Home Work 2020: The Year of Home Economics

I love that people are calling the new decade we just entered the Roaring 20s. It makes me optimistic for good things ahead. I’ve set my New Year’s Resolution for 2020, and it’s to become a fabulous home economist. I’m calling it “The Year of Home Economics”. It’s all about doing the work that’s required at home beautifully – systematically, efficiently, and economically. I’ll still be working my full time medical sales job, but I’ll also do some carefully targeted “home work”.

I’m so happy I met my New Year’s Resolution goals in 2019. My official resolution was to finish, self-publish, and launch “The Holiday Window Painting Book”, and with an incredible amount of work, and support from other people, I got that done, and I’ll continue to sell that book for the rest of my life. My other big goal for 2019 was with my husband, and that was to finish paying off all our debt besides our home mortgage. That got done too. No more student loans, car loans, personal loans, or credit card balances. Thank goodness. It took a decade and tons of work and patience, but it was 100% worth it. In case you’re curious, we used the Dave Ramsey debt snowball, lots of time at work earning money, and budgeting to make it happen.

It’s exciting that we are now in 2020, which for me – and my husband – is The Year of Home Economics. I’ve been thinking about what I want to accomplish personally this year, and I’ve boiled it down to ten words that will help me focus on success and prosperity at home: Clean, Organized, Cozy, Frugal, Healthy, Timely, Friendly, Mindful, Free, Actualized. I’ll flesh out the concepts behind these words in this blog article.

But first, I’d like to elaborate a bit on how I see “The Year of Home Economics”. I want this to be a year of getting back to the basics; the functional fundamentals of home life. I want to focus on the economics of our household: wealth, health, and domestic order. Domestic bliss. The focus is on people in the home, and things in the home, and systems in the home. The focus is on true life energy conservation; good value in everything. Maximum results for reasonable effort. Again, the primary focus is the home: the people (my husband, our toddler son, myself), the cat, the house, the money, the plants, the things in the house, the cars, the yard; the true well-being of all those things. Then the auxiliary benefits can ripple outward into the other areas of life, like work, family, and friends. I want to take the tangled beautiful mess that is my domestic life, and thoughtfully organize, sort, and systemize things into beautiful orderliness. I want to build practical, smart, life energy conserving skills. I want to set goals with targets that actually matter.

As I mentioned, for my husband, it’s The Year of Home Economics too. We have many shared goals, and we have a shared overall life vision that’s always evolving, but we have individual goals and lives too. We are individual people, so I see my New Year’s resolution as entirely, autonomously my own, yet at the same time, I’m working in complete partnership with my husband.

This year I want to build a more functional household and build my arsenal of domestic skills. And of course, as with every New Year’s Resolution I set, I’m playing to win. Here are my ten words – concepts – that’ll keep me on track.

CLEAN

I want to keep my home clean: the floors, the countertops, the fridge, the garage, the garbage, the cat box, the area under the sink, dishes, laundry, the bathrooms, deep cleaning – everything. I don’t want to be a perfectionist, but I want everything to be reasonably, consistently clean. I want to figure out simple, easy systems I can use, spending minimal time, to keep the place ship shape. We plan on getting a housekeeper to help out every other week, but the real housekeeper is me, and my husband and son too. I’ll make an effort to tackle the yuckiest spots in the house and keep them reasonably clean. I’ll clean as I go. I’ll set up simple cleaning schedules. I want the kind of house that is visitor-ready all the time. I think having a cleaner home will be cleansing to my mind and wellbeing.

ORGANIZED

I want the stuff in my home to be organized. I’m certain that will involve having less stuff, which is fine with me, because I’m not a huge “thing” person. At the same time, it’s tough for me to throw things away. I’m thinking one strategy I will use is to totally empty the kitchen, for example, then I’ll only put back the minimal items that we absolutely must have. I’m so tired of clutter. I’ll donate stuff monthly or quarterly. I crave empty space and designated spots for every item, so domestic functions can be performed easily. I love empty time too. Space to think. It’s such a luxury. I love the idea of an organized tidy home and an organized tidy mind. I think they complement each other. I ultimately want to spend minimal time organizing. But I’m totally willing to invest some time up front to create good systems, that’ll result in easier organization in the long run. Then I can spend less time organizing, and more time obsessing on more interesting things.

COZY

I want to increase my enjoyment of being at home, and I want to increase the enjoyment my husband and son feel being at home too. I want our house to feel like more like home: a truly pleasant place to be. I want our home to be a cozy place to rest and feel comfortable. I also want our home to be warm, soft, stylish, and inviting. I want to keep myself presentable too, even on lazy weekends, and wear slippers in the house. I also want our home to be a great place to work on economic and creative projects – and get them done.

FRUGAL

I want to stay on a written, zero-based budget for all 12 months of the year. We’ve used the budget app EveryDollar in the past, and I think we’ll continue using it this year. My husband and I paid off all our loans except our mortgage in May 2019. Since then, we’ve been on a bit of a spending spree, relative to our frugal spending of the past decade. However we have saved a substantial emergency fund. In 2020, we plan to get back to our frugal ways, so we can complete our 6-month emergency fund, invest for retirement, invest in our son’s college fund, invest in a property development project, build a sinking fund (for things like car or furnace replacements), and begin the three-to-five-year effort to pay off our mortgage entirely, and we also want to do some giving. I want us to be good treasurers. Making all this happen will require careful use of our income – frugality – and living way below our means. But hey, we’ve done it before, and we can do it again. The results are worth it. And we can always budget in the fun things and experiences that really mean the most to us. But I want to get expenses down, eliminate wasteful spending, and use what we have more smartly. Also, I started a small publishing business this year. I plan to get all my business financial records brilliantly and simply organized for tax preparation and records. I want to get the taxes done nice and early. Finally, I want to keep planning for the future financially on my own and with my husband. I love envisioning and planning for a beautiful financial future, and I think it’s a powerful exercise that, with follow-through, brings good results. 

HEALTHY 

Health is the greatest wealth, so I want to place to big emphasis on the healthy well-being, energy, and happiness of everyone in my household. Sleep is priority number one for maintaining good health in my opinion. So we’ll stick to early bedtimes during the week. Then next most important thing for health is good nutrition. I want my family to eat mostly plant-based, highly nutritious whole foods (vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, seeds, grains), with plenty of water, plenty of protein, and some wild, free-range fish, eggs, meat, and dairy, and some carefully chosen nutritional supplements. I want to shop for these items frugally, and carefully keep garbage foods out of the house, like refined sugar, white flour, and processed edibles. But we will have some indulgences. I want to keep everyone healthy, thriving, and increase all our longevity odds as much as possible. I don’t love cooking, so I plan to keep things easy with smoothies, and easy-to-grab healthy foods. But I truly do want to develop a true love for cooking and serving food too. I know good meals can be wonderful in bringing people together. Also, I want myself and my family to get plenty of exercise-type movement too. I want to make sure everyone in the house stays up-to-date on doctor and dentist visits, especially preventative stuff. And also, I want everyone in the family to have plenty of mental space to think, listen, learn, and further develop executive function skills, so we can all maximize our autonomy, control, and happiness. At the same time, I want to remember we are human, and no one’s health is perfect. Sometimes we must all play the game of life, even when we’re injured, tired, and uninspired. And luckily, sometimes we are full of energetic gusto. In both cases, life goes on, and we’ve got to have faith in good things and give life, our loved ones, and ourselves all the best.

TIMELY

I want to be early or on time during the workweek: to wake up, to wake up my son, to leave for work, to arrive at work, to start working, to leave work, to arrive home, to head upstairs with my son, to set my alarm and turn off my phone for the night, and to turn the lights off and go to sleep. I want to do some gratitude/motivation journaling right when I wake up, then early in the mornings I’ll check all my personal online accounts including social media too, and at lunch I’ll check on a few publishing business tasks and tend to any home economics needs that need to be taken care of during business hours. Then in the evenings, I’ll be free to spend more time away from my computers, and with my family. I’ll also have time to work on home economics-related things that will hopefully be very happy experiences. On the weekends, I’d like to be a little more loose about timing, so we can all get a break from the fast pace and chill out and work on home economics type things. Somewhere in the mix, I’ll need some alone time, and plenty of quality time with family and friends.

FRIENDLY

This is a big one. The people in my life are very important to me, and The Year of Home Economics is all about making life with those people as good as possible. My husband and son are at the center of my life. I want to be very present with them, because they’re important to me, and I’m lucky I have them. It’s essential I cooperate with them well, so we can help each other survive and thrive. It’s a tip top priority for me to support and cheer them on in having wonderful lives. I also want good things for the rest of my family, and friends, and community, and everyone. A happy life at home is good for my little family, but I’m pretty sure it’s good for the larger world too. At least that’s how I can justify my inward focus on making my home flourish. Also, I’m going to buy a few flowering plants and constantly have something flowering at home. And I have so many brilliant home economists in my own life: my parents (in the city), my in-laws (in the country), other family and friends. I will certainly be opening up my mind and my heart to these domestic wizards. I want to enjoy quality time with some of these wonderful people. I hope they’ll share some of their home economics skills, so I can learn how they make their homes run so beautifully well, and so I can bring some of their suggestions home. I want to set a good tone and brighten up my home and the homes of others. 

MINDFUL 

The Year of Home Economics is kind of intimidating to me, because I’ve never considered myself a skilled housekeeper. But I think it’s a goal worth shooting for. In some ways, I have a wild, unfocused mind. Yes, I whip myself into a state of focus most weekdays to wake up at 5am, so I can do international sales work in an office all day, so I can parent my 3-year-old son with my husband, to write, to accomplish big goals like our debt payoff or writing my book. But life-at-home is the most unwieldy part of my life in some ways. It’s harder to focus. It’s easier to get engrossed in unproductive activities or hyper-focused on select things. Home is also where I relax, sleep, nurse my wounds, and nurture other people. Home is where I deal with the messiest parts of my own life and my own mind. This year, I’ll need to compartmentalize some of those literal and figurative messes into boxes, and focus on the whole home economics picture. Then I’ll tend to each of those messy boxes thoughtfully, one at a time. I’ll approach The Year of Home Economics with patience, strategy, and the attitude of a diligent student. I also want to be able to frequently step back from the constant overstimulation of life and calmly consider strategy, and be thoughtful, and be happy just because.

FREE

I really want some free time. That’s kind of why I’ve designed my weekdays to keep the evenings and weekends free and open for home-enhancing activities. I also want to get our finances in increasingly good order so we can experience as much financial freedom as possible.

ACTUALIZED 

The whole point of The Year of Home Economics is to have an incredible life. I’m just picking what I consider a weakness of mine – housekeeping – and I’m trying to make it a strength. I want to be a domestic goddess. It’s a paradigm change. I chose the word “actualized” for to describe this concept, because it reminds me of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. Basically, when the fundamental needs of life are met, you can become self-actualized and have more peak experiences. I like to dream big and think big, so having more juice to accomplish big goals and live a beautiful life is a compelling reason to focus on home economics. Today is January, 6th 2020, and so far, so good. All the best to you in the Roaring 20s! Hope it’s all fabulous.

All the best!