The January Happiness Cure Project

The combination of the new year and the kitchen being largely done has motivated me to make an attempt to get my act together re: "housekeeping." When we were living in the condo, we did a decent job of using Chorebuster to divide the household tasks and do them on a somewhat regular basis. When I say "a decent job," I mean that I would print out the cleaning schedule and post it on the memo board, where Eric and I would both basically ignore it except for maybe one day a month. As sketchy as that is, it was a far better system that what we've had since moving into the house- the "put clutter in the spare bedroom and close the door; only clean bathrooms when guests are coming over; don't even attempt to organize the living area because it is bursting with kitchen junk" system. So. Let's put those days behind us. 

I've looked to a combination of resources in my attempt to turn over a new leaf. I bought The Happiness Project, which I'm only a chapter into but seems like I'll probably refer to here and there. I pinned a bunch of ideas on my cleaning board on Pinterest. And I signed up for the January Cure on Apartment Therapy. Basically, I'm surrounding myself with cues and tips to stop being a slob. Hopefully this immersion will be enough to help me form new habits and set up the right kind of systems to sustain them. I'm counting last weekend a big success because I hung our memo board above the desk and also installed bins for shoes, hats and gloves by the garage door. 

This weekend I'm planning to play catch-up on the January Cure. With modifications, because some of this stuff is like COME ON. Let me sketch out a list for myself: 

Day 1: Make a list of projects, room by room. I will do this. I love me a list. 

Day 2: Set up your "outbox," which is basically Limbo for items that may or may not be clutter. Solid idea. I will do this. 

Day 3/First weekend: Buy flowers, clean your floors, buy green cleaners. Well, too late for flowers now. The floors... umm... we're buying a Roomba soon; I might ignore this for now. Green cleaners: I think we're actually covered on this! Win. 

Day 4: Sit in an unfamiliar spot in your house for 10 minutes and question every choice you've made in life. Well, something like that. Whatever. I'm not going to do this; we only moved in six months ago. 

Day 5: Pick one project from your list from Day 1 to tackle this month. I haven't even made my list yet but I already know what I'm going to choose: Clearing out the little bedroom. It doesn't make sense that we're using it to store boxes when we're also storing boxes downstairs. I'ma consolidate the boxes in the basement. This is my weekend project. In addition to the other weekend projects. I can do it all. I'M SO EXCITED.

Day 6: Frame a piece of artwork. I am actually going to ADD to this task and get around to hanging up some art that's been sitting in the little bedroom since we moved. 

Day 7: Plan a party for early February to show off your clean house. I actually talked about this with Eric last night, though the motivation was more along the lines of having our friends over to ice skate on the creek than "lalala, party in my clean house." Regardless, we could set a date. 

Day 8/Second weekend: Buy flowers again, clean and declutter your kitchen, try a new recipe. I get a bye on ALL of these because a) the contractor GAVE us flowers yesterday, b) my kitchen IS decluttered; we only just started using it, and c) trying new recipes is my middle name, my forte, my RAISON D’ÊTRE, and I probably would have done this even without some dopey website telling me to.

Okay, so my free time this weekend is spoken for! I'll try to post updates as I work through the list. This will be fun, gang. List-making, organizing, system-establishing... fun.