Do you remember that group of other women I’ve been getting together with about once a month for almost a year now? We get together at one house or another and eat appetizers and drink wine, that group? Well, I HOSTED one. It took me six weeks to think it through, but I did it.
I did it for several reasons. One is that we had gone through all the women who were eager to take a turn hosting, and in fact one of them had taken a second turn. I think there are people who like hosting and people who don’t, and although it makes sense for the former group to do more of it, it can start to feel unfair anyway.
Another reason is that I heard one woman saying she wasn’t going to host because her house was too messy. I thought about the houses where we’d met so far, and all were very, very clean, and uncluttered, and nicely decorated. It makes sense that “nicely-taken-care-of house” and “likes to host” would often go together; and I can identify with the feeling that my house isn’t nice enough to host. But…when the only people who host are the people with clean and nicely-decorated houses, that not only keeps a certain cycle going, it makes the cycle much worse over time. Meanwhile, when I go to a house that ISN’T clean and nicely-decorated, I feel RELIEF and INCREASED AFFECTION: I think, “Whew, I don’t have to worry about my house with her!” My mom, who keeps a clean and nicely-decorated house, confirms that she feels that same relief at the sight of someone else’s messy home.
So it seems to me that in a group, someone has to Go First: someone with a non-clean, non-nicely-decorated house needs to act like it is perfectly acceptable to host a get-together in such a house. WHICH IT IS. But this can’t be SAID (“Oh, don’t WORRY about it, we don’t care!”), it needs to be SHOWN. So I did.
It was a little difficult in the days before the get-together not to go into a crazy, fury-stressed, misplaced-anxiety-fueled cleaning frenzy, but I managed it by thinking of a messy house as a deliberate and philosophical act here. A service to humankind, really. (Also I re-wrote Sara Bareilles’s song to be about not-cleaning instead of about dancing alone in public.) Plus, my dining room was still reasonably clean from Thanksgiving, which means my messy house looked about ten times better than usual, which I guess actually means I was cheating from the get-go. But without that boost, philosophy would have been insufficient. (Perhaps I will take my hosting turn at this time EVERY year.)
My goal was to keep all (additional) cleaning at a reasonable “wiping counters and moving things out of the way of where we’ll want to put the appetizers” level, not at the “cleaning the crack between the stove and the counter” level. And I succeeded, except for cleaning the silverware caddy, so I thought that was pretty good. I also remembered to make ZERO REMARKS about the messiness of the house, since those draw attention to the messiness that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, and/or are annoyingly reassurance-seeking, and/or backfire by adding strength to the idea that only people with perfect clean houses should host.
My third reason (I don’t blame you if that lonnnnnnng second reason made you forget we were in a list of reasons why I decided to host) was that I’d noticed that after I’d been to someone’s house, I felt like I knew that person more than I did after seeing her at other people’s houses. I’m one of the quieter ones in the group, so I thought this was a good strategy for letting people feel like they knew me a little better, presuming they desire to feel that way, which is necessary to presume or else all is lost.
A fourth reason didn’t emerge until AFTER I’d issued the invitation and people had started to accept: I realized that taking a turn hosting made me feel like a more permanent, solid, committed part of the group. Like, if I’m HOSTING, then I’m for-sure a MEMBER. I realized I felt the same way about the other women who hosted: once they’d hosted, they definitely BELONGED to the group. I remember one woman hosted after attending only one get-together, and I thought something like, “Whoa, she’s really serious!” So there can be some symbolism there for both the host and the hosted, and it was symbolism I was glad to have accidentally acquired.
