How to Make the Neighborhood Kids Feel Welcome in Your House

When I was growing up, there were Kool-Aid commercials where the mom's were making pitchers of Kool-Aid for all of the neighborhood kids.  Their houses were the gathering places for everyone.  We never had a "Kool-Aid" house in my neighborhood when I was growing up.  Mostly we played outside and the fewer adults that were around, the better.  

But when my kids started growing up, kids were hanging closer to home and weren't allowed to freely roam the neighborhood.  They needed places to go.  I decided early on that I wanted my house to be that place that we used to see on the commercials, the place where the mom always made every one feel welcome, especially when my oldest son became a teenager.  The first thing I had to do was get over my aversion to mess.  Any place that kids hang out in regularly will get messy.  You just have to learn to live with it to a certain extent.  With that idea in mind, when we built the house we are now in, we carpeted the basement, painted the concrete walls and didn't bother with a ceiling.  The furniture is is a hodge podge of things we have acquired.  Over time, we've managed to get to the point where it is cohesive, but it wasn't always so.  It was a matter of choice not to "decorate" the basement.  The less done it was, the less upset I would be if someone spilled soda on the carpet, dropped pizza on the loveseat or through balls all around the room.