Decorating for the holidays can be fun; you make everything downright magical. In this house, everything is touched with a holiday flare, and we love it. But sometime around the new year, we start getting itchy for a change. The incredible feeling of decorating your house can make you feel pales in comparison to that shiny and clean feeling once everything is put away. It offers a blank slate for your home. While beautiful, the clutter of the holidays can make it all feel like “too much.”  We like the clean reset of the new year and, honestly, not just for the house…for our lives. 

We use the new year not just for resolutions but for resets. Resets on house cleaning, resets on chores, resets on moving our bodies, and resets on health. This Worthy Life has a list of resets for the month of January. Some of these include the following:

·       Heal your heart

·       Forgive yourself

·       Get closure and let it go

·       Declutter your home

·       Simplify your life

·       Make more time for fun

·       Make more time to work out

·       Create a realistic plan

·       Make a bucket list

What an awesome list! I can get behind these goals to reset. Let’s explore this a little further. 

Cleaning

Oh, we are all in on this one this year. Will 2023 be the year we get our stuff together, and we are a nice and clean family? Probably not. BUT maybe we can pick up some good habits. 

Go Clean Co is a digital creator that provides cleaning education. Check out her Instagram or go to the website here.  A friend recently recommended Go Clean Co, and we are already deep into this. They say, “We’re empowering everyone to take their cleaning into their own two hands. Because a dusty and cluttered home leads to a dusty and cluttered life.” Buy the powdered Tide now. Trust us. 

Another excellent resource for a reset is Better Homes and Garden cleaning schedule. The article is titled “A Whole-House Cleaning Schedule You’ll Actually Stick To.” Fingers crossed they are right! This schedule helps determine how you clean and tailor a plan (and frequency) that works best for you.

Apartment Therapy also has a cleaning schedule that breaks down what to clean weekly, monthly, and seasonally. They break down when things need to be cleaned. Here is the schedule. They also have a cool calendar that you can sign up for (typically mid-year) that helps walk you through cleaning projects. 

Now that we are ready to reset our cleaning, let’s move on to chores. 

Chores

We aren’t sure about your house, but at our house, by the end of the year, no one is doing their chores. We get overwhelmed with school, sports, activities, etc. The new year is a perfect time to reset this habit. If you aren’t sure where to start, check out The Spruce’s article “A List of Age-Appropriate Chores for Kids 2 to 18-Even kids can help around the household with simple chores for every year.” This can give you ideas on what to include and what is developmentally appropriate for your kids. Mindful Amazing also has the “Giant Chore List for Kids By Age (Age-Appropriate Chores For Kids)” that you can find here. Both are great options to get back on the chore train. It is great for your kids to learn how to help run a house, and it is good for you as well to have the help!

Now let’s explore a health reset and all that can mean. 

Health

The Washington Post just had an article about new year’s health tips. The article is titled “5 Easy Steps to be Healthier in the New Year.” It is a quick read to get you thinking about your health. Of course, getting enough sleep is on the list. That can be challenging for parents, but it is so so important.

Another great article to reset your health for the new year is “The 9 Healthiest New Year’s Resolutions You Can Make.” Now we aren’t referring to these as resolutions but instead a reset. This small list is more than just exercising more but explores other ways that we can take action to address our health…mentally, socially, and financially. Remember that a reset allows us to drop the harmful activities we accumulate throughout the year. 

Enjoy the holiday, enjoy the extraness of the season. But as we wind down, the celebrations take a moment to do your own reset. Think about what that can mean to you. Do you love taking everything down and putting it away? Do you start your first-of-the-year cleaning? Are you ready to mentally reset to bring your best self into 2023?