Nearly everyday, at different points in the day, I make the same three decisions.

1.I decide to try and prepare more of my own food and be more nutritionally aware.

2.I decide to run – or go to the gym, or workout to a video, or take a walk, or whatever my exercise of choice is at the time.

3.I decide to do a better job of cleaning my house.

Clearly, these are important goals in my life, and even though I make the same decisions almost everyday, it feels like I never make any real progress towards the goals. Here’s a recent example:

About 2 months ago I decided to begin the Couch to 5K program. I’ve always wanted to be a runner and there’s no real reason I’m not. So, everything went great the first week, and the second. By the third week, I was feeling confident enough to tell a few people what I was doing and to start thinking about running an actual race just to prove to myself it’s possible.

Week four, though. Whew. Week four kicked my ass. In a big way. The first day of week four was so hard I didn’t complete the recommended running/walking times. I thought I was going to puke by the end of it. Still I looked forward to running and felt a sort of loss on days I didn’t. By the end of week four, I could do it without thinking I might die. It felt great and  I felt great and everything was going according to plan.

But I never started week five. I don’t know why, but that is my pattern. After following any fitness program, regime, diet or whatever for about a month, I just stop – totally proving that the theory it takes 21 days to create a habit is bunk.

It’s the same with both of the other decisions, too. I will clean the whole house, feel a sense of peace and contentment and vow to do  a little everyday so it never gets so bad again. But it does. Every single time, in fact. I might keep things neat and clean for a couple of weeks, or even a month, but unfailingly we find ourselves living in the midst of clutter and chaos again.

And cooking. I love to cook, and have a horror of getting food poisoning from a restaurant. There are only a couple I trust at all. I’m a huge supporter of CSAs, farmers’ markets, locally grown food and eating food as natural as I can get it. I know how to bake bread, soak and cook all kinds of beans and even how to can or freeze most kinds of produce. Yet, I end up eating out more often than I will ever admit.

Now, after reading about all those lapses in discipline, don’t imagine I don’t have any will power. I put myself through college on sheer will alone. I’ve done lots of things that require a hefty amount of perseverance. So, I’m at a loss as to explain why these three relatively easy habits are so difficult for me to maintain. After all, two of them are habits that I really enjoy – running is awesome, and homemade, healthy food rocks. Cleaning I can’t really say I like doing.

Do most people have things like this that they struggle to do regularly? Even things that are enjoyable? Why?

“Not enough time” is not a valid excuse in my mind. We all have time to do the things we care most about – especially me and especially now.

These three goals are important enough that I am not going to give up on them – I’ll just keep trying different things until something sticks and the habits form properly.

This time the experiment will be to make a six month commitment to do only one of the three. I’m going to begin with week three of the Couch to 5K program and will report back on how it worked in December. Wish me luck.

We live in an old house. It’s not an old house like the ones you see on This Old House, either. It’s a house that started out as two rooms, built by poor people out of whatever they could lay their hands on. This is not to say it doesn’t have the charm old houses develop – it does. You know upon crossing the threshold that this has been home to lots of people and that their have been happinesses and saddnesses within these walls.

But. It also has issues, and plenty of them. It’s barely off the ground, the ceiling is low – about 6’5″ so all of our tall friends are constantly breaking our lightbulbs – the rooms all run into each other, the doorways are narrow and in odd places, the windows in the living room don’t open, and this list could go on and on.

Something as simple as deciding where to put the furniture is a huge challenge. Here are the obstacles that must be surmounted in the living room:

• It was originally two rooms, so is long and very narrow.
• There is a doorway from the kitchen on the extreme right-hand side of one of the short walls, and another doorway to the bathroom and a bedroom on the extreme left-hand side of the other short wall.
• The only window in the entire house that will accomodate a window air-conditioning unit is on a long wall.
• There is a short – maybe 2′ foot – wall sticking out in the middle of the room. This is where there used to be a doorway and a wall separating two rooms. We are afraid the ceiling will collapse if we take this remaining piece down.
• There are two non-opening windows on either side of a non-functioning fireplace. The mantel and hearth are made of mountain stone that has been plastered over.
• There is a closet (one of only three in the house) sticking out on one long wall.
• There are only 2 electrical outlets and one of them is located literally halfway up a wall – maybe 4′ up. My theory is that this is so everyone could see it and know the family that installed electricity had it.
• All three windows are on the same long wall as the fireplace and the other long wall has two doorways and a closet on it.

No matter what we do, we end up feeling as if we are sitting in two rows that face each other. The couch will fit in exactly two places, and the positions of the TV and computer are limited due to outlets and cable boxes.

We’ve lived here for about 4 and a half years, so we’ve done a bit of experimenting, which is to say we’ve tried  every configuration we could think of. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention our TV. It’s one fo the big, old console kinds. The thing is just massive. I’m seriously considering selling most of our possessions on craigslist so that we can buy one of those swanky-hang-on- the-wall-new-fangled TVs.

When I got laid off in April, and started working on SmilingTree Writing with a little more, ummm, let’s say urgency, our computer was sitting on an antique school desk. A flat, wooden one with a pencil holder, with a standard-sized desk chair scooted up as close as it could get. The “computer desk” was pushed up close to the couch – in fact, you could turn the moniter and sit on the couch (very uncomfortably) and operate the computer. This meant that when both kids were home the conditions around the computer were less than ideal for working.

About 3 weeks ago, I started thinking about how we could change things so that I have a little workspace. Since my computer is actually our computer, it had to stay in the living room where we all can use it easily. We tossed ideas back and forth amongst ourselves, mostly me saying, “We could get rid of….” and being vetoed by my wonderful, stuff-loving family and them just shaking their heads saying, “I just don’t know.”

Finally, I decided where I wanted my desk to be. Then I decided the kitchen table would be a perfect desk. My talented husband offered to build a new kitchen table, and he did. It’s gorgeous – easily the most beautiful item I own.

It’s hard to describe how much rearranging the furniture motivates and inspires me. Maybe it’s a learned behavior. My mom used to move stuff all the time, and it was stuff like clocks and trash cans. I guess she was keeping us on our toes. I don’t know why or what, but something about planning, thinking, moving, cleaning – the whole process - makes me happy.

There are still small annoyances, of course. The bird cages are sort of pushed together and the room is still shaped like a hallway, but somehow, it seems much better. It always does.

Clutter. Mess. Junk. Dog hair. My house.

Today, my daughter came home from school and said, “You know mom, I’m not saying this to be mean, but I kinda thought now that you don’t have to go to work everyday, you would clean up the house.”

Well. I kinda thought that, too. There are so many things I enjoy doing more than cleaning. And this week, I’ve had the pleasure of several meetings. Cleaning has been fairly low on the priority list.

Besides attending meetings and trying to catch up on freelance projects that have been piling up, my little dog had to have surgery. She’s recovering nicely, but there was much stress and worry before the surgery.

This evening, I finally made time to wash the dishes. Not exactly earth-shaking, life-changing spring cleaning, but still a big difference in my kitchen. I also made my daughter take out the trash before she went on a date.

Sometimes it is absolutely amazing how much better you feel if you just do one small task. The idea of “cleaning the kitchen” was entirely too overwhelming to contemplate amid all the other bits and pieces of my life that need to be picked up and put back together in a pleasing pattern.

Washing the dishes was actually kind of relaxing. I stopped typing for a few minutes. The water was hot, there were suds and it was so easy to see the progress happening. Now when I need a spoon, all I have to do is get it out of the drawer.

It really is the little things. Tomorrow I may fold some laundry.

My house is rarely clean. It’s usually cluttered, there is almost always a minimum of one or two dirty dishes, a basket of laundry waiting to be folded and put away (I HATE putting-away), more than a basket waiting to be washed, and a fine coating of dust and dog hair on top of it all.

What can I say? There are two teenage girls living here, one of whom works 25-30 hours a week and goes to school, I work full time and write part time, my husband works full time and we have three dogs…It’s gonna get messy.

So, walking the line between messy and outright nasty is a constant challenge around here. Through the years, I’ve tried just about every strategy imaginable to keep it clean – from chore charts to allowances to a half hour of required cleaning time a week and everything in between. All of it works for a week or two, then we return to our normal state of utter chaos.

Last week I tried something new. Before anyone could go anywhere on Saturday, we all four (plus an unfortunate spend-the-night friend) had to clean for one hour. The three girls put on aprons and ipods and decided to work as a team, tackling first the kitchen, then the bedroom and bathroom. My husband cleaned his “area” next to his chair (yes, it did take the whole hour) and I took on the living room.

Unbelievably, it worked! The house was cleaner than it had been for quite sometime. And, bonus, since it was relatively clean, it was easier to spend a few minutes every evening maintaining the cleanliness and this weekend there are just a few must-be-done chores. Even the plants look happier.

I don’t know how long it will last, but for now, the one hour of cleaning has motivated us all to try and keep the mess under control.

Not much inspires me to clean.  Even though I know that I will feel better if my surroundings are clean, it takes some sort of push for me to get it done.  Maybe if friends are coming over or it is someone’s birthday…even then, I usually do the minimum necessary.  The thing is, I spend a lot of mental energy worrying about finding time to really clean.

There are plenty of excuses:  I have writing to do, I don’t feel good, I’ve worked all week – shouldn’t I enjoy the weekend? Most of the excuses are valid.  I do work full time and spend at least 15-20 hours a week building my writing business.  Then there are the two teenage girls who live in my house.  I used to think when they were old enough to help with the big stuff it would get easier.  Turns out, they have the same aversion to cleaning that I do.

I’ve tried set schedules and routines for cleaning and to make it just a part of my day.  That didn’t work.  I’ve tried making chore charts so that everyone in the family could share in the work.  That didn’t work.  I’ve tried declaring Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon chore time, where we all work together for 20-30 minutes cleaning.  That didn’t work.  I’ve tried going on strike to see how long it would take before the rest of my family couldn’t stand the mess anymore and cleaned it up (I do NOT recommend this route!).  That didn’t work.

Nothing has worked for any length of time.  And this is a personal problem that goes way, way back – to even before I had a space of my own to keep up.  By default, I tried to keep my dad’s house clean as a teenager because my younger brother and dad certainly didn’t care about the mess.  Really, I wish I could attain that sort of redneck zen, where the cleanliness of my house just didn’t matter and I could be happy and at ease even if there are empty drink cans all over the end tables and piles of laundry on the sofa.

In an effort to try and help inspire myself and my fellow slobs to do a better job of cleaning up, I’ve been looking for ways to make it a little easier:

• One of the biggest things is to visit someone who keeps a really neat house.  I always come back home and think, “I’m going to do a little more around here so my house is as comfortable as ……..”
• As a big fan of Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project, I enjoy reading her posts about how outer order promotes inner peace.  Her thoughts on the topic don’t always inspire me to get up and clean up but they usually sit in the back of my mind and help me feel motivated when there is time to clean.
• A recently discovered site is the Unclutterer.  It’s been around for awhile, but it is pretty entertaining. I find the “Workspace of the Week” photos particularly inspiring because I dream of having a neat and pleasant home office someday soon.

And now, I have to go wash dishes and put the clothes in the dryer.