Originally, my 2013 New Year’s resolution was to stop making New Year’s resolutions. Or, at the very least, to stop making the same resolution that I have made for the past 15 years—lose weight & get in shape. Every year, I make the same promise to myself that THIS IS THE YEAR the magic will happen! But it’s not magic, it’s diet and exercise, and I hate it. So, this year I decided to aim for a different goal, one that I knew could be reached—to get the house completely organized.

This would be no small undertaking. I envisioned myself tearing through this house like a wild fire leaving nothing in my wake. I would systematically move from one room to another organizing every drawer, cabinet and closet. Items that hadn’t been used in years would either be donated or sold in a massive garage sale. I was going to be rich! And the house was going to be so much easier to clean without all the unnecessary stuff everywhere.

I started with the pantry.

I took everything off the shelves and wiped them down. Anything that was expired, moldy or suspicious looking was tossed out. With great pleasure I dumped all remaining Medifast Meals from last year’s failed resolution attempt in the garbage. What an exciting and liberating experience this was proving to be! I moved from the pantry to the kitchen and organized everything in sight. I tried to reduce the 3 junk drawers down to one, but we had too much stuff so I just renamed them instead. We now have a “bill paying drawer”, a “junk drawer”, and a “miscellaneous drawer”.

I then tackled the coat closet, the closet under the stairs, the garage and the laundry room. As I moved from room to room, I made quite a few discoveries. Like why in the world do we have 6 bottles of Draino? And why are they scattered all over the house? I started to notice how many items we had in duplicate and triplicate. Who needs 4 bottles of Armour All and Shout It Out? Or 3 tire pressure gauges for a two-car household? How much money had we been foolishly spending purchasing items we already had on hand, simply because we weren’t organized?

I ran upstairs to tackle the studio. There I discovered 7 pairs of scissors, 17 rolls of scotch tape, 30 various colored and sized highlighters and countless other redundant art and office supplies. (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I did just recently shut down my art education business and sold off most of my inventory, but not all of it. The items mentioned above however were not used for my company. These came from our personal stash, collected over years of making art and apparently hoarding supplies.)

After 5 trips to Goodwill and even more to the dumpster, I finally finished cleaning out the upstairs studio and am halfway to my goal of organizing the entire house—and it’s only the beginning of March! It looks like I may actually make good on this year’s resolution.

And as a bonus, it turns out that deep cleaning the house is some seriously good cardio exercise! I think I may have actually sweat off a few pounds. Maybe I should take the money I’ll save this year from not having to buy all of the items I already have in excess and go join Weight Watchers to get a jump start on next year’s resolution.

But for now, I think I’ll just take a little break, put my feet up and have a beer. (or two…or three) After all, I do have a whole year.