Spin-Off of Shoe/Bathroom Threads - Do You Have Company?

[ronandannette]

Several posters on the shoes and bathroom threads mention that none of it is an issue for them because they purposely don't invite visitors into their homes. Do you? Covid-restrictions notwithstanding, do you like to entertain? Do you enjoy having overnight guests? Do family and close friends just casually drop by? Did you plan specific features into your home to accommodate hosting?

We LOVE entertaining and do a lot of it; I'll contrive almost any excuse for a celebration and we do a lot of socializing by inviting one other couple/family over for dinner. Our current home isn't ideal for it but I have figured out ways to maximize the space we've got and when we chose it we absolutely had to have a spare bedroom for occasional overnight company. I don't like drop-in company though and blessedly, in our circles it's not really done.

 

[NAB]

We don’t have much company. Husband’s family at holidays because he only has a father and brother left . Brother is alone too. They are an hour away and come from a rural area.

Did have people over for the kids Sacraments when they were young but that was 8 years ago when the last one was. Only time we had my sister and mom stay over too.

We live 2.5 hours from my family across a very busy highway so they don’t visit. Don’t really have a group a friends we hang out with so it’s just us.

No drop in’s either if they don’t call first might not be home.

 

[evilmommie]

I’ve put this answer out here a few times in different threads.

Yes, we love to entertain and our house is set-up that way. Our home is where the family gatherings happen. We built our most recent house with entertaining and overnight guests in mind. We have two guest rooms that are en-suite and have other resort like amenities for them as well. We want our family and friends to feel welcome, rested and happy after spending time in our home.

Yes, we have drop in guests. My husband and I are friends with several couples that live in our neighborhood or within a few miles. Many times they will drop by for a cup of coffee, beer or glass of wine. Maybe stop over to swap a book or something. I love to share my garden with my girlfriends and talk plants, so they come by often to look at what’s new and swap tips.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

We have company quite often. We have gatherings, like watching movies, playing games, or just hanging out.

My step-daughter regularly has guests. She has friends from college come over sometimes they spend the night.

When my other step-daughter is here, she turns the place into a zoo. Over Christmas vacation from college, her BF who kind of reminds me of a zoo animal animal was here every day. I thought he was never going to leave. DH and I had one of our very few fights over this because I ended up saying something about it in front of some friends. He was so mad that I "embarrassed" him because somebody asked how her visit over Christmas vacation was going and I kind of mentioned that we should start charging her goofy BF rent because he was spending too much time at our house, using our hot water, washer/dryer, and eating our food. It is not as if he is homeless (although he looks it), he lives like a mile away from here. DH's angle on this is, he wants his daughter to enjoy her time here so if that means letting that loser BF here hang out here for 3 weeks, then so be it. It is almost like he and his ex wife are in a competition over whom they kids love more. Her mother won't put up with the BF and makes it known she cannot stand him because she thinks he is a bum. DH on the other hand allows this and brags how she wants to spend her vacation time here than with her mother. It is not because she likes being here better, it is because he lets her do whatever the heck she wants when she is here. This is pretty much how his other daughter ended up living with us. Her mother tried to impose rules upon her as a teenager. She did not like that one little bit, so she moved in with us, her father who just lets her do whatever she wants.

She also invites her friends over and they will spend the night. You can come home and your basement is full of people. Now I will say that the friends she invites over who sleep in our basement will leave the place looking better than what they found it, so I cannot complain about them. They seem like nice kids.

 

[disneychrista]

I’ve never had an overnight guest. Rarely have people over “socially.” My daughter will stop by once a week or so but that’s about it.

 

[prairie_girl]

Our apartment is really small so we don’t have room to have a large gathering. The most we’d have over is 4 but probably 2. We don’t have a guest room, so no sleepovers lol

 

[leebee]

We occasionally, rarely, have overnight guests. We're pretty "off the beaten path" but my nephew has come to visit, a friend's daughter (we've got your girl, Clutter ) has stayed a few times, and my brother used to come up a couple of times a year. DD, SIL, 5yoGS come for dinner about once a week. We USED to have friends over, one couple specifically, on occasion. We had dinner with them maybe 3 out of 4 weekends a month, although usually at their house. They come here maybe 4 times a year (their house is better suited for dinner and warmer than ours!), but Covid killed that. I think we've had dinner at their place twice since May 2020 and they've not been here at all. We also used to have small groups over maybe once every month or two to watch a sporting event. Covid killed that, too.

 

[ronandannette]

I’ve put this answer out here a few times in different threads.

Yes, we love to entertain and our house is set-up that way. Our home is where the family gatherings happen. We built our most recent house with entertaining and overnight guests in mind. We have two guest rooms that are en-suite and have other resort like amenities for them as well. We want our family and friends to feel welcome, rested and happy after spending time in our home.

Yes, we have drop in guests. My husband and I are friends with several couples that live in our neighborhood or within a few miles. Many times they will drop by for a cup of coffee, beer or glass of wine. Maybe stop over to swap a book or something. I love to share my garden with my girlfriends and talk plants, so they come by often to look at what’s new and swap tips.

That sounds awesome - can I come?

 

[PollyannaMom]

We're not huge entertainers - a cookout or two in the summer, but not the regular "couples over for cards" things I remember my parents doing. We're more likely (well, before covid) to meet up with friends at a restaurant halfway in between our houses. And holidays are still at MIL's house for the time being.

We do have a guest room, and members of my family have visited and stayed with us a few times, and friends of DS's fairly often.

 

[evilmommie]

That sounds awesome - can I come?

Yes!!! We love to host new friends too.
My husband’s motto: There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet.

 

[Donald13]

Yes we have people over. Not often but enough. We are a leave your shoes on type of family. I couldn’t care less.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

We've only had two or so times for overnight (my mom and one of my sister-in-law's) and it was due to power outages. Any time someone has a prolonged power outage all of us in the metro are like "come on over" to their house.

We have company every now and then just depends but it's mostly just our family. Usually it's like game night, super bowl, watch this sporting event, firepit nights (where most of that is obviously spent outdoors around the firepit), etc. Sometimes one of the sister-in-law's will stop on over for a dinner and a movie. Generally my mom stops by for just more quick visits or we'll go out to eat/run errands (been avoiding that though for several weeks and will continue to for a bit longer). We have had our fellow DISers over a few times as well for get togethers (and we've gone to their homes as well).

I don't mind having company over, I do enjoy it but I'm not the uber entertainer either. Father-in-law's wife loves to entertain but she's a person who tries too hard in doing so. We really don't care if the house looks like it's straight out of a magazine for Christmas nor do we need food to feed an army. We've come to the conclusion for her it's like that's how she shows her worth not meant to be a critique of her just that it helps to understand why she's like that. The main thing that bothers us though is that she'll put these big centerpieces up on the main table to eat at and it just ends up blocking the people on the opposing side. Whenever I have guests over the table centerpieces in the main table we use always get removed when it's time to sit down. No one needs to fight over feathers, a big lantern with stuff inside, a large glass vase, a huge nutcracker, etc just to be able to talk (these are just some of the things she has put out, my center pieces are fairly small and simple).

 

[mumto3girls]

We entertain fairly often, but rarely overnight except for the kids having sleepovers and that mostly went away during Covid and hasn’t really started back up. Our siblings all live within 10 miles of us and my dad is only 10 minutes away so no close family would ever really have a need to stay over.

We host a lot of family gatherings—birthday parties for the kids and our parents (just my dad left now), Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Super Bowl partiesetc. which may be mostly outside depending on the weather.

We also do a lot of gatherings with the neighbors—most of those are outside and pretty informal. If our hockey team makes the playoffs we show the night games on a big screen in our driveway. They’ve gone far in the playoffs many times and won the cup a few times while we’ve been doing that so it’s a lot of time with the neighbors—couple of games a week. Occasionally we’ll also do a night football game and our baseball team is lousy but we’ve put up 1-2 of those as well. We also do NYE with a few neighbors and this year we also did Friendsgiving the Sunday before the actual day. Those are inside.

We only have one couple we generally socialize with at home. They usually come over to play cards/watch sports. They’ve been here for dinner a few times but usually we do drinks, appetizers and dessert after they would have had dinner at home. Other couples we usually go out to dinner or out for drinks.

I’d actually like to entertain more but we are usually running kids around and involved with their activities which makes entertaining more difficult to squeeze in.

And I’ve never had anyone ever abuse the bathroom!

 

[ronandannette]

I don't mind having company over, I do enjoy it but I'm not the uber entertainer either. Father-in-law's wife loves to entertain but she's a person who tries too hard in doing so. We really don't care if the house looks like it's straight out of a magazine for Christmas nor do we need food to feed an army. We've come to the conclusion for her it's like that's how she shows her worth not meant to be a critique of her just that it helps to understand why she's like that. The main thing that bothers us though is that she'll put these big centerpieces up on the main table to eat at and it just ends up blocking the people on the opposing side. Whenever I have guests over the table centerpieces in the main table we use always get removed when it's time to sit down. No one needs to fight over feathers, a big lantern with stuff inside, a large glass vase, a huge nutcracker, etc just to be able to talk (these are just some of the things she has put out, my center pieces are fairly small and simple).

I don't know her but maybe try to reframe this a little. It's possibly not an ego-driven thing but instead she just really places a high value on serving guests well and making things special for them.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don't know her but maybe try to reframe this a little. It's possibly not an ego-driven thing but instead she just really places a high value on serving guests well and making things special for them.

It really is what it is. You'd have to be around her to understand. She's the kind of person the likes to make comments here and there about how great her place is, how things were done back where she used to live--that part was hard for a long time because she used to act like our area had nothing to offer it would be constant "In St. Charles we did this, in St. Charles they had this, in St. Charles the houses were like this", she's constantly making small digs that she thinks goes unnoticed about how others are.

I also didn't say it was ego driven. I said that's how she shows her worth. She was raised that women were the cooks, women were the housemakers, women's role in life was to do this and that. She was absolutely aghast that my husband does his own laundry, that I hyphenated my name and how dare I have any say in the ring. She's just old school in that. So when I say she tries too hard I do mean that. My husband said it probably the best in her world "it's who you know and what they do". We don't care about people who are building a yacht who will be 6 months in the Caribbean and 6 months in the Great Lakes but she'll love to tell you about it. For her it's not necessarily ego just in her circle that's what people apparently appreciated in being around. So her having her house the way it was and cooking the food the way she does is her showing others what her role is in life.

When you frame your response that she places a high value on serving guests and making things special for them it's like someone doesn't go all out like she does then that means they don't value serving guests or making things special for them. There's a difference in trying to make your guests feel comfortable and well received and making it like the only proper way to do something is to have 100+ santas around (she actually has like 150 santas that decorate the house) and extravagant displays and to let them know all about it. Her worth to us is just her being welcoming (among other things), not that she decorates her house to the 9's or has so much food no one could ever eat even a fraction of it.

 

[luvnwdwgal]

We never have overnight guests because we only have a 2 bedroom house and the other bedroom is mostly storage since our son got married and moved out 14 years ago. There’s only room for a twin bed in his old room anyway. We didn’t start entertaining in our house until just a few years ago when we were finally able to renovate the downstairs to the point where I wasn’t ashamed of what it looked like anymore. Since then we’ve had family for Christmas a few times and some friends over. We still don’t do it often especially now that my husband’s spare time on the weekends involves caring for his mother.

 

[DLgal]

Nope. I don't like people gathering in my home. We are all introverted and in addition, have autistic kids who like peace and quiet. I get VERY anxiety ridden and stressed out even when I just have, for example, my parents or MIL visiting and staying with us for a few days (which happens a couple times a year). I just cannot relax when I have people over.

We host one of my best friends for an afternoon/evening hang out session like once a month. She was my college roommate, though, so she is like a sister and when she is here, I don't feel that way.

In general, we get together with groups of people outside of home, at bars or restaurants. We never go to people's homes unless they are hosting an actual party. I always feel weird in other people's homes. We NEVER would stay overnight in anyone else's home either. We are hotel people.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

I ALWAYS have people in my home. From my kids friends, my husbands friends, extended family (especially my kids cousins) and my close friends there is literally someone other than my immediate family in my home almost every day. We go through food like crazy and the house is always loud, but I think life would be boring without it. We have a pool so during the summer we get even more people coming over, for a swim. We also have major holidays at my house. I always tell my dh that one day it’ll just be me and him in the house, and oh how sad and boring that will be lol

 

[DumboDash2006]

We have some people over regularly.

My parents, sister, and nephew come over for holidays/birthdays and occasional family dinners.

We have dh's aunt and uncle over a couple of times a year for dinner. Every other years we host his side of the family (what's left, his parents and grandparents have passed) for Christmas.

Dh's brother will stop by occasionally for a holiday or dinner. He works a ton and lives an hour away so not too often.

We have a couple friend over pretty often, a couple times a month. Sometimes planned, sometimes a last minute thing.

DD's boyfriend is over often and her best friend sometimes is over (less so lately as she has a baby).

Very occasionally other people will drop in, but that's more of a need to drop something off (my parents, neighbors, subcontractor's that dh works with etc).

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

We NEVER would stay overnight in anyone else's home either. We are hotel people.

I'm fine if I know it's just for a night and it's more like a power outage but I'm the same way. I make exceptions for my husband's grandmother's place where usually it's a night to two nights but other than that I'm just past the point of actually wanting to stay over at someone's home just because or if we're going out of town. Our home is always open to those who need it but the reverse of it is I'd prefer to stay at a hotel if someone offered their home to me if I was visiting them.