Hmm, it's January 30 and I think I can say with confidence that my "15 minutes a day of cleaning" thing has been a moderate success. I'm getting better at doing the cleaning each day instead of just saving up those quarter hours for Saturday. Certain tasks take me easily beyond the 15 minutes, but once I get started I don't care so much. The big gain has been that the goal makes me get started. Started is good. My houselet isn't the most beautiful thing on the planet yet - not by a long shot. But it is better on the whole.

February's goal will be to stretch every day. Up until a few months ago I could just plop down into splits anytime. No warm-up needed. That isn't so much the case any longer. (Which I know because I have a gymnastics class every Tuesday night.) I don't know why, but it isn't a trend I wish to encourage so I guess I'll have to actually work at staying flexible now.

So I don't really do New Years' Resolutions. I do smaller, more frequent resolutions throughout the year. Which I am adept at breaking just about as quickly as the average American breaks his or her New Years' resolutions. Yay me?

Anyway, in addition to a vague intention to really start thinking about maybe getting on some of my 101 in 1001 list items, I'm going to make a New Years' resolution this year. Really. Except it is going to be spread out over the year so I can flake 12 times instead of all at once. My resolution is to pick up 12 good habits this year - one per month.

January is the dawn of the "clean or pick up for 15 minutes each day Monday - Friday leaving weekends free for fun." The benefit is that if I flake, I *can* pick up a missed day on Saturday (but NOT Sunday). But that is no fun. Since I hadn't thought of this resolution until Friday nightish, I did all of last week on Saturday (and also I had a friend coming over and the house was not even up to 'friend who claims to be bad housekeeper' standards). But starting today, it's 15 minutes per day.