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It’s 2011! Achievable New Year’s Resolutions

Rosie December 31, 2010 1

Happy New Year!

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Don't do this

It’s very easy to write a list of New Year’s resolutions. It’s much harder to actually follow through with them past about 10:32am on January 1st.  The first step should be to write an achievable list in the first place.

The list I’ve written above…isn’t a sensible list.  (It caused my husband Tim to panic and very nervously ask me if “that list downstairs… is a real list”) Your goals need to be Manageable and Realistic – as well as all the other letters in the SMART Goals acronym

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to organize your house and live in the clean and tidy home you’ve always imagined, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, there’s no instant fix to do that overnight. But if you build up routines gradually, and declutter bit-by-bit, you will get there in the end.  I tell you what, it’s my (real) resolution too; I didn’t design an app for managing housework because cleaning comes naturally to me.  I am not “Born Organized” as they say.

Here’s what I’m doing: starting from the beginning and taking it slowly.

Ideas for building up your routines gently

  • Start small.  Create a morning routine that contains only 4 or 5 tasks that you already always do. Stick with that for a week and enjoy your gold stars.
  • Build up gently. Try another week where you add one task that you “should” do but don’t.  There’s always one that’s disproportionately hard to do: it might be sweeping the floor, folding the laundry, or unloading the dishwasher.  Add that one to your morning routine.
  • Add another task a little while later
  • When you’re mostly completing all the tasks in your morning routine, create an evening routine with the tasks you already do.
  • Build up from there.

If you’re feeling too overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, it can help to have an external guide to follow.  I suggest The Flylady’s baby steps, or following the Nest steps on HabitHacker.com.

Some more good examples of routines

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