Hospitality – How To Have A Hospitable Home

Hospitality – How To Have A Hospitable Home | In this post, I talk about how to make your home feel warm and welcoming to guests.

Being raised and living in the south, I can help but think back on the days when neighbors gathered on the porch and visited. Friends would come over, and everyone often ended up on the porch talking and enjoying a glass of sweet tea or lemonade while the children ran around in the yard playing games waiting for dusk so they could catch lightning bugs. Those are still my favorite kinds of evenings. It’s a little different for us now. We live in a rural area way back of the road. It would be quite a trek for neighbors to walk over for a visit, although they’re welcome too. Sadly, these days are becoming more and more a thing of the past. Nowadays, we have to be intentional about making these kinds of days happen to form relationships with people around us.

Hospitality – How To Have A Hospitable Home

In my last post, I wrote on How To Practice Practical Hospitality and why it’s essential. Today, I want to discuss how to have a hospitable home.

When people come into your home, do they feel like they can put their feet up and stay awhile? What sense of “Welcome” does your home speak? What welcoming vibes are your guests feeling?

How To Have A Hospitable Home

1. Put effort into having your home neat and clean. Having a clean, welcoming home shows you are putting effort into providing a comfortable and relaxing space for your guests. In doing this, you show your guests that you want to create an environment that encourages them to feel welcomed and loved.
2. Have some throws and soft pillows around that whisper to your guests to get comfy and make themselves at home.
3. Create the right ambiance with lighting. Bright overhead lights can make your space feel cold and uninviting. Either dim the overhead lights or turn a couple of lamps on to give the room a warm, inviting feel. It’s also nice to have a candle burning in a dark corner. Be sure and remember to turn the front porch light on before your guest’s arrival.
4. While you want your home clean, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Homes are for living in, and if yours doesn’t have that lived in feel, it could be uncomfortable for your guests.
5. Always have a hot and cold beverage on hand, if somethings not made at least have it ready to be made. Our southern drink of choice is sweet tea or homemade lemonade.
6. Be a listener and engage in intentional conversation. Ask intentional questions to get to know your guests on a deeper level. If it’s a couple, you may ask how they met and to share a little about their story.

If you put these qualities into practice, you will find that you have set your home up to be a place of lingering. As your guests linger, you will see that’s when you often have the best and most meaningful conversation.

I believe your home is a reflection of who you are. If you are a warm and welcoming person, then your home will reflect that too.

As you learn how to have a hospitable home and hosts guests you will quickly find that hospitality comes from the heart. Inviting someone into your home, pouring yourself into them, and intentionally getting to know them is a genuine act. In practicing hospitality, beautiful things will happen. You will:

•  Bless others.
• Strengthen and deepen relationships
• Find that you receive blessings too.

Without much effort, you can make your house hospitable and ready to reach out so you can start bringing joy to your home one guest at a time.

Do you have a hospitable home, or are you still working on it? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

If you didn’t see my post on How To Practice Practical Hospitality, you can see that here.

Here are four books on hospitality that I plan to read.

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