You’ve spent weeks poring over ads for apartments. You’ve hiked all over the city to meet up with shady broker after shady broker. You’ve spotted your brother and his friends while they moved your stuff into a fifth-floor walkup, and you’ve given them enough kickback cash to throw parties for a month. So don’t you deserve a party of your own?
Housewarming parties aren’t just for your parents and their friends. Moving into a new place without having some people over to christen it is a wasted opportunity. Here are a few ideas for housewarming success, whether you’re hosting or guesting.
1.) If you throw a housewarming party, don’t worry about cleanliness. Seriously, how many times are you going to have such a great excuse to have people over when your mattress is on the floor and you don’t know where the plates are? Everyone will forgive you, promise.
2.) Order a bunch of takeout. You aren’t even expected to cook anything. See how easy this party is?
3.) Make the effort to hook up your video games and bring the Scrabble box to the top of the moving pile. The grand tour of your studio in Brooklyn will be entertaining for about five seconds.
4.) Obvious ideas for housewarming party gifts include bottles of wine, and bigger bottles of wine.
5.) A less obvious, but slightly more clever idea, is to canvas your friend’s new neighborhood and pick up takeout menus from a bunch of different delivery places. You can put them together in a little book if you’re handy, but even if you just throw a pile of neighborhood menus in their face, they’ll know you spent some time on the gift.
6.) Another easy housewarming gift, if you’re feeling a bit crafty, is magnets. You can get magnets at any craft store or dollar store, and then cut pictures from magazines or photographs of your choice and glue them on with cardboard backings. Think of a theme, or cut photos of your friends’ faces into eye/nose/mouth components and make a mix-and-match magnet set. (Creepy? Maybe. Funny? Hilarious.)
7.) And if your Aunt Doris offers to send you a housewarming gift, make it easy for her by finding something a little more special from one of the online gift sites.
In short, there’s no reason not to invite a bunch of friends over to admire your cardboard boxes and the walls the super painted just last week. When else will it be ok to tell your guests to take a seat on the box because you don’t know where the furniture is?
