It’s that time of the year when things get hectic with work, family and everything else that the universe throws at you. By that time of the year, I really mean every part of the year that I’m not on vacation.

When life gets crazy, and we have too much to focus on, it’s often our friends that get neglected in favour of those few precious moments when we can hide away under a blanket and binge watch something.

Here’s the thing though, according to Mentalhealth:

Friendship is a crucial element in protecting our mental health. We need to talk to our friends and we want to listen when our friends want to talk to us. Our friends can keep us grounded and can help us get things in perspective. It is worth putting effort into maintaining our friendships and making new friends. Friends form one of the foundations of our ability to cope with the problems that life throws at us.

So, how do you make sure that you’re touching base often enough with your crew?

A few friendship groups in Cape Town have started private clubs that meet once in a while to do activities. These range from burger clubs, where a group of peeps will get together to try out a different burger joint every month, to salons where friends take turns sharing something interesting or creative.

These groups are great, but they’re also time-consuming. If like me, you always get stuck with the organising, they become yet another chore on the to-do-list. Being the planner that I am though, I’ve come up with a simple way to see your mates once a week, try out different places and save some cash.

Start a Clink club.

Clink is an app which gets you one free drink a day at a ton of top range bars and restaurants.

Got it? Good. Here’s the plan:

Step 1: Figure out who you want in your Clink club.

You want to pick the friends that leave you energised, who drink (but not too much), and who are keen to try new things.

Step 2: Get everyone to download the app

The Clink app is free to download. You also get seven days of free membership to try it out, which is good news for that friend with commitment issues.

Doing the initial organising for the Clink club also has its rewards, because you get up to three months using Clink for free if you get three friends to download and subscribe. Score.

Once you become a Clink member, you receive 30 free drinks for R90 a month. That’s the price of three drinks (sometimes two), which means that after your first two drinks, the app starts paying for itself, and you start saving.

Hello, end of the month guilt-free drinking.

Step 3: Define the purpose of the club

Do you want to just chill and meet at the same place every time, or expand your horizons as a group and try out different bars and restaurants? Is it just a drink? Or a drink and dinner?

Is this a girls only, guys only, or squad only event? Can friends bring partners?

Choose wisely.

Step 4: Decide when you’ll meet and stick to it

Pick one evening a week, and stick to it. Also, because your first drink is free, you could always just stay for the one and avoid that hangover at work in the morning. If you’re seeing each other every week for an hour, that’s all you really need – it racks up to some good quality time overall.

Alternately, make a plan to meet up once or twice a month, and use your app to drink for free with whoever else, whenever else. After all, it’s one free drink a day – so why not?

Step 5: Select your first venue

This part can get tricky because Clink offers such an extensive range of venues for you to choose from, including Café Roux, Orphanage, House of Machines, Slug and Lettuce, The Fat Cactus and Black Irish.

I suggest that for your first meet-up, go somewhere you know is great, and make a plan to try somewhere new the following week.

There you go. #SquadGoals.

Cheers!

[source:mentalhealth]