and unpleasant in the hours leading up to having guests over! I have been working very hard at minimizing this, and my husband has been pitching in more in the lead up, which helps tremendously. I think a lot of it is the anxiety of having people in my space, and since I can’t address that (unless I just refuse to invite people over), I project the anxiety onto things like food and tidiness.
Girl, I GET IT. My kid has always had a relatively early bedtime and so many kids don’t! What must that be like????
I also agree that “spontaneous,” for me at least, is, like, a few days’ notice. I don’t know that I could ever do something spontaneous same-day! I mean, I’ll have the neighbor kids over to swim without notice, but that’s different.
I try to have a few standbys around if people drop in or if I’m feeling spontaneous. If it helps, I’ve become much more of a casual host as I’ve gotten older.
That does help! I definitely feel more capable of having people over now than I did in, say, my twenties. So perhaps it gets easier as time goes on!
I understand about asking people over who say yes, then planning/prepping for them only for them to not show up or back out at the last minute. We no longer invite people over because the anxiety isn’t worth it. Instead we meet at a bar or restaurant where IF they don’t show we still have a good time.
That’s a good idea, Ally! We have the added complication of a kid who’s not quite ready to stay home alone, so that might be a few years off. Are you a regular anywhere? I love the idea of being a regular at a bar or restaurant.
No, but I would love that, too. Kind of like going into Cheers… “where everybody knows your name.” 🎶
Commiserating here! I think you’re on to something about making plans and continuing to get more comfortable with having people over through exposure to the situation. We can only get better at things through trying them. I personally like having people over in our backyard in the summer for drinks around the firepit. Its casual and low key – just drinks and smores. Worrying about a clean house and preparing a meal Stresses Me Out! My neighbor has started inviting our family over for impromtu BBQs. I’m trying to learn from his example.
Impromptu BBQs sound so fun! Breezy and easy and outdoors! BBQ is casual by its very nature! And yet I am like, HOW???? I suppose the easiest BBQ meal would be, like, hotdogs and corn on the cob. But I don’t really LIKE hotdogs. Burgers are more my speed, but they are complicated (I do not like pre-made burger patties and I also require Very Specific Toppings to make a burger taste the way I want it to). It’s me. I’m the problem. Clearly.
ALLLLLL of this! I have so many thoughts. But I agree with you, it’s too hard to be spontaneous, and too stressful to plan (and then have people not show up, which happens to us as well and is super disappointing).
Off to read the article you linked! I may have more to say.
It is SO disappointing. Sometimes the disappointment is only because there’s no release for all that pent up anxiety!
I love this post. I’ve spent my whole life trying to straddle/balance being solitary and social. And as for entertaining in my home, that stresses me out too. This is this first time I’ve heard of ‘deep casual hosting’. I may be old-fashioned but if people say they’re going to show up and then they don’t, I find it unacceptable. A bit of a relief, yes, but still, unacceptable.
Thanks, Pearl! You know, I am resisting very hard my own crabbiness at the idea of not showing up. I think in the cases I mentioned, a) the plans weren’t particularly firm — maybe not even semi-firm on the other end, I suppose — and both families have multiple small children, which definitely complicates things. So I am trying to extend grace. (While also feeling like I wouldn’t do that to anyone else.) I still would have preferred a cancellation in advance, though. But oh well.
I respect that you’re not complaining, but the not answering thing seems kind of rude.
I keep thinking of the whole thing about exercising – the suggestion is usually to figure out what kind of exercise person you are – solitary or group – and then plan accordingly. The suggestion isn’t usually “change the way you are”.
We don’t have the biggest house or best outdoor entertaining space, so we are often going to other houses in our friend group. But we also HAVE the friend group, and we know each other well, and know each other’s strengths, so it doesn’t bother me and i’m confident that it doesn’t bother them. We contribute with food and drink and whatever else, and we host more in the winter when outside isn’t an option.
I think I do usually have enough stuff to throw together a spontaneous get-together with some level of food, even if it’s just nachos or cheese and crackers, but if your grocery patterns don’t lend themselves to this, that’s what works for you and it’s probably more stress than it’s worth to change it.
When the kids were little, there were always people who seemed way better than me at having extra kids over and just folding them into their routine. That was not me, and at some point I realized that was okay.
I feel like I haven’t said anything very helpful – I’m a little older and I am coming to the point where I am (a little more) comfortable with knowing that we all have our strengths and – not even weaknesses, just differences – and I’m happiest if I just lean into that. But it’s something you can only come to in your own time.
Yeah, I do feel like it was a little rude, but I also don’t 100% know how firm the plans felt on their end. (I wasn’t the primary communicator of the plans.)
I also feel like reciprocation is not necessary. It can be nice, but also, people have their own stuff and I would hate someone to feel OBLIGATED to invite me over, you know? To be fair, I have only really come around to this in the past few years… and I also still feel miffed when there’s no playdate reciprocity, but in the main I try to remind myself that if they show up at my house, they must enjoy my company, which means there has to be a different reason than Not Liking Me to not extend a similar invitation.
And oh, how I wish I could be comfortable with knowing I have strengths and weaknesses/differences and leaning into them!
The last time that Hubs and I were invited to a spontaneous party, the instructions were to bring something with us. It ended up being a pool party with about six other couples and there was a really interesting assortment of food. I remember that we brought banana bread muffins and that someone made a box of Costco’s mini eggrolls. What I remember more than that was a really fun night.
I think if you do a mix of planned parties, spontaneous “lets’s get pizza” and/or snack parties, and of course time alone you’ll have the right balance.
Your last line especially really resonated with me! We hosted a family member for three days last wkend and although the visit went great and was carefully planned (mostly by my husband, as it was his cousin), I still felt self-conscious/awkward often and wished I was just kind of … a different type of person, ha. Actually comfortable and energetic vs. attempting to perform/pretend it (with extremely varying success, haha). That said most of the time I strive to be accepting of myself as I am and have come to believe it is enough. I am enough. (Stealing that from a long-ago yoga instructor who repeated it as a mantra and it has stuck with me all these yrs!) I’ve always been a kind of a “march to the beat of my own drummer” type and I try to embrace it now rather than fight it or compare myself too much to others, who I admire and marvel at (often for smooth social skill type stuff) but don’t worry too much about emulating. At the same time! it is sometimes necessary to push oneself out of a comfort zone and try new things/grow etc. So still a balance but firmly making the decision that you are enough as is/regardless can be a good foundation, I think.
It’s so weird—just the other night, I was thinking about how we don’t entertain like we used to. My mom was over for dinner, and afterward the house felt cozy and warm, and I really liked that feeling. Then I realized how rare it’s become. I think it’s because I’ve grown more introverted over the years—especially since lockdown.
I loved the idea Jill shared about deep casual hosting. That’s exactly my kind of gathering. I’ve even thought about hosting a night where everyone brings something—maybe an introvert dinner night. But the thought of planning? Ugh. That part never appeals to me.
I’m sorry about those two non-cancellations. That would bother me too.
First of all, I’m amazed at how rude some people are – opting out at the last minute is RUDE.
Also, it’s hard to strike a balance. I am not a spontaneous person at all, but I find I can go with the flow if I have at least a day in advance. I personally love entertaining, but I am not very formal about it. I have a girlfriend who always has foods in a theme, and decorations, and special towels and candles and flowers every time she has a gathering, and wow is that not me. For my 50th birthday Rob put burgers on the grill, I mixed a bunch of salads from Costco, and I had things like chips and dip. And we served a sheet cake from the grocery store. I think as long as there’s lots to drink no one cares what the food is like.
I’m trying to think what I would do if someone just popped by. I have a girlfriend who is just so effortlessly elegant about things like that, like even if we are there for a glass of wine she just puts things like chips and nuts in pretty bowls and it’s kind of perfect? There’s something just so easy and lovely about that.
My house is generally clean, except for the floor if Rex has been particularly messy, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed if anyone dropped by.
I would love love love a pool party at your house. I’d be so excited to come to something like that!
OH MY GOD I AM DEEP CASUAL HOSTING (I just clicked on that link)
Most of our friends have moved away, so we don’t have people over often anymore, which is sad. I used to love having people over. In my crowds, we would usually (not always) do pot luck, but assign things. Like, I’m the host, I’m making a main dish and likely it will have chicken. Then someone brings an appetizer, someone else brings dessert, someone else brings a side dish. I’ll have some wine and soft drinks, and if someone wants beer or a cocktail, they can bring the ingredients for that. Clean enough is as far as we ever got, and if the place had to be pristine, I would never have anyone over. One thing I like about pot luck type things is that it feels relaxed to me. Like we’re all just gathering so we can hang out, it’s not so much a dinner party. Another thing is that if Bob has been assigned a side dish, if he has to bail at the last minute, he’ll probably at least call to let us know he’s not coming.
I hear you on the stress…I do tend to get a little worked up when we’re hosting a party and we’re providing everything. It’s a lot of work to get the house ready and buy the food and prep the food and have it look effortless. It’s not effortless. Having my husband and daughter help makes a big difference on how I feel about the whole thing.
I think I’m a semi-anal deep casual host. Like I want the house to be fairly clean and I want to have the food planned, but I’m not fussed about things being perfect or elaborate and there are OFTEN paper plates involved.
We want to host some families from church on Sunday’s after lunch moving forward, and I think our go-to will be take-out pizza from this awesome (and very economical) pizza place.
I do quite a few last-minute plans in terms of hosting. I find it less pressured that way. I figure people will “expect” less if it’s last minute and I definitely think it’s easier for people to say a firm Yes or No if it’s spontanous. Sometimes we plan weeks in advance, but usually is less than a week and sometimes it’s the day before.
With kids and their friends I set an extra space at the table A LOT. Sometimes it irks me that the kids invite their friends to stay without asking me, but they’ve gotten better about that. Most of the time I really enjoy having extra kiddos at the dinner table and I usually put out a smorgasbord of leftovers, fruit, veggies, and some crackers and cheese.
we host a decent amount in the summer, usually one other couple at a time, with their kids if they have any. My husband likes to grill, so we hang outside around the grill and chat. The menu could be any combination of hot dogs, burgers, sausage, chicken, pork tenderloin, even ribs. Corn, grilled zucchini, grilled or grill baked potatoes, maybe potato salad, salad, potato chips are common sides. Nothing too fancy. In the winter, we rarely have anyone over, and as a result the house is never company clean. And we don’t really have any go-to company food except grilling. Maybe lasagna? I would stress over trying to think of what to cook if it was too cold or my husband didn’t want to grill.
Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes. I have severe “hosting anxiety.” And, we’re NEVER set up to be spontaneous like that. The house is usually a mess (and smells like guinea pigs) and I would have no idea what food to serve. We’re debating having some friends over next week, and we’ll just do takeout- but even then I’m stressing about cleaning the house and making sure we have drinks (and clean glasses). I think this type of thing just comes naturally to some people, BUT I also think you could get better at it (and feel more relaxed) if you did it more often. Anyway- I have no words of wisdom other than- just do it, and most likely everything will be fine.
If it makes you feel better, you are actually better at this than Beth and me because you are trying.
We never, ever host. We probably haven’t since we were in our 20s or 30s and we are pushing 60. When I get together with friends it’s always outside the house. When other people invite us over, I try to reciprocate in other ways (when everyone had younger kids, passing on hand-me-downs to families with kids younger than ours was a favorite way to do this, bringing homemade baked goods or garden produce is also good).
Something we do with close friends is have them over and then everyone orders takeout and one person goes to pick it up. We have a little strip of restaurants about ten minutes from our house and I keep all the menus in one little section of my menu collection (it’s in a binder because I am me) and everyone picks what they want from there and one person goes and just picks up all the different orders from that strip of restaurants. We usually get stuff from an average of three restaurants when there are nine of us and we only have to park and pick up once since there are about ten restaurants in that little section that you can access by foot once you are there. It makes it really easy because (since these are good long time friends) everyone gets whatever they want and orders and pays for it themselves and then we just all of a sudden have all this food that suits everyone and no one has to cook.
I love to be spontaneous, but that’s mostly because we aren’t great at planning in advance. By the time we figure out that we have an open night, one when we are not too tired, etc. – people already have set plans. We once invited a neighbor family over for the superbowl. Our kids were really little, like we’d just moved in so Curly was probably a year or two. The family said yes. Then the mom showed up with her three tiny boys, that was odd. The dad was out of town, but that wasn’t communicated and it wasn’t the social scene we were hoping for. Coach watching the game with his wife and a neighbor lady. More often than not, I throw up my hands and say WE TRIED. Last summer, I woke up from a nap and bumped into Tank in the hallway. “Did you hear?” he says to me. “Ed’s girlfriend is coming for dinner, it’s OK, we’re manning our stations.” That’s what our house is like – never suitable for company unless everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off.
I love how you said there’s nothing to be done, aside from being a completely different person. I accepted my introverted, anxious personality and gave up on hosting people long ago. I’m a wreck having people over! My husband has a similar personality, and he doesn’t want to have people over either – so it works for us. But I understand that most people wouldn’t want to be so extreme. I hope you can figure out a way to make it easier on yourself to have people over.
You are not alone. As I was reading this, I kept saying THIS IS ME EXACTLY. I hate hosting, yet I long to be the kind of person who can say at virtually any time, “Oh, hey. Why not come over and have drinks and I’ll throw something together? How does Saturday look?” Even having the boys and their wives in makes me get frantic.
When the boys were teeny tiny, I used to host Christmas Eve open house for 40 people in my little house. I was fine. Probably because the menu was fixed as was the date.
But I get it. I really do.
I get the feeling that you worry about being judged by people visiting you, which seems a bit crazy to me, because I would guess that you DO NOT judge when you’re invited into someone’s home. Right?
I can’t believe people say they are coming over, but don’t show up? I’ve not had that happen. Ever. WTF?
We do have spontaneous guests, and I don’t stress over it, because it’s generally someone I’m not worried about impressing. I usually always have cheese, crackers, some veggies and hummus in the house. Oh, and wine, I always have wine and some beers in a fridge for people.
Like you said, people want to visit with YOU, and your family. That is the Whole Point. I hope that in time, you might be able to embrace and enjoy spontaneity more. XO
I love having people over. I just pop some popcorn, put out some water, and hope my dog doesn’t murder anyone. I do not stress the way you do. I wish you could just borrow my brain for a few hours when you want people over!
Phew. I think the more comfortable you are with the people who come over, the easier, spontaneous and more casual it can be… because you know they won’t judge you by the food your serve or the messiness of your house. We don’t have a lot of “close friends” like that here and that’s when hosting becomes tricky.
And I also think, the “casualness” of RSVPing is a HUGE headache. Just sayin’. If I say that I’ll come, then I’ll come (unless there’s an emergency or debilitating illness. “Oh we did something else” doesn’t apply.)
Suzanne, this was great to read- so thought-provoking. As San said above, if I said I’ll come, then I’ll come unless there is a true emergency. I understand the need and desire to host- I have it, too. Tony has mentioned often – we should host more. Yes, we should. We have the desire, but what we don’t have is energy. Or, maybe, our desire is not strong, or not strong enough. We def have space both inside and outside and if we really wanted to, we would have made it happen. Heck, even if it’s a barbecue… which is super easy!
I feel like the only format that works okay for me is potluck appetizers + BYOB. That way I don’t freak out about what I’m cooking, because it’s only one small part; and whatever everyone else brings, it works out fine, because it doesn’t really matter. Even if we all brought sweet and no one brought savory, or vice versa, it’s fine. And then I like to make sure I have a bag of tortilla chips (that I can open if someone brought dip but no chips, as happened one time and I will never forget it), some cookies/candy I’ll eat anyway (in case everyone brought savory), and at least two extra bottles of wine just in case (and that’ll keep until next time if we don’t need it).
I try not to clean much ahead of time, because of how disappointed I am if I go to a friend’s house and it is beautiful and clean and clutterless, and how happy and comfortable I am if it looks more like my house.
THIS: “I don’t think I am particularly easy to be around”. Suzanne, I seriously feel so seen with this comment. I am not an easy person to be around. I’m definitely not an easy person to live with. Add entertaining/hosting to the list and I become…not fun. I’m anxious and worried and remind me to tell you sometime about the time I stayed up all night worried I’d given my friends and their kids food poisoning. So I get it. Maybe take the “what would it look like if this were easy” approach? Maybe you’re not a meal-hosting person, but a snack/happy hour hosting person? Maybe save the BIG stuff for the really really good friends? just a few thoughts that others have already shared. Hugs, friend. Adulting sucks sometimes.