The Best Advice I Never Took

I am a fan of advice.  I like to give it.  I like to get it.  I have received a lot of advice over the years, some good, some bad, some I applied to my life, some I ignored, and some I ignored but thought it was good enough to pass on to others.  "Ahhh, she's lazy and a hypocrite", you are probably thinking, but that would be incorrect.  I may be lazy, but I am honest. So when giving this type of advice, I always include a disclaimer indicating that it is advice I WISH I had followed.  "The Best Advice I Never Took" was given to my dear husband and I as part of a game at a couples wedding shower.  The advisor was the hostess, who happened to be the mother of a dear mutual friend, as well as the owner of a beautiful and immaculate home, so she most certainly had the credentials to be doling out cleaning and organizing advice.

On a quick side note, I thought about giving this post the title, "The Worst Advice I Ever Took", which is actually the opposite of the actual title, in case you didn't notice.  That is a very entertaining story, but unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the focus of this blog, AND it would involve airing dirty marital laundry, AND it might hurt the advisor's feelings if the advisor ever happened to read this and recognize the advice as his/her own.  Did you see how I just hid even the gender of the advisor, thus reducing the odds even further that I might hurt his/her feelings?  That is good advice for anyone.

So without further adieu......."The Best Advice I Never Took" i-is...... NEVER GO TO BED WITH A DIRTY KITCHEN!  (fanfare).  You're disappointed aren't you.  Sorry, its the truth.  To some of you, this may be common sense, but if you are lazy like me, it is advice.  More nights than I care to admit, I go to bed with a sinkful of dirty dishes.  Did I mention that in the "confessions" post?  Sometimes, it is due to legitimate busy-ness, and with 4 kids, evenings are definitely always busy around here.  Which leads to the next confession that I "forgot" to confess earlier: I watch waaaaaaay too much TV.  Hopefully that is not a huge surprise, because don't all lazy people watch too much TV?  Once the kids are in bed, even if the kitchen is still messy, I will plop on the couch and watch nothing in particular, sometimes for several hours.  Ugh, confession can be ugly.

Going to bed with a dirty kitchen means waking up to a dirty kitchen.  I could go on and on listing the reasons a dirty kitchen first thing in the morning is bad idea, including the fact that its just kind of disgusting.  But in an effort to keep this post at a reasonable length, I will get to the point.  It lets the whole day get away from you before you've begun. Since I am a runner. Since I used to be a runner. Since I am a runner at heart, I will use a running analogy. It's like lining up on the starting line for the 400m dash and choosing to stand there for 5 seconds after the gun goes off. You might end up running a good time. You might end up beating a few people. If you're really talented, you might even win. But you'll never know how good you could have been if you had started with the gun like everyone else. When you start your day with a dirty kitchen, you have all of the usual things on your list for the day, PLUS you have to clean your kitchen!  Playing catch-up is a dangerous way to try to win a race and a ridiculous way to start your day, because sometimes, you never catch up!  And when you never catch up with your daily responsibilities, do you know what happens at the end of the day?   A little TV sounds good, a few potato chips, a couple of chocolate bars to push away the anxiety about everything you didn't get done.  The next thing you know, you're not only lazy, but ten pounds overweight too, and your kitchen is still a mess!

So, as my first step to conquering my lazy tendencies, I am going to finally consistently put into practice, the best advice I ever received.  I have heard that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, however, it appears this is a myth.  After reading a couple of articles that may or may not be reliable, it appears that 66 days is a better bet.  You can check out one that summarizes what I found at http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/hbrc/2012/06/29/busting-the-21-days-habit-formation-myth/.  Am I really going to vow to go to bed with a clean kitchen for 66 days in a row? YOU BETCHA!!  Starting now!  You didn't think I cleaned the kitchen before I started writing did you?  And if that's not biting off more than I can chew, tomorrow morning, I will literally be "Lazy Mom Running", because I will be going on a run.  To all of my lazy friends out there, think about picking one of your lazy habits to tackle along with me.  I would love to hear about what you've chosen...........if I survive my run.  Stay tuned.