TLDR: What do you do if your home is scruffy and not spacious but you want to get a group of people together in a nice sociable hospitable way?
Sorry this is long and first world problem etc but it is driving me mad so maybe someone can help.
I really wish I could invite people to a social gathering – eg a family party/meet-up or a group of friends – I find it very frustrating that I can’t do this - but it seems impossible – I can’t get our house to look presentable – it’s an old terraced house and there is only room for one sofa in the main living room and we have mismatched furniture and I can’t get everything to look neat and modern – everything seems scruffy – we have several cats and it’s ages since we decorated and we aren’t good at DIY etc etc – so I am trying to think of alternatives that aren’t too weird.
- Move house – bit drastic but I’m imagining a house with space for socialising that looks modern and presentable. Problems – takes too long to buy and sell, costs money, and the location of our current house has so many pluses (near shops, near transport, near range of facilities etc) that it’s difficult to find somewhere in our budget that isn’t in a worse location. (We don’t have a car.)
- Invite people to a restaurant. Have done this several times before with certain cohesive family groups. Problems – there isn’t usually room to mill about and I want to introduce various people to one another – different bits of family who haven’t met before; also there’s the paying awkwardness : if you invite people to a restaurant do you pay for everything they order (£££) or do you expect them to pay for their own meals in which case I won’t feel like I am being hospitable at all.
- Hire a room in a restaurant/hotel – have hired rooms in hotel type venues before but usually for a particular occasion like someone’s big birthday or once my parents’ anniversary – can control catering costs this way but it seems weird to do it without an occasion to celebrate and I can’t think of anything coming up that would bring together the right group of people (eg wouldn’t invite in-laws of one grown up child to the birthday of another grown up child and they would want to invite their own friends).
- Rent an Airbnb or a ‘holiday’ cottage – but would need to be in London really as most people live in or around London and we need to be able to get there easily ourselves – and isn’t it weird to have a kind of casual party in someone else’s property – plus would have to get separate catering in.
What do other people do if your home is scruffy and not spacious?
I just want to be sociable and hospitable but not embarrassed about all the scruffiness.