Did you know that your home can determine if you keep your New Year’s resolutions?
In this post, you’ll see the top 7 New Year’s resolutions made last year and find out how your home environment can help you keep these resolutions.
Why do so many of us set out with great intentions, only to fall off the wagon shortly afterwards?
Whether it is keeping fit, eating well or decluttering our homes, our resolutions can be long forgotten come February.
So I am going to show you how you can set your home up to help you succeed in keeping these top 7 New Year’s resolutions.
Set Your Home up for Success.
“…motivation (and even talent) is often overvalued. In many cases, the environment matters more.”
James Clear
If you’ve been relying on motivation to achieve your New Year’s resolutions, you may be setting yourself up for failure. Instead, you should be looking at the design of your home environment and how that can help your success.
7 Most Popular New Year’s Resolutions and How to Set Your Home up to Keep Them
1. Exercise More and Improve Fitness
Who doesn’t want to be fitter? But although this is the most popular New Year’s resolution, it may also be the hardest to keep. And that’s probably why it keeps coming back in at the number one spot. So how can your home help you with this one?
If exercise is your goal, but you have to spend time looking for your exercise clothes or equipment, it’s not going to happen. So make space and make it obvious. Here are some ideas:
- If you plan to run in the morning you can keep your running shoes near the door and put them on the doormat the night before.
- You can keep your workout gear next to the bed so you can put it on first thing.
- You can keep a yoga mat right where you plan to use it. And make sure you have a clean, clear space to use it in.
- Set up one dedicated drawer for your workout gear so you always know where it is and don’t need to spend time looking for it.
- You can keep your workout outfit in your gym bag. Put it straight in there when it comes out of the wash.
- Keep your TV remote upstairs and your TV downstairs so you get a workout to turn on the TV!
- Declutter and clean your house. This is physical work and can be a great workout!
- Sell your car and ride a bike instead
2. Lose Weight
All the points in the exercise and healthy eating categories will apply here as well. But did you know that a cluttered home can contribute to you gaining weight too? That’s the theory put forward by Peter Walsh, in his book “Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight: The Six-Week Total-Life Slim Down.” Why is that? Well, studies have shown a clear link between clutter and stress levels. “Once the stress increases, hormone levels increase. Now, the result of that is that you start to overeat,” Walsh said.
Another effective strategy is to switch out your current plates for smaller plates. This might sound bizzare, but has been shown by a Cornell University study to be a surprisingly effective way of feeling full while eating less.
Set up your home to help you lose weight:
- Reduce your stress levels by decluttering your home.
- Get rid of most processed foods and store any remaining in hard to reach places.
- Keep only the items that make you feel great and add value to your life.
- Use smaller plates.
- Get rid of clothing that doesn’t fit you. Your goal is not to keep old clothes that taunt you by being too small. Your goal is to reward yourself with new, well fitting clothes as and when your body shape changes.
- Focus on having clear, open spaces on your floors, storage and walls. This makes for a less stressful environment.
- Be mindful in your purchasing habits. Plan your purchases ahead of time to avoid bringing in new clutter or unhealthy food.
3. Eat More Healthily
Your kitchen is the key to your diet and healthy eating resolutions. No one is motivated to cook in a messy kitchen. If your counters are cluttered, cupboards are overloaded and the fridge is full it’s going to be far easier to reach for a takeout menu than to cook a healthy meal from scratch. So ironically, having too much food in the kitchen can be a barrier to healthy eating.
- Keep things in view that remind you too eat healthily. You can keep a fruit bowl on the counter or images of healthy fruit and veg framed on the wall.
- Put all temptation out of sight. If you have sweets on the counter, guess what you are going to be reaching for? Yep, sweets. Store them out of sight, ideally on a high shelf that requires a step stool. The harder they are to get to, the easier you make it to resist temptation.
- Declutter your pantry. Throw out all expired food.
- Declutter your fridge.
- Menu plan. This helps you shop smart and make good food choices.
- Declutter rarely used kitchen gadgets. You may thing that they help you cook, but actually having too many gadgets can create a barrier to cooking.
4. Save Money
Saving money works really well alongside decluttering your home. First of all, by decluttering items you no longer need you will directly confront past buying decisions. This can help you shop more mindfully in the future.
Decluttering will also help you identify what brings joy to you now so you don’t waste money on things that don’t serve you. You are likely to also find items that you had forgotten about, saving you from buying them again. For more on decluttering you may like Need to Declutter Fast? Try This. And for more on saving read 21 Things to Stop Buying to Save Money Fast.
The more intentional you get with your spending, the more you will save. And the more intentional you get with your spending, the less clutter you will bring into the home.
- Declutter your home
- When you want something new, put it on a list first. Wait at least 24 hours before buying from your list.
- Organise your bills and set up auto-pay. Setting up good systems for bills and paperwork will prevent overdue fines
- Declutter unused subscriptions
- Dedicate a time and a space to reviewing your finances. Make your files easy to find, whether they are paper or digital.
5. Pursue a Career Ambition
With more of us than ever before working from home, it stands to reason that a tidy home and workspace will help you be productive in your work, or even support you in starting a side hustle or career switch. But working from home can also mean a lot of distractions.
- Set up a dedicated room, desk or area solely for work
- Remove all non-work related distractions from this area
- If you can, dedicate your computer to work tasks only. Use a separate phone, tablet or laptop for Social Media and browsing.
- Create a vision board and hang it where you see it daily.
- Have a clean, tidy restful oasis that you can relax in when you are not in work mode.
6. Improve Social Connections/Spending Time with Family
How comfortable do you feel inviting someone into your home? If the answer is not very, and the reason is a mess, then decluttering is going to be great for social connections. Your home should be a restful oasis for you, and somewhere you can feel proud and comfortable to invite people to. If it’s not, you may find yourself losing touch out of the fear of having someone over.
- Declutter the items that do not add value to your life.
- Implement a cleaning schedule and/or get a cleaner to help out.
- Take care of any outstanding maintenance or home decorating tasks.
- Make sure the furniture you have works for the amount of people you like to have over.
- If you have a guest room, clear it out and set it up ready for guests.
- Get professional help.
7. Take up a Hobby
Hobbies require stuff and space. Make it easy to do your new hobby and you’ll be more likely to succeed at it. Dedicate space for your hobby. It doesn’t have to be much, but it has to be easy to access. Your hobby gear should be as close as possible to where you want to use it. So if you are starting knitting, and you knit on the couch, keep a basket with your knitting supplies by the couch.
Also, be mindful of not keeping stuff from hobbies that you don’t do anymore. That may get in the way of what you are doing now. Having to dig through clutter before you start a project is going to detail you from even starting.
- Set up a dedicated area for your hobby. This can be as large as a whole room or as small as a basket to keep supplies in.
- Keep your hobby supplies as close as possible to where you will use them.
- Declutter any hobby supplies you no longer need.
- Don’t keep other items on top of your hobby supplies (looking at you, clothes horse/treadmill!)
- Focus on just one hobby at a time.
Your Home Can Help Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
In summary, setting up your home right can make you much more likely to succeed in your New Year’s resolutions. Consider what it is that you really want to achieve and make sure that your home is set up to make it as easy as possible.
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