Can your New Year's resolutions take the reality test? Or, my secret to straightening out your life.

Did you make a bunch of resolutions a few days ago; resolutions about being a wife and mother, taking care of your husband, keeping your home, and raising your children better? Do you feel a little twinge of wonder -- maybe even anxiety -- about whether you will keep those resolutions?I'm going to tell you the secret to doing better this year. It won't sound like much. But it really works, and I know it does because it's how an over-intellectual, impractical, untutored person like me (not your fault, Habou!) has been able to keep house for all ten of us. Not like you see in a magazine. Not like you see on some blogs. But enough to be called housekeeping, and on a tight budget too!

And here it is, the incredible secret that no one but me will tell you (unless you call up the friend who told me; she doesn't have a blog) -- and it's really amazing in its simplicity: ready?

Do better in the minimum anyone can expect from you, and you will do better in everything else.
This outrageously counter-intuitive revelation (and I haven't told you what it really is, yet) came to me one time when I was really sick. I think it was after I had had my dear Will, number 6 --
-- a very difficult birth that left me recovering from major surgery and double pneumonia. And then I got the flu.

As I lay on the sofa, lamenting telephonically to my friend about my seriously miserable condition and the mountains of duties beckoning to -- no, hurling themselves at -- me -- especially the baby and my phenomenally, epically, heroically messy, dirty house, she told me this: basically your family needs food and clean laundry from you right now.
Just think about tackling those two things. Just two little resolutions. To do the minimum.
Now, maybe you are not sick and not recovering from a major trauma, and maybe you don't have a million kids. And maybe you are sort of a perfectionist and want things really clean and nice, like a magazine. And maybe you are great at that, and should start a blog!
But just maybe you are sort of keeping things going by dint of a boom-and-bust cycle, and no one really knows where you will land today. Maybe you are the way I was and things are sort of okay, but not really the way you want them to be. They will never be perfect -- you know that -- but they could be better.

Maybe you are like me, and don't mind having the top of the line appliances from the last decade; maybe you don't really care about things being brand spanking new. Then I can help you!

So, when you are making your resolutions, at the top of the list do you have these two items: feeding and clothing your particular horde?
Because if you do, things will go well for you this year. And this is why: no matter what other duties you have, the two biggest challenges you will face will be -- ta da! -- cooking ---- and laundry.
Conversely, if you have a handle on these two areas -- if you have serenity when contemplating dinner or the washing machine -- you will be rational in your approach to all other areas of your life: losing weight, saving money, cleaning up, using your time well, loving your family more, having reading time with your kids, teaching them Latin, you name it! It will all go better if you have order in these two fundamental duties. Or at least our inevitable failures in this area won't upset the peace of our family as much!
And I call these duties for a reason. First, I like using old-fashioned words. Also, some mothers really look at dinner and clean clothes as chores assigned by a particularly demanding, even cruel, parent. But in their heart of hearts they consider them optional.

They actually whine! They complain! They live with a laundry room that has piles of dirty laundry, and a master bedroom that has baskets of unsorted clean laundry! They get annoyed because their kids are hungry! They hate cooking supper!

They think that someone else will come fix all this for them! Then they spend money -- their husband's hard-earned cash -- on take-out dinners, or frozen dinners, or drive-through dinners, because they can't figure out what to have for supper; and on new clothes, because the old ones are dirty!
No, Love, only YOU can solve this problem, the problem of your life; and this is the year to do it! I will show you how! Now, I can't show you how to be Martha Stewart, or to make your home like a magazine. Can we all remind ourselves that she actually has no family and that a crew, perhaps several crews and a staff, make her every whim a reality?

Again I say no! Rather, if I can do it, so can you! If a girl (and I really was a girl --19 years old!) who got married without really knowing how to sweep can keep house, so can you!If a girl who thought that Mastering the Art of French Cooking was a good manual for meal planning can keep three squares on the table within a budget, so can you! If little old me, who would rather read a novel than wash a toilet (am I alone here?), and who shorted out a whole apartment building ironing a shirt the first year of her marriage, can do it, so can you!
Look at it this way: if you had the profession of managing, say, a hotel, you would be darn sure that first and foremost you had a plan, a system, and a clear idea of how you would provide food, clean sheets, and a warm atmosphere for your customers. You would not whine. You would pat yourself on the back for having such a great career! If you did not do this, you would be -- fired!
Oops -- are we in danger of being fired from our jobs as moms? (Hmmm... while pondering our resolutions, we probably should add one to be grateful to the long-suffering good humor of our family!)
Now I know you are not like those babies I describe above, those terrible whiners. And you probably have a better work ethic than I do! But still, have you achieved clarity on these two important areas of your home keeping duties? That's where I come in. I have clarity!

Since one actually can wear dirty clothes, but one can't last long without food, I will start with meals.
In my next post. And it will be fun! I promise.