To hate entertaining?

[DancingLady]

It seems that everyone I know, or read about (admittedly in Style at Home mag) is always saying how much they love having friends over for dinner, making food people love eating, seeing the joy on their faces blah blah blah... chatting to their friends while they cook, making everyone cocktails...

I HATE having people over for dinner. I love my friends - and pubs and restaurants are the perfect places to meet up with them for a meal. I hate cooking, hate cleaning up, end up feeling really resentful that I've made a horrible meal and everyone has pretended to like it.

Can I be the only one who isn't a natural-born hostess?

Me! Far too much effort having people over nd having to spend time sorting food and drinks and then all the cleaning afterwards!

YABU

Entertaining is fun! Having friends over to eat and drink with you, chat and relax. Its all good. Planning and cooking something fancy is great if I have time, or a simple one-pot thing if busy or a weeknight. I love it.

Im the same. About 2/3rd of the time, we'll meet out in a pub/restaurant making an afternoon or evening of it.

The rest of the time or esp when we have our friends with children around, we'll meet at our house, have a cuppa and a posh biscuit, then go for a stroll and eat out.

Works for us and friends know that both DH and I are terrible at cooking. We can never get anything ready to serve at the same time.

Or in the evening, serve friends a cheese cracker board and wine!!

YANBU.

I like the idea of entertaining. We used to do it a lot when we were newly-married, in our first home and naive. Fortunately DH loves cooking.

But....the clearing up kills it for me now and I get stressed these days, possibly having seen MIL pull out all the stops when entertaining one too many times.

Apart from extended-family meals I try to get all of our entertaining of friends done in the summer months now. Barbecue and outdoor dining whilst the kids play in the garden - so much more fun, and minimal house-cleaning required.

I think it's cos I spend all day at home with a small child, cooking/preparing food, the last thing I want to do in the evening is cook a meal for people. Cheese/wine is good, but then people would need to eat dinner first, or they'd feel hard done by, surely?

Luckily DH is a good cook, so takes over on weekends and does most of the evening cooking. Otherwise I'd live on beans on toast or cereal...

Get people round for a takeaway instead.

Twat yes BBQs are good, and DH does all the cooking for those. Plus, cooking a meal for people is expensive!

Cooking is fine, clearing up afterwards is fine, I'm a slattern if it takes several days to catch up with dishwashing I don't care.

I just loath tidying and cleaning the house first!

Nope, I don't want to do it either, tbh I just don't do it. I have friends & their kids round for a play, tea, buns with no bother at all.

But if I want to enjoy myself with grown ups I like to do it out of my house. I just don't find any enjoyment in it. I know lots of people - most of my family who do but to me having people round & doing food no matter how simple is a chore - like gardening, ironing, baking

My most common visitor is Jewish and generally a veggie, so lovely and cheap.

Not quite so this time as she came for knew years Eve with her DH and DS and we had Salmon Wellington.