A couple of years ago, we started hosting New Year’s Eve at our house. I make a big pot of gumbo, friends and family come for dinner, we light a bonfire, and maybe a firework or two. It’s low-key and family-centric, and by 9 pm, most people are ready to move on. Half head home with their sleepy kids, the other half head out to another party where they’ll celebrate for another few hours and count as the ball drops in New York City. With any luck, I’ll be asleep by then.
The preparation for this evening exhausts me, and usually it’s enough extroverting to last me at least a month, but each year I get a peek into a version of my life I can’t wait to bring forth.
Growing up, I was friends with a family I met at church. There were six people in the immediate family. Mom and Dad, four kids. But the house always felt fuller and warmer than that. They shared a back fence with the dad’s brother, so family came and went in every direction. I craved that kind of togetherness. We had bits and pieces of it. My grandparents lived just a few miles away, but it was just them and us. I wanted cousins, and second cousins, and random people who felt like family, even if not by blood.
One of the big visions I have for my life is for our home to be a place where people gather. Christmases, birthdays, Supper Clubs, sleepovers. Gathering large groups can feel a little complicated in a 1100-square-foot house. It felt crowded back when it was just the two of us. Now we have two kids and an enormous (and very anxious) dog.
I almost cancelled our New Year’s Eve party this year. It would be easier to laze about for the rest of the week and make gumbo for four rather than 25. Then, I came across a woman on Instagram, where I get all my best wisdom, who said:
“If you want to build community as an adult, you have to say yes.”
Yes to putting in the elbow grease to scrub your house clean of any cobwebs 2025 left behind. Yes to standing at the stove for actual hours stirring oil and flour to make a roux, the perfect shade of brown. Yes to inviting people into our too-small home with Sharpie on the walls, and a couch that smells permanently of dog, no matter how often I shampoo it.
I know we all know this, but it seems worth mentioning that all the things we want to be live on the other side of the habits and behaviors that make them possible. To be the household I admired so much as a kid, we have to open our doors and invite people in. In 2026, I want more noise in my house. Kids dumping all the toys out in the playroom, game nights around the table, dads whittling branches into spears in the back yard. Hose fights and Mario Kart races. And maybe one day I’ll kick my family out and invite all 15 of my girlfriends to squeeze around our table for a Supper Club.
Do you want to come over? Say yes.