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Planning the perfect family gathering by Lou Lavery.
Hosting a family gathering? Would you rather stick pins in your eyes? Here’s how to get through it. YOU ARE WELCOME.
Let’s cut straight to it.
They’re coming.
The whole lot of them. With their different opinions, personalities and odours. With all of their tempers, all of their drama and all of their… just their-ness. They’re coming to your house, they’re going to eat your food and they’re going to be in your space for hours at a time.
You love them (probably, at times it’s questionable) but there’s something about family en masse descending on your household that can make even the most confident of us run for cover.
Here’s how to navigate this potential mindfield with your sanity, silverware and salad bowls intact.
This cannot be stressed enough.
Gone are the days when the little woman was expected to race around in the kitchen to prepare a feast for the hordes and then eat her own sad little meal over the sink while she washed up.
You may be hosting but you are not the only adult present. Your guests can easily provide one small aspect of the meal (a salad, a dessert or some drinks) and all contribute. This will have a positive impact on the amount of cash you’re splashing for the occasion, cut down on washing up and storage (you know Aunty Beryl is NOT going to let ANYONE take her Tupperware from her) and their own food issues are their own business. Cousin Esmerelda is a vegan? Good for her! She can enjoy her tofurkey that she brought herself.
If you’re reading this then most likely you live in Australia.
Four words for you. Plastic furniture, garden hose.
If you time your family gathering for a sunny day (so basically all of them unless you live in Melbourne) calmly request that everyone eats outside. The air is fresh, look at the view, we cleaned the dog poo off the grass. Whatever it takes. Get those butts on (plastic) seats in the garden.
Once the family has moved on, calmly take out the garden hose and spray the absolute hell out of the table until all of the remains of the day have left. Bonus points if you employ household pets (we have two dogs, they are our clean-up crew on the ground) to assist in this magical disintegrating of leftovers.
Spray away, baby!
If they really and truly are unbearable and your jaw has been grinding ‘til it can grind no more, try the tag team approach.
Take your immediate family into a private room. Assign each a target. Family members (hereby referred to as your A Team) must engage with their target in pleasant conversation until the signal. The signal can be anything – an alarm on your phone, a loud cough or even someone going ‘Ca Caw, Ca Caw’.
Once the signal is given, A Team rotates onto the next target and the game continues.
This way you’re not stuck for hours being bailed up in the kitchen by Uncle David’s weird theories on the connection between the changing bus timetables and the new rollout of Australian currency. You are free to move, to keep things fresh and to engage in a cheeky game of subterfuge with your nearest and dearest.
It doesn’t exist.
But you can make it perfectly imperfect by trying to have a little fun with it. Ca Caw!
What are your tips for planning the perfect family gathering?
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