How Do You Make Chores Fun?

By Crabby McSlacker

It's not exactly a shocking confession: I am a foot-dragging, excuse-making, pathetic, whiny chore-hater.

So the title question "How Do You Make Chores Fun?" is not just a rhetorical question. I'd really like some advice!

And yeah, I have some tricks that I use that help a lot that I'll pass along, and I've gotten way less lazy and petulant than I used to be.  But I still dread most forms of manual or clerical labor and make a huge melodramatic production out of it when I'm forced to do any.

A brief search of the interwebs was not much help: I kept finding pretty much the same small handful of ideas I'd already "invented" myself.

So I'm hoping someone has some thoughts?

Sneak Attack--Monthly Goals

Photo: byron chin

So, we're a month away from that most amusing time of year, New Years Resolution Season!

Hope springs eternal, eh?

I know not everyone is a fan of the annual Resolution Ritual.  Each year, millions of earnest folks set lofty goals and then, for the most part, totally blow 'em off a few weeks or days or even hours later.

Getting healthier and/or more productive generally involves willpower, self-discipline, and deprivation--and dressing it up in a party hat, alas, doesn't make it suck any less.

Portion control? Nooooooo!!!

photo: tambako

But, if you, like me, can't help but join in the annual Failure Festivities... what if we give ourselves a fighting chance this year?

Here's my sneaky plan, if anyone else wants to play along.

Change Your Life in 10 Minutes

Are there things in your life that could stand improvement but you just don't seem to be getting around to them?

Whether it's one room of your house or your whole life that's a mess, you may have noticed that logic and emotions sometimes disagree on the best approach.

Logic:  "Just get off your ass and DEAL WITH IT and you will feel so much better!"

Emotion: "You're right, logic, that's exactly what I should do! But f--k off willya, I just don't want to!"

There is a a simple trick, that you already know, that is incredibly helpful in fixing this problem.

However... there are tricks to the trick! Which is probably why you are not using it nearly as often as you should.

Note: this post is mainly a reminder to myself, because I forget all the time. Or I remember in some areas of life and blow it off in others.  But feel free to eavesdrop if you could use reminding as well.

The simple trick:  Set aside TEN MINUTES to deal with an unwanted task or activity even if ten minutes isn't enough time to do anything remotely useful. Getting started is 98% of the battle.

The Tricks to the Trick:

On Being a Quitter

I was originally going to title this: "Dead Horses... When to Stop Beating Them."

But then I thought, do I really want to encourage people who are googling "dead horses" to find us here, where we prefer our horsies not dead and, in fact, frisky and rarin' to go? Oh, and sporting wings if possible.

Plus I also wanted to offer a nod over in Rick Hanson's direction, since he's a constant source inspiration, and watching one of his recent "Just One Minute" videos on accepting the limits of your influence was the impetus for this post.  Plus Rick is moderating what looks to be a very cool, FREE online seminar in October called The Compassionate Brain and I wanted to let folks know about it.  And then I thought, sheesh, would Rick really want to be found in the company of dead, depressing, and possibly rotting and smelly horse corpses when he could be in a post about the joys of being a quitter instead?  Oh wait... that doesn't sound much better, does it?  But hell, coming this blog, it could be a lot worse.

This post also contains an Exciting and Totally Premature Announcement, which I will most likely regret but what the hell.

Same Ol' Story... Hooray?

(Same Ol' Story is a great Cyndi Lauper song, although the chorus is actually Same Ol' F--cking Story, which makes it way more fun to sing along to. That was the original title of this post too but I edited as that seemed like asking for trouble. Oh, and obligatory copyright disclaimer below if you're an attorney with a mean streak.)

So labor day weekend has come and gone, summer is over, and for many people this may mean going back to old familiar routines.  The party's over!  After various adventures, vacations, celebrations, and a multitude of both reasonable and ridiculous excuses for doing things we might not "normally" do, it's time to get back to business.

I'm psyched! Anyone else?

Because as much as I believe that shaking up your routine every now and then is crucial to long-term health and happiness, it's equally crucial to have an awesome routine to shake up in the first place.

And this is not to say that I didn't have an absolutely fantastic summer.  Between travel and various festivities, I had a boatload of fun and a lot of fantastic excuses for consuming too much of the wrong things and exercising too little.

In fact I'm still buzzing from last night, where we attended the euphoric insanity that is the "Last Dance" at the Boatslip.  This is our preferred method for marking the end of the season, which we do in a most undignified fashion, packed like sweaty sardines on a dance floor shoulder to shoulder with other crazed revelers, jumping up and down, screaming, laughing, and having a grand ol' time.

Wanna see what I mean?   (Of course you don't give a crap, and I know that, but I'll post a minute and a half of last years "Last Dance" anyway to give you an idea--takes about 25 seconds for the nuttiness to ensue, and even though we were there you can't see us.  Ah, the tedious oblivious narcissism of bloggers with invisible readers!) 



Anyway, do you have some favorite healthy routines to go back to that make life easier?  Or do you find yourself making unsatisfying compromises and screwing around and being all inefficient or self-indulgent in ways that aren't even fun?

Here are a few thoughts and suggestions, all of them totally obvious 'cause that's how I roll, so I'm hoping some of you have some to ideas to share as well.

Life-Hack: Ten Even Easier Ways to Get Up Early

Have you ever come across one of those "How-To" sites and looked for tips on just living your everyday life? They seemed to be called "Life Hacks." Because everything is apparently much more interesting to Web Users if it comes in a list and contains some reference to computers! Anyway, there are quite a few articles like this one out there about how much more productive you'll be if you become an Early Riser! They even give you suggestions as to how to accomplish that.

However, the post above seemed mostly to suggest: "make it harder to turn off your alarm clock," and "have a reason to get up." Both good suggestions, certainly. (Apparently worthy of a couple thousand Diggs! No jealousy here at Cranky Fitness, though. Nope. None whatsoever--because that would be Petty!)

Anyway, there are of course many sensible things one can do to make the transition from being a Slothful Slug-a-bed to an Eager-Beaver Early Riser. Here are a few: lay off the excess caffeine; don't do things late at night that are going to keep your mental gears grinding long after you've gone to bed; have a soothing bed-time ritual; don't sleep 'til ten o'clock on weekends just because you can; let morning light into the room... but, well, some of these require Thought and Effort and Discipline and Planning and who wants that?

Here are ten much easier ways to become an Early Riser!

1. Have a child. Hell, then have a couple more. "Mommy? Daddy? Are you awake? Madison just got the blender down and she's trying to make Grape Juice and Ice Cream and Peach Smoothies and I told her she should take out the pits first and find the top of the blender but..."

2. Buy a dog. One with weak bladder and bowel control who can Barely Wait until morning is especially good.

3. Or if the dog proves too stoic and trainable, try a cat! Make sure you get the kind who gets hungry in the early morning hours and communicates this by walking across your stomach and perching on your chest. Bonus if she playfully bats your face or licks your eyelids. Important test: to see if you've adopted the best kind, perform this simple pre-adoption test: go into the bedroom and close the door, leaving Kitty on the other side. She should attempt to dig her way through the door. If this doesn't occur to her, or if she gives up on this activity in less than two hours, sorry! You'll have to take her back and get the kind we got.

4. Get Married or Partnered. If one of you is a night person, the other is bound to be a Early Riser already! Or if you somehow accidentally hook up with someone who shares the same biorhythms, make sure you get one whose Snoring, Restless-Leg-Syndrome, Sleep-Talking, Cover-Stealing or other Sleep Disorder occur in the 4-6 a.m. hours.

5. Get older. Even without finding a mate, breeding, or buying pets, simply maturing on its own without other major lifestyle changes can take care of the early rising issue. Sun's up? You're up! Have a late night or a bout of insomnia and only got 37 minutes of sleep? Strangely enough, that doesn't matter! If it's past 5 am, you're Awake.

6. Generate garbage. This only works once a week, but there seems to be some universal rule that garbage pickup must occur in the pre-dawn hours.

7. Forget to drink your Recommended Daily Amount of Water until an hour before bedtime, feel thirsty and guilty, then drink an entire gallon of water right before going to bed. Allow nature to take its course. (But wait, you say, what about those articles saying there's no magical "8 glass a day" requirement anymore? No worries! Every time you read one of those, you will inevitably see 3 more articles right afterward telling you how important proper hydration is and that skimping on water will make you Unhealthy and Constipated and Wrinkly and Bloated and Ugly. There's no escaping the Water Drinking Requirement!)

8. Move to an Urban Area. No need to fret about sleeping too late, what with honking horns, car alarms, sirens, early-morning jack-hammers, big heavy trucks with squeaking brakes, club-hopping neighbors still amped on crystal when they get in at dawn...

9. Or you could move to a Suburban Area! There they have early-morning landscaping concerts (featuring the popular leaf-blower/lawn-mower/hedge-clipper combo), neighborhood dogs who howl at the first sign of movement or light, idling SUV's preparing for their 2 hour commutes, smug joggers and bicyclists shouting back and forth to each other because if they can get up for their 5 a.m. workouts then everybody should be up...

10. Just don't try moving to a Rural Area because of course people who live on farms traditionally sleep in late and the thought of any barnyard animals making noise just because it's morning... absurd!


Thoughts on early/late rising, sleeping, pets, kids, "life hacks," or, as usual, Any Damn Thing at all are always appreciated!