The Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining - Tips from Marfreless

Some thoughts about creating space for your event:

• Try to visualize where your guests might gather, and where it might become too crowded.  Take some time to walk around your place to do this.  Move furniture accordingly to create better spaces and better flow of traffic.
• Minimize the bottlenecks in the areas where guests will congregate during your party.  A narrow hallway or small amount space between a sofa and wall are a couple of examples.  One tactic is to move chairs and tables to create walkways where people will move.
  
• People tend to congregate in the kitchen.  This is due, in large part, to the fact that the beer and white wine are usually in the refrigerator along with other drinks, especially if a blender is involved.  And, food might also be served from the kitchen.  To help keep the kitchen from becoming too crowded, place at least some of the drinks and food in other areas of your home.
  
• Move your large or bulky furniture, if it makes sense to create more room, or a better flow of guests.
  
• With the exception of dinner parties, you will not want to provide seating for each guest.  You want them to move around and mingle.
• Be aware of the fact that if you have a large sofa in the middle of where you hope guests will congregate, they will sit on the sofa, which might slow down the party.
• Close doors to the rooms that you don’t want visited during your event.
• Create spaces where guests can lean, if not sit, and place their drink.  Spaces where this is possible will create areas where guests can be somewhat more comfortable and will assemble.
• Keep in mind that communal or shared seating can help induce conversation.  You might want to create areas where disparate guests sit together.  Think about all the fun you had at Oktoberfest at those long picnic tables with those fellow drunks from other countries who became your great friends by the end of the day even though neither of you spoke the same language.
  
• Hopefully you are not like this, but it bears mention.  Maybe you have been to the party where the hosts, to the detriment of the mood of the event, declare large parts of their home off-limits, or make it a point that much of their furniture is expensive or antique, and so, that it is really only for decoration, not for use, much less enjoyment.  Many guests might end up treading too cautiously to enjoy the party.  In these cases, the event should not have been held at their home.