52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 29: Make Your Beds in the Morning
OK, bear with me here. I promise I am not trying to sell you on the idea that your life will magically be a happier place if you get on top of the housework. I mean quite simply that making your bed in the morning—and asking your kids to make their beds—will make you a little happier every single day, even if it is the only housecleaning that gets done that day.
Making your bed is just one little thing—it only takes a few minutes to do, but it makes a big difference in the way your bedroom looks, not to mention the way it feels at the end of the day when you retreat back into your bedroom to relax. When your kids make the bed, their rooms look less messy, and they’re less likely to lose their shoes and whatever books or electronics they took to bed with them the night before. Because it’s so easy and you do it before your day kicks into high gear, it also feels totally doable—making your bed doesn't require a lot of extra energy or brain power.
Even more than the easy neatness factor, though, is the way that making your bed gives you a feeling of accomplishment—hey, look, I did this!—every morning that you do it. Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, says that morning bed-making is consistently one of the biggest happiness boosters for people who do it for this very reason: It lets you start every day feeling like you’re an organized, productive, efficient person.
