Comment by Groxx
20 days ago
There also used to be pretty strong social expectations to host and visit such parties. That was essentially gone by like 1990, for my area, and I always kind of got the feel that everyone was glad to see the expectation disappear.
They can be fun, but I and almost everyone that I'm friends with much prefer to simply visit and hang out with no plans at all. Just be there, maybe chat a bit, maybe ignore each other and read a book for a few hours, maybe find something to eat / do a lightweight potluck. Which rather sucked that COVID ended up shutting down almost all of our communal places to visit for that.
This is it for me too. Having to plan everything days or weeks in advance means you can just decide to hang out because you feel like it, and you have to commit to the date you set no matter how much that day sucks when it arrives. And having to clean and do all this bullshit before you can have company over doesn't help.
Yep. Takes a while to get everyone over the "someone's coming, MANIC CLEANING TIME!!" urge, but I find it a lot more pleasant to just... help clean if something needs cleaning? It's a shared space. I don't clean for fun, but it is rather nice to remove a bit of stress from a friend's plate.