Make People Feel at Home · 20 Practices

Think of a house where you felt completely comfortable within ten minutes. It probably was not beautiful and it very likely was not tidy, and you cannot say what the person did, because everything they did was designed not to be noticed. Nobody remembers your house. They remember whether they felt easy in it. This is not cooking and it is not etiquette. It is the mechanics. The first four minutes at the door, and why a host who is still chopping puts people more at ease than one sitting opposite them with nothing to do. Why turning the overhead lights off is the single biggest thing you can do and it costs nothing. Why music slightly too loud makes everybody tired by ten. Why six people hold one conversation and eight never do. How to introduce two strangers so they have somewhere to go. And the one rule about food, which is about timing rather than ability. Then the hard ones. Hosting when you are the shy one, which many excellent hosts are. Hosting somebody who is grieving, including the thing almost everybody gets wrong, which is that they stop saying the dead person's name. Hosting difficult family, which is management rather than hospitality. And hosting without the three-day recovery that stops most women doing it more than twice a year. It ends with two evenings. One where you invite somebody before the house is ready, say one light sentence about it and then never apologise again. And one dinner built around a single question, with twelve to choose from, where three or four people talk properly for three hours. Twenty steps. Including the ten minutes after everybody leaves, which every woman has and almost nobody mentions.