Why should anybody use a garden shed for a party anyway? As a matter of fact, not everybody has a home well suited for parties, and if you have one, why not try something new for New Year’s Eve like a garden party in the middle of winter? Doesn’t sound that comfortable to you? Imagine a heated and nicely furnished garden shed or summer house with food and drinks, maybe some hi-fi equipment, a big camp fire, maybe with a big bowl of hot, tasty and nourishing vegetable soup in it, or some stone plate to heat up bread or pizza over the campfire.

At midnight everybody would be outside anyhow, so why not make it a rustic, wildlife-campfire experience in your own garden with the garden shed or your log cabin as a logistical center?

There even might be snow outside and if you possess a hot tube, you could build a big, nice new year’s snowman with your guests after a “hot” little snowball war and afterwards invite your guests into your hot tub. You would have to provide some blankets, thick winter coats and some self-made benches around the fire so that heating up in the glow of the fire would be easy for everybody.

How do you prepare your garden shed for the party?

Well, if you have already followed our advice of how to insulate and heat your garden shed, then you will have the opportunity to offer your guests a room to warm up or to find together for some party small talk at the buffet. If you own a full-grown summer house or a garden office, a workshop in the garden, a hobby room, or just a simple garden shed large enough to give some people shelter and to store some salads, drinks, an old sofa or bench or some old armchairs: You just need to tidy up what ever you have and make some room for the guests, food and drinks. A “hot” tip: you will probably not need a fridge! Just store everything on a table outside the garden shed or in a box on and under this table!

To offer the food outside will also be an incentive for your guests to go outside and enjoy the outdoors feeling of your New Year’s Eve party. The same applies to a bowl of soup or some other cooking or grilling devices at the camp fire. The place where the food is offered or cooked is always a popular gathering point at every party.

The decoration is up to you. Hippie-life could be a popular theme for an outdoor party, or just some colourful decoration with paper streamers and balloons would be nice. You could even reuse the fairy lights from the Christmas decoration to illuminate the garden or to indicate a dance floor if the ground is dry enough for that or frozen. Activities like dancing are a proved remedy to feeling cold.

Exploring some options for tidying up the garden shed or summer house

Every garden shed and every summer house is used to store things that belong to the garden, the workshop or that simply are not so welcome in the main house. So why not use the opportunity and create some storage solutions, that might open up a new and tidier future for your shed in the new year to come?

Shelves and racks are always one good step into the right direction, and to make them, and to fix them to the walls or under the roof, you have just the right material to work with if you own a wooden garden shed or summer house.

The first step could be to move everything to the outside, that does not have a proper place to stay in the garden shed or that takes up too much space. The wheel barrow, the lawn-mower, the bicycles could temporarily find a place behind the summer house maybe under a large piece of plastic foil for just a day or two. You might see, what you have and part with some things, maybe broken things, maybe things you won’t need anymore, maybe some things can be marked for fixing or selling on the first flea markets in spring or on the internet.

For the others, sturdy, self-made wooden shelves are a good solution to give them a home. Boards with hooks on them, boards with nails with cut-off heads can take tools of all kinds, wooden handles or even those of plastic can be drilled through to give them a place on the nail-board if they have no eyes for your hooks.

Tools can be stored on tool-boards, where every tool gets its place and where you might even draw the contours of the tools on the board to have a quick overview which tool is there or must be somewhere else. Boxes, maybe see-through, can hold materials like nails, screws, washers and so on.

Light things or materials like insulating material, light garden furniture and their pads and cushions could also be stored in shelves hanging from the roof, although your outdoor garden party around the garden shed or summer house is probably a good opportunity to put the garden furniture to good use.