On Preparing for a Party 

Since I'm on retreat this week, I thought I'd re-run a somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece about preparing for a party that I had on my old blog. It all really did go down this way and I am a huge list maker when it comes to parties. Maybe, though, you don't have to follow all of the advice I give here. We'll be throwing a graduation party soon, so I'll post about the practicalities of how I plan a party at that time. In the meantime, have a chuckle.

Lists are Key!

How do you prepare to host a big party?  I begin by making lists - and lists for my lists now that I have Evernote!  After making my "To Do" list for the week, I break down the things that need to be done by the days in which I have left to do them.  If I'm still a week out, I put the least important things first.

Outside First

For example, this past weekend we did some pretty important things like clean winter out of our garage.  Gone are the dead leaves and snow sleds. The floor is swept clean and things are put back where they belong because the garage is going to be an important space for our event.

I also deemed it necessary to have the inside of the car cleaned.  Not because we will be using it for seating during dinner, but because I thought it might be nice to drive to my son's First Holy Communion in a clean and pleasant smelling car - not one that smells of a winter's worth of crumbs.

Inside Next

The next important task was to clean out the hall closet that holds all of our shoes and coats. Really? Who doesn't do that when they're preparing for a party?  It makes sense, though.  In order to clean up the shoe/coat area in the mud room, I had to have room in the closet to put it all in, thus the reason for that important task.  

After that it was time to attack the dust behind the washer and dryer.  No, really, this was an important task because I had the vacuum cleaner out and the hose attachment on it and it was in the back hall area where the washer and dryer are.  Since all of these things rarely align, I determined that it was meant to happen.  Now, if a guest accidentally drops something behind my washer or dryer, I won't be embarrassed and they will be amazed at my incredible housekeeping abilities.

As Party Day Approaches

As we get closer to our big event, the tasks will be a bit more relevant and stressful.  Things like:

•  finding the right clothing to wear
• making that run to Sam's club to get those big boxes of plastic silverware (you know the ones where you run out of forks WAY before you run out of knives and spoons)
• the BIG clean of the rest of the house
• food preparation will happen

Through it all I will continue to add to and subtract from my oh-so-important lists.  I really couldn't do something like this without them.  They're my marker to make sure that all of the important things are getting done. Having a list and a timeline also allows me to determine if I have time to add things like closet cleaning and dust bunny removal.