New Year's Resolutions For The Slackers (Like Me)

Maybe you’ve made a resolution to revamp your life this New Year. Maybe you’ll save money to take that dream vacation. Maybe you’ll KonMari the house. Maybe you’ll just buy less stuff. Maybe you’ll donate more to charity. Maybe you’ll work out more, or eat more healthy food. You’ll reach out to old friends. You’ll get around to all those household chores, like cleaning your baseboards and power washing the siding. Maybe you’ll talk less, smile more.

And you know what? Maybe the rest of us DGAF about any of this. We need resolutions for the rest of us. We need resolutions for the realists, the slackers, the people who won’t keep up that goddamn gym membership. We need attainable goals, people. Something a person can get their hands around. Something an actual parent can feel accomplished about. We need real resolutions.

1. Make a resolution to cope with those cups your kids leave everywhere.

Oh, you know the ones I’m talking about. Your kids grab a cup of water. They take three sips. They leave the plastic cup you bought for $0.99 at Target on the edge of the coffee table. An hour later, they get another cup, fill it with juice, drink half of it, and stick it on the kitchen table. There’s three plastic cups in their bedroom and a plastic cup in the bathroom and this is why we can’t have nice things, dammit. This year, make a resolution: one cup per child per day so help me god. Make your child live by it. Then make them put the damn cup in the sink before they go to bed.

2. Resolve to take charge of the Stuffie Situation.

It’s DefCon 5 in your kid’s room, and the stuffies are the Soviet Union. They’re slowly advancing, gaining more territory every day, and your children welcome their cuddly overlords. Make. It. Stop. Sneak in there when they aren’t looking. Snatch up the ones they won’t miss. You know the ones I mean: the ones they don’t play with and won’t notice when they disappear to the Goodwill Down The Road (note: do not visit that Goodwill for some time). Yeah, that stuffie mammoth is soooooo adorable. Be ruthless. Have a heart of steel. Cuteness is their superpower and they deploy it with impunity. You do not need their cute in your life.

3. Stop treating Target as a recreational activity.

Yeah, it’s fun. Yeah, they always have deals in the clearance aisles and you got that Cartwheel app and holy shit you can save so much money that way, OMG. But for serious, people: you can save even more money if you don’t go to Target in the first place. There are places called parks. There are places called museums. There are places called woods that you can walk in and see nature and sometimes there are flappy things called birds that make noises. You will save money and see the world. And you can always drive thru Starbucks on the way there, so don’t you even use that as an excuse.

4. Make a resolution to clean out that junk drawer.

You will find all sorts of treasures, like birthday candles you never used and matches and dead batteries and paperclips and placecard holders and maybe even some tape and scissors if you’re super super lucky. You will also find lots of junk. You will throw most of it away. You will feel so, so good about yourself when you are finished. Your kids will steal some of it and scatter it through the house, which will be super annoying, and they’ll hover while you clean, so do this after they go to bed.

5. Stop dropping your wrappers and trash on the floor of your car.

Yeah, you do it. Don’t even try to lie. Make a resolution to stop that shit.

6. Stop living out of clothes baskets.

Make a resolution this year to actually fold the clothes and put them in the drawer. That’s right. It’s hard. It’s brutal. But we believe in you. We believe that you are capable of folding a shirt and putting it in a drawer. You can do this. The struggle is real and this is not bullshit.

7. Make a resolution to replace your goddamn makeup.

You should not use the same tube of mascara that you were using a decade ago, and you know who you are. Every kind of makeup has an expiration date. Learn it. Replace your shit, people. Don’t be gross. You will give yourself some kind of eye infection eventually and don’t say Scary Mommy didn’t warn your ass.

8. Sometimes don’t wear yoga pants.

No, seriously. Just once in a while, make a resolution not to wear yoga pants or leggings. Or if you wear leggings, make them fancy leggings. Just do it once in a while. You don’t have to be that parent that looks all fancy-pants every goddamn day and makes the rest of us feel like scrubs. Just like, once a week or something.

9. Clean out your damn purse.

Do you really need that Target receipt from 2018? No, I didn’t think so. You also don’t need that unidentifiable sticky thing and that pacifier, since your kid is five and gave up pacis like three years ago. Clean that shit out, then make a resolution to keep it that way.

10. Make a resolution to throw away some of the art.

No, really. You can let it go. You are not throwing away your child’s childhood. You are not throwing away your child. You are throwing away a blop of paint on a piece of paper that a teacher wrote “KADEN” across the top of. Keep like, two or three nice pieces. Ditch the rest.

11. Do something about that resting bitch face.

Just kidding. You keep rockin’ that RBF, and make a resolution to loudly shout ‘Oh, fuck off!’ to anyone who dares to comment about it. We don’t owe the world a smile, unless we want to give it.