Besides the obvious -- good fellowship, laughter, and fun times -- hospitality has a few other perks that make me anxious to open our home regularly.
Motivation.
Motivation to clean, tackle piles of clutter, and clear the counters.
Motivation to cook an especially delicious meal consisting of more than just 3 things.
Serving a meal with many items (for example, salad and/or soup, main course, bread, vegetable, fruit, dessert) is a fun treat... and such a variety almost surely ensures some leftovers for the next day.
Of course, a 5- or 7-course meal is certainly not a requirement in order to practice hospitality. But because I do keep our daily meals fairly simple, it's fun to have something more elaborate every now and then -- and dinner guests is the perfect motivation! :)
Our menu for yesterday's guests:
Grilled Chicken Salad [0] (a cool summer salad that we made entirely in advance; my mom has been giving us lettuce from her garden, so it's "salad season" for us!)
Italian Cheese Bread [0] (an all-time favorite!)
Waldorf Salad (brought by our guests)
Baked Beans [0] (on the stovetop on low heat... too lazy to dig out the crock pot!)
Fresh strawberries (courtesy of our kind neighbor's garden!!)
Disastrous [0] two-layer chocolate cake [0]
There was enough salad, beans, and cake leftover for our lunch today. (I did make more cheese bread to go with it!) We still have baked beans in the fridge for another snack/lunch.
And my house is still cleaner than it was all last week!! ;) I'm in the middle of several projects that have gotten me a little behind in my regular cleaning.