Hospitality tips (from Open Heart, Open Home)

As I mentioned last week, I've (kind of) finished off my hospitality series, but I wanted to end with some more practical tips and ideas for how to practice hospitality. These tips (and most of the ones for tomorrow) are focussed on having people into our homes for meals, which is not the totality of what's meant by hospitality but a significant part of it. Today, I've compiled some of the tips I found most helpful from the last few chapters of Karen Mains' book, Open Heart, Open Home:

Examine your motives

Keep looking at your motives to assess if you are seeking to serve or seeking to impress. Karen Mains suggests that a good barometer of these motives is to ask two questions: 1) Am I nervous and 2) Am I fussing? If you are either of those, your motives may stem from pride more than you realise.

I think this will be something I will continue to struggle with, so I'll need to keep asking myself those two questions!

Looking at your use of time

A lot of Karen Mains' tips come back to being organised. She encourages a good hard look at your life to determine if you are being a good steward of your time (including logging what you are currently doing to help in the analysis!).

I've found that this has been the main thing that Dave and I have needed to do in order for us to practice hospitality more. It's resulted in us actually setting aside a time in the week where we always try and have people around to share a meal with us. We just don't manage to do spontaneous hospitality that well, so we need to plan it! At the moment, we've decided to put aside Sunday lunch as the time we invite people around - and so far, it's working out well. Now that it's in our weekly plan, it means that other things are less likely to crowd out our desire to practise hospitality (which has happened in the past).

Never clean before company

By this (sadly!!) she doesn't mean 'never clean', but rather she encourages the approach of cleaning on schedule. You need to work out your cleaning schedule and do it then rather than always before and after you have people over. If you stick with that schedule, it means the cleaning doesn't multiply as the hospitality does. This frees up time and removes a great deal of the stress we associate with hospitality.

I have been trying this approach a bit more and it really does help my attitude towards having people into my home. Up until now, my first thought associated with hospitality was all the cleaning up I would have to do before the guests arrived. I used to feel like I 'wasn't doing hospitality right' if I didn't rush around cleaning everything beforehand (even if the house looked okay to start with!). What I've tried to do lately (if I'm expecting visitors) is do a quick tidy and wipe down of the kitchen/bathroom (as well as the other jobs that I have to do daily), but if it's not the day I normally vacuum or dust - I don't vacuum or dust!

Do as much as possible ahead of time

Again, this relies on being organised and working out when you can do things ahead of time. If you can do things ahead of time, this means you can be relaxed before your guests arrive (she suggests you could even take a nap!).

As an introvert, who can find conversation a little draining, I think this is a really good way to make hospitality sustainable long term. I also find it hard to concentrate on a conversation if I'm fussing around in the kitchen too much, so it's good avoid too much unneccesary work once the guests arrive for that reason too. One of the main ways I try to do this is to cook meals that I can prepare beforehand. At the moment we do 'pizza nights', which means the pizza can be in the oven and the salad can be made, or we do chicken, salad and rolls, or BBQs for lunches. The dessert we usually serve is a store bought pavlova case which I top with cream and fruit. If I can put drinks out and set the table, then most of it is already done!

Clean as you go

Pretty self-explantatory (I think I've heard Jamie Oliver say this is a good idea too). Just makes things a little more manageable.

Use all the help that comes your way

Next time someone asks 'is there anything I can do to help?' say 'yes'! I've realised that I tend to say 'no', but I wonder if this is just a way to avoid conversation sometimes? If you let people into the kitchen, this can sometimes lead to the best conversations and help them feel relaxed in your home. It can also make it seem less like you are 'entertaining' if you let them help.

Mains also says it's a good idea to let people bring food because it takes some of the burden off you as host and make hospitality more sustainable, and again can help them feel more comfortable.

Tomorrow, I'm going to compile some of the tips that you've sent in. I haven't been overwhelmed with emails about this one, so if you do have any ideas, thoughts or examples, you can email me up until tomorrow morning and I'll include them. I'm looking for tips that help you do hospitality often and regularly!