How To Host Friendsgiving In Your Studio Apartment

Hosting a dinner party in a tiny space, on a low budget, is a challenge I have enthusiastically embraced over years of living in New York City, where a dishwasher is a luxury and in-unit washer-dryers are the ultimate sign of abundance.

“Having people over” is a Tetris game of furniture rearrangement and DIY shortcuts. There’s the constraint of kitchen space, limiting what you can cook and how much, and with no extra storage space, your serving bowl may look a lot like your breakfast cereal bowl.

You may not have matching sets of plates, silverware, napkins, placemats, and a garlic-adorned pheasant feather live centerpiece (not sponsored), but you can make your space feel aesthetic and festive.

And with a few do’s and don’ts, I promise you can have a chill, elevated, and dare I say easy Friendsgiving.

Do:

Embrace ease over tradition

Unless you’re a die-hard Thanksgiving purist, relax the requirements around the traditional dishes (does anyone actually like turkey??) and let everyone (including you!) make dishes they’re actually comfortable making.

Add a questionnaire to your Partiful invite to ask people for dietary restrictions in advance. In general, ask people to bring things they themselves would love to eat (this solves for a lot of otherwise-disappointing, naïve attempts at vegetarian and vegan dishes), and depending on your headcount, double or triple the portions to share

Outsource the mains

It goes without saying that you are putting your friends to work for Friendsgiving. For the anxious host, this may seem like an undue burden, especially when it comes to main courses. But the truth is, your friends are so grateful to be doing Friendsgiving at your place and not theirs, cooking is the easy part.

Main dishes are the best thing to outsource because it avoids you having to worry about everyone having enough to eat. Crucially, it also preserves your kitchen and counter space.

Buy dessert yourself (and ask your laziest friends to bring apps and drinks)

It’s your Friendsgiving, and you have the right to take the best (easiest) potluck option for yourself. Beat your cop-out friends to the punch and let everyone know you’ll be providing desserts and a couple appetizers.

Let them focus on other appetizers and mains, throwing a curveball to your lazy friends who were planning on picking up the last pumpkin pie at the grocery store on their way over. They’re still going to be last minute (this is not the time or place to try to fundamentally change who your friends are as people), but steering them to a crudité plate, dips, or other small bites will go a lot further in making sure everyone is well fed.

For the inevitable cases where someone is too busy or truly forgot to prep in advance, direct them towards drinks — an extra bottle of wine or a case of beer will always be appreciated, and results in “leftovers” you can keep around for a long time.

Splurge on grocery delivery

I’m a crusty old luddite who believes the collective experience of in-person grocery shopping is foundational to an orderly society. But if there was ever a time to outsource this task, it’s when you’re hosting. (And if you’re new to grocery delivery, most services have a first-time customer discount to cut down on your bill.) Add everything to your cart, pick your delivery window, and save yourself some precious time.

Invest in serving (like literally serving—no not like that—ok I guess also like that)

If you are committed to the least amount of work possible, then go ahead and buy paper plates, napkins, and disposable cutlery. But if the plastic and extra waste gives you the ick, I promise it’s less work than you think to serve food grownup-style.

For appetizers and desserts, mini forks will take you far and make your guests feel fancy. (Nothing in this post is sponsored, I wish I had thought of that before writing this.) For mains, invest in a couple extra sets of flatware, which don’t take up a ton of space. Throw them in any cute glass tumbler for guests to grab what they need.

Do you hate doing laundry?? Well throwing in a few cloth napkins won’t make it any worse. They’re one of the biggest bangs for your buck in terms of making a dinner party feel aspirational. Sustainable, chic, and easy to store, they will make any party (and even your daily weeknight dinners) feel just a little more special.

Another upgrade that’s not super space intrusive: a set of stacking appetizer plates. Low profile and easy to clean or throw in a dishwasher, these come in their own stacking rack for a set-it-and-forget it solution.

To round it out, get a table runner and/or tablecloth, a vase, and pick up any random bunch of flowers from your local grocery store (one tip: a monochrome set of flowers, like hydrangea, tulips, or white lillies, is just a tad more chic).

Prep ahead of time

To avoid spending the entire morning before your Friendsgiving stressing over all the last-minute details you forgot, there are a few options. Firstly, most of the prep can be done in advance, including setting up decorations, batching a cocktail, rearranging furniture, and laying out your serveware. Day of, if you executed flawlessly, you can focus solely on prepping appetizers. If you didn’t execute flawlessly, not to worry: that’s where our final Do comes in.

Put your friends to work

The most important hosting tip I can offer is to put your friends to work. Have some friends come over early to help decorate and set up (anyone who needs to heat food up with your stove/oven can also take advantage of the prep time). Throughout the event, assign friends various responsibilities: serving beverages, playlist management, door buzzer duties, interim cleaning, making sure the group doesn’t fill up too much before dessert. As things are wrapping up and people start to leave, send them out with bags of trash/recycling. Especially for parties where people are coming and going, this is a great way to keep your small space feeling tidy.

Don’t:

Mix more than one signature cocktail

Cocktails are fun, and we should have more of them. You might think Friendsgiving is the time to live out your mixologist fantasy, but I promise you do not want to play bartender all night. The peoples’ appetite for drinks will far outpace your ability to mix, and you have other things to worry about. Instead, pick a single signature cocktail that also tastes good without the booze. This will satisfy both the non-drinkers and drinkers with something special, but also gives you the peace of mind of knowing they can DIY.

If there is a cocktail, in my experience most people will choose to drink it. But as a backup, pick up a couple bottles of wine and a case or two of beer (one white/lager, one IPA). Combined with the last minute drinks your lazy friends will bring (see below), you’ll be covered.

The golden rule for serving drinks: Let people make their own. Set up carafes with the cocktail mix on the table next to cups, an ice bucket (extra credit, I’ve never done this), and a couple bottles of liquor so that folks who are drinking can add their own.

Be precious about your seating arrangement

This feels like another good time to remind you that everyone is very thankful/relieved that you are the one hosting, and they’re not going to judge your seating situation. When in doubt, bring out pillows, and have everyone sit on the floor. If you have any kind of storage space and want to generally invest in your ability to host, buying folding chairs is a great idea.

Don’t be afraid to rearrange your furniture to optimize for a big group sitting in a circle. If you have a dining table, push it against a wall and use it as a buffet station where guests can serve themselves food and drinks. If you only have one of those tiny two-person dining tables, utilize any other surface area that’s roughly at hip-level — a repurposed bookshelf or TV stand totally works.

Buy expensive candles or string lights

It doesn’t take much to get your space to feel cozy. If you have a TV, throw on one of those fireplace YouTube videos, pick your favorite playlist, and light a few candles. If you have blankets, bring them out. My hot take is most candles are a scam and unless you’re really splurging for a quality candle, getting one that costs less than $40 will be just as good as anything in the $50-100 range. Here are two options before I get cancelled by Big Candle.

Beyond the scented variety, the best ROI for decorations is simply getting a bunch of tea lights and plopping them in small glass votives, placed strategically around your apartment (don’t forget the bathroom). Terrified of a fire hazard / your friend who chose 80% tequila for their self-mixed cocktail? The LED options, while a little pricier, offer a similar vibe. String lights are higher effort than they seem; they’re a mess to untangle and look sad unless they’re hung up evenly.

Get hung up on “perfect”

Let’s be real, you’re not going to execute flawlessly. Life happens. You might forget to place your grocery delivery order (or maybe your shopper thought pecan pie was an adequate substitute for pumpkin). The decorations you ordered might embody the meme “when you see it online vs. when it arrives.”

I want to shout this from the rooftops, because the hosting advice our parents used to follow put a lot more work on the host to curate a perfect experience, where guests didn’t have to lift a finger. But those generations could afford a house, or at least more space than your studio apartment, and often involved the labor of someone who was hosting as a full-time job.

For the parties we’re planning today, the rules have to change. And there’s so much room for them to change—guests don’t expect you to do all the work alone. Parties have become participatory. More of us are invested in IRL community building and recognize that bringing an event to life is a collective action.

So if you want to host Friendsgiving but are worried you don’t have the space, time, or energy—you’re not in this alone. Friendsgiving is about celebrating your friends, and it’s about them celebrating you. If you’re open to offering up your space, you’ll find a lot of helping hands ready to bring the event to life. And if you’re not getting a ton of volunteers… a vaguely threatening text blast also works. Go forth and give thanks.

‍