Don’t Fold Your Underwear (and other tips for busy people)

Look, mom, I made my bed! (But only because we had our friend Christopher over for dinner yesterday!)

Part of my happiness project this year is to figure out ways to get myself in the habit of being neat. I’m naturally a messy person, so being neat and tidy doesn’t come easily to me. But I’ve realized that I feel calmer on the inside when things are orderly and tidy on the outside. So, here are some tips that have helped me so far:

1. Don’t fold your underwear – They usually get unfolded as you search for your favorite ones to wear, anyway, so just throw them in your underwear drawer unfolded and save yourself a few minutes. My husband also has a “same sock” strategy. He only buys one brand & type of white socks, so that any white sock of his will match any of his other white socks. I’m too cheap to make the switch when all my mismatched white socks still seem wearable, so I still spend a lot of time sorting socks. But I kind of envy his sock efficiency.

2. Do accidental cleanups. -- If you accidentally drip water on the floor in the bathroom and reach for a towel to clean it up, go ahead and wipe the whole bathroom floor quickly with the towel while you’re at it. Or if you spill some coffee grinds on the floor of the kitchen and reach for the broom to sweep it up, go ahead and sweep the whole kitchen. You’ll be surprised how these little cleanups can save you time and make your house look nicer bit by bit.

3. Keep a Donation Bin – In our house, we have a heavy duty “Good Will Bag” (a.k.a. a ForceFlex trash bag) hanging inside our pantry at all times. I’m amazed how fast it fills up. Of course, the 10 item a day Clutter Therapy Challenge has made it even more of a necessity! I remember in our old house, we didn’t have a designated spot for “donation items,” and we’d constantly have goodwill stuff piling up in our hallway near the kitchen. Our donation bag keeps the clutter contained until we’re ready to actually donate it.

4. Shine Your Sink – Flylady says that keeping her sink consistently clean (or doing your dishes every time they’re dirty) was the first step she took to try and change her messy tendencies into productive habits. She says keeping our house clean makes us better people, because we start being able to be hospitable at any time and have guests over with just a few minutes notice.

5. Buy Clorox Wipes. In Bulk. – Keep a container of Clorox Wipes (or any other brand multipurpose cleaning wipes) handy wherever you’ll need it, and allow yourself to do mini cleanups when you have time rather than waiting for a big chunk of time to clean. I try to keep some in the bathroom, under the kitchen sink, and in my car. That way, if I’m sitting in the bathroom waiting for my daughter to finish up her bath, I can quickly wipe the mirror and the sink without having to seek out the cleaning supplies and rags.

6. Plan Dinner – If you have a plan for dinner by lunch that day, then you’ll probably eat healthier and more balanced meals. Sometimes I get really OCD and plan my meals out for a week or 2 at a time. That’s when I really feel like a supermom. But it doesn’t happen a lot. Oh, well. Baby steps.

7. Make Your Bed – I admit it, I never ever EVER make my bed unless people are coming over to my house. But when I do, it totally does make me happy.

8. Invite People Over -- When we lived in Athens, we went through phases of having regular “Thursday Night Dinners” at our house every week. Or sometimes every two weeks. Nothing motivates me to keep my toilet clean consistently like having a deadline by which it must get done in order that guests not be horrified.

9. Pay for Cleaning Help – There have been times when I have just been too busy to even think about cleaning, much less actually find a bucket and some Pine Sol amidst the chaos that was my house. At these times, even though I have never been a wealthy girl, I have hired cleaning help. Hey, I’m cool with eating rice and beans for a week if I have to in order to save up the dough for the cleaner. To come home to a freshly dusted, swept, and mopped house after a long day at work is a serious happiness boost. 75 bucks has never been so well spent.

10. Assign Babysitters Chores – This was a hard one for me, but my friend Nikki inspired me to try it. After the kids go to sleep, or while they’re watching TV before bedtime, you really CAN ask your babysitter to fold a load of laundry or do the dishes. Nothing too difficult, because of course their main duty is to keep the children happy and safe. But most good babysitters don’t mind helping you with a few little chores. And some of them will even do chores without you asking them to! (Those are the ones you pay extra and keep a secret from all your friends so no one will steal them away!)

So there you have it. Secrets to tidiness from a professional mess-maker.

What’s your secret to keeping a tidy and orderly home? Really, I want to know!

On Tiny Little Moments and Half Full Friends

What? Me, interview you?

I'm going to start posting interviews with amazing and insightful people who inspire me! Hopefully I'll post one per week, but who knows how it will work out. And here's my first interview!! Tada!!

It’s only fitting that the first happiness interview I post here is with someone who has brought me joy and happiness since 8th grade…my best friend, Kelley. Kelley is a screenwriter in sunny California. Yes, that’s right, she’s living the dream. She left her high stress job as an actuary in Boston to pursue a career that she might actually love one day.

Kinda cool, huh?

We’ve had a long relationship that has changed a lot over the years. Our friendship has survived:

* middle school (and braces!),

* high school (as nerdy academic/math team girls with a flair for theater!),

* living together as college roommates (BTW, living with me while I was in college was not a picnic, so kudos to Kelley for weathering that harrowing year of me never doing dishes, laundry, or pretty much anything other than studying!),

* living near one another in snowy (aka the frigid arctic) Boston,

And now we are long distance friends who persevere against all odds (seriously, a 3 hour time difference is all odds!) to stay friends.

Kelley is someone who finishes my sentences, which I really appreciate, since I have a bit of a word-finding problem. On a more serious note, she has also dealt gracefully with the recent death of her mother, and has somehow maintained faith and a (sometimes sick!- she made me say that!) sense of humor.

Here are my questions followed by her answers to some happiness questions:

1. How do you cheer yourself up when you're feeling blue?

I watch movies. This is also what I do to fill the time between waking and sleeping. :-)

When I'm the mad-shade of blue, I might also run or exercise. Also, list-making of how I'm going to get back on track helps. The biggest thing I do when I'm blue is I get myself away from my blue friends! We all have them, and when I'm feeling half-empty instead of half-full, the half-empty people get rescheduled. My half-empty would otherwise be poured into THEIR half-empty, and what good does that do? THEY still see it half-empty even with my last remaining drops! Retail therapy used to be a good fix, but now I hate shopping, so that's out. It's more of a cold-weather sport, if you ask me.

2. What have been the happiest experiences of your life so far?

I'm still waiting for them!

No... In general, I don't like BIG moments, so I'm far happier in a tiny little moment where I have a good conversation with a friend or when my dog does something cute. So "happiest" is a big word that stresses me out to think about. Graduation or a Wedding is enough to send me to the asylum, thus I'm getting married in Vegas and only went to the two graduations I had to attend out of the four. :-)

3. What is something small that you do regularly that makes you happier?

It's stupid, but exercising. If I don't run for a span of 5 days, even if there's a good reason, I start to get down on myself and think that I'm not moving forward in my life - since I run on a treadmill, the running isn't literally moving me forward, but you know what I mean. This is for selfish happiness though. Ultimately, I think the best happiness and more substantial kind comes from giving to others. Be it free room and board, paying my dog-walker a little extra, or remembering someone's favorite treat from Starbucks and surprising them with it, things like that pay you back in smiles and fill you up far more than just a normal moment would. In the long run, these things end up being selfish too because what greater joy is there than for someone to tell you you're such a nice person - and you actually know the things you did that made them say that!

Can you classify your friends as half-empties or half-fulls? What do you think your friends classify YOU as?

Paperwork makes me...happy?

I've started thinking about my personal "Happiness Commandments", and one of the first ones I have adopted is, "Do what needs to be done."

This happiness commandment is brilliant.

I can say that, because I didn’t think of it, happiness guru Gretchen Rubin did.

It seems so simple, but it’s probably the commandment I have said to myself more than any of the others in the past week. It works for all those things I don’t like to do but feel much better after having done. Laundry is the main one that comes to mind for me, but this also includes doing dishes, filing paperwork, writing reports, mopping, checking voice/e-mail—I’m sure you get the idea! In the moment, these things do not bring me happiness (and actually often bring me stress!), but after the fact, it is such a weight off of my shoulders that I (almost) forget the drudgery it took to get the task over and done with.

Speaking of which, I just finished an evaluation report that took me 3 hours to write...ugh! I hated every second of writing the report, but now, I can feel relaxed rather than tense as I blog. I DO feel a little happier after doing what needed to be done.

And tired. So now, off to bed.

What tasks that you hate bring you the most relief (and even happiness!) once completed?