Party Stress Buster: Detailed To Do List

Having a party? Need help to keep from getting stressed? Here are a few things I did to keep from getting stressed while co-hosting my daughter’s bridal shower.

The first thing I did was make a detailed to do list. I learned from the last shower I hosted (my daughter-in-law’s baby shower) that when people offer to help, I need to have an idea what to tell them. And I need to know what I need to do! So I created an extremely detailed to do list so I knew what to do and so my helpers could look at the list and know what to do to help. Here’s a look at my list:

In addition to the list, there were a few other little things I did to make it easy on myself, including:

Set up the night before. We set up the family room where the party was to be held the night before. We brought in every chair we own (well, my husband actually did that part) and arranged them for the shower.
Cook ahead. I cooked as much as possible the day before.
Get the serving dishes out before you need them. The morning of the shower, I decided what serving dishes would be for what foods and wrote the name of that food on a post-it note and put the post-it note in the dish. Again, this was for me but also for my helpers. It made it easier for them to figure out what to do. Oh, and I did remove the post-it notes before I put the food in! Just in case you were wondering.
Delegate a few things (or more). I usually make ice cubes for several days before a party (we don’t have an ice maker – just old-fashioned ice cube trays) but this time I delegated to my mom. She picked up a bag of ice on the way. Much easier. I’ll be doing that from now on.
Only clean a little. When you have a party, there are so many people in the house that it’s just going to get messy again and they won’t notice whether it’s clean anyway. They’re not there to inspect your house (or shouldn’t be anyway), so just do a few things to make it presentable. I vacuumed (because of the hairy dog that lives in my house) and touched-up the glass doors (again because of the hairy dog who slimes the glass) and not much else. Trying to cook and do a bunch of cleaning will just take the fun out of it.

So the next time you have a party, don’t stress. Instead make a detailed to do list. Then when the party starts, you’ll be able to relax and enjoy the fun!