This is not going to be a conversation about making grand, sweeping gestures to overhaul your life. If you need and want to make one of those, give it a go! Press the detonation button! Do the big thing! But for the rest of us, we’re tired and looking valiantly for the path of least resistance en route to The Good Life. (If there was such a thing as the path of zero resistance, I’d sign up to be that tour guide. But no, living takes a modicum of effort [*😑🫠*].) The good news is that there are a bunch of little things we can do to make this experience of being alive that much better.

I’m going to give you a bullet point list of examples, and before I do it, I’m going to warn you. You’re going to raise at least one eyebrow. You might be inclined to dismiss these examples with a “yeah, whatever,” and go on with your day. Or you might get all smarmy on me and say, “as if that’s going to make a difference” in that condescending tone—flipping the table over and storming out of the room. Regardless of how you act, please don’t underestimate the compounding impact of small changes. If one change makes a 2% improvement in your morning, and another change makes a 3% improvement in your afternoon, well, you can do the math: that’s a 75% improvement in your day. (There you go, flipping the table again.) (I’m too insecure to not clarify that I know 2 + 3 does not equal 75. And a 5% bump in our life satisfaction is pretty darned noteworthy.)

Here goes it: Your Take-or-Leave Laundry List of Simple Ways to Make Living a Little Bit Better:

1. Take a gander at your wardrobe.

Our attire is obviously linked to our self-esteem. Is there something you’ve been meaning to replace/ upgrade, but just haven’t gotten around to it because you think you’ll get to it “sooner or later” (IGNORING THE FACT YOU MIGHT DIE SOONER THAN LATER)? Making the upgrade might be better for your life.

• Uncomfortable with your white T-shirt situation, since maybe they aren’t so white anymore? And you’d feel a lot better about yourself if you actually had white and not smoker’s-teeth-with-jaundice-colored T-shirts? This is a solvable problem: order some online right now and call it a day.
• Is your underwear scraggly and you’re kind of embarrassed about it, even when you’re alone? Order some new stuff and call it a day/ one hell of an evening.
• Maybe you don’t need to replace anything… you just need to purge the old bolero ties and stirrup pants.
• I’ve been wearing these ratty running shoes since we moved here to Palm Springs, and I don’t even remember how long I had them beforehand when we were in Chicago. I have been wearing these shoes into the ground (I mean that literally because most of the time it’s a running-shoe-melting-temperature here in the desert, so the soles are pretty much just globs of melted-and-hardened plastic). I wear orthotics to help with my 13 different feet issues. Why am I not ordering new shoes? I know they aren’t cheap but isn’t my mobility… a priority? I just need to order a new pair, and then my life will be 2% better.

2. Look around your kitchen.

This isn’t the time to talk about a total renovation, although I love those shows, too. This is about rummaging through your drawers and realizing, “hey, wait a minute… If I just had a can opener that worked better my life would be better.”

• We all need a can opener that works. Get an OXO one and start living the life you’ve imagined (and I’m not even sponsored by those can opening people).
• Maybe you need to go and get your knives sharpened… which is exactly what we need to do here in this house. We keep talking about it, and then we keep doing nothing about it. I want to cut through a tomato without squashing it. That’s not the kind of life I want to live. I want Sharp Knife Life, don’t you?
• Oh and should we talk about your spice rack? Oh yes, yes we should. Go get rid of that expired shit and don’t come back and see me until the job is done. You are going to turn those little bottles over and you are going to be flabbergasted that your cumin expired in 2018. Don’t question it. Don’t try to barter with yourself that it’s still okay (like The Husband does). Just throw that shit out and buy new stuff. And then use it! Go and get a cumin-centered recipe and make your kitchen smell like life’s getting lived in there.
• Our life got better when we put a little tiny acrylic wine rack in the fridge. Yes, this does say some things about me, but I don’t give a care! Now I know that I always have at least six bottles chilled and ready to go for like a random Thursday morning, and said bottles aren’t rolling around jockeying for space amidst all the leftover cumin dishes.

3. Look around your environment.

You know your home has an impact on your well-being—whether it’s clean ‘n tidy or ripe ‘n ready to audition for that Hoarders TV show. You don’t need to rent a 1-800-GOT-JUNK bin today, but maybe a few tiny tweaks can help you incrementally like your life.

• Have you been dragging your heels about putting up those pictures in your office? Organizing your bookshelf like you’ve always planned, maybe in that super-cute-organized-by-color way? Maybe you’ve been meaning to fix the rip in the couch (the one that shows) or finally finish that last coat of paint in the bathroom? Again, these aren’t major investments in terms of time and money—rather a matter of deciding to do it and then doing it and then feeling better about the place you call home.
• Maybe cleaning is your nemesis (👈 yeah, we could go for drinks and bond over that one). If you can afford it, just hire someone to come in even once a month to get the stupid stuff done like the baseboards and the back-breaking scrubby stuff. If that’s out of your budget, just pick one thing that’s making you feel disgusting and attack it this weekend like someone who wants to like life 1.5% more. For me it’s the kitchen drawers… why are there so many crumbs in the utensil drawer? Who is putting all the crumbs there? I will wait for the answer. […..] The silence is deafening.
• Dianne, a reader-friend of this blog, shared this gem last year: “I am a bit of a clean freak but I think this ‘hack’ could be helpful to those who would not describe themselves as such – I keep the basic bathroom cleaning supplies (comet, windex, paper towel) under each sink in each bathroom in my house. I have two bathrooms but they are on different floors of my house. It just makes it so easy to grab the comet cleanser or the windex when it is needed.” This might solve so many of my life problems?
• If you have a yard, yank out the dead plant that has been killing your soul every time you walk by it. You don’t have to replant it just yet, although you will need to do that or else you’ll be the pariah of your neighborhood (if you aren’t already), but at the very least, get rid of the dead carcass of the plant. The Husband and I have a dead thing in our front yard and I’m grimacing right now as I type this. Maybe we can use our sharpened knives to cut the thing out of the ground, I don’t know.
• And maybe you need to once and for all put a box of Kleenex in the car. You can go do that right now and then come back and finish the article. Same thing about putting Kleenex in all the places that will make your life better, like the coffee table and bedroom side table and wherever else your bodily fluids ooze out of you. This article is not sponsored by Kleenex but they can negotiate with the OXO people and we’ll see where it lands.
• Go get a garbage can that’s actually big enough for your bathroom, rather than those stupid hotel sized ones that hold two Q-tips and three strings of floss. Right on cue…

4. Take a look at your hygiene.

Brace yourself: research agrees that grooming is good for us. But this isn’t about going to the spa or getting a deep plane facelift. These are tiny tweaks…

• Maybe you’ve been planning to floss more, but you haven’t gotten around to it. Public service announcement: people who don’t floss die so much sooner than people who do floss. Don’t make me bore you with the details but this shit can’t be made up. So make the decision to set an alarm on your phone every night to go off at a time that won’t offend you and just floss your stupid teeth already. I floss in the morning BECAUSE I AM RECKLESS LIKE THAT but also dentally responsible enough to do it daily.
• Same thing about maybe how you’ve been wanting to whiten your teeth… just go and buy the strips. Or go get Invisalign if it’ll make you feel better about yourself.
• If you have reached your lifetime limit of shaving, make that laser hair removal appointment.
• Go get the eyeliner tattooed on your eyelids and never spend a moment trying to do a straight line again on your own. (And if you do do that, please tell me how it goes? I think my eyelids are too flappy and floppy now that I have hit 50, but you never know?)
• I finally put an extra set of cuticle cutters in my office—perfect for boring Zoom meetings when you have time to clean things up around the nail bed, you know?

5. Take a look at your technology.

At the risk of sounding like I work at the LAX Brookstone, are you set up for tech success? Oh God this one makes me so queasy I can barely type. Tech and I have a checkered relationship history. But you know what I’m talking about… sketchy technology leads to panic attacks and/or death.

• Set up a little tech-bag that lives in your suitcase so that you always have your chargers for your laptop and iPad and iPhone and Apple Watch and iPod and whatever else you need to charge when you’re jet-setting off to the Poconos.
• Finally get chargers in a few rooms in the house so that you’re not always running upstairs or downstairs or into the dungeon or wherever you keep your charger right now. This might be endorsing less physical “steps” in your day but it’s all about a well-charged phone.
• Organize your passwords Once and For All. You could go high tech with an online service (😵‍💫?) or go low tech and write everything in a Word document called “Best Cumin Recipes Ever!” (just to throw the identity theft/ bad guys off the password scent). I just got a new phone and I am hoping to never need ¾ of the apps again because I can’t get into them anyways since usernames and passwords are the games of the devil.
• Get a new phone/ laptop/ whatever already. I had an old phone for years (maybe longer than my melted running shoes) and the battery was dying by 11am every day. One cannot live The Good Life like that. New phone, new life. (Except for the app password thing.)

6. Make the doctor’s appointment.

I know this one isn’t as easy as getting a spare cuticle cutter. Have you been talking/thinking for more than three months about making that medical appointment? About getting your physical? Yeah, you’re not alone.

• Book the damned dermatologist appointment already and get that gnarly thing burned off your body. Go see the endocrinologist to get the hormone pills (timed beautifully to go with all that fancy new underwear). Go get your check up so you don’t feel like an ass if you die from something that could’ve been caught and fixed earlier (I AM LOOKING AT YOU, READERS WITH PROSTATES AND/ OR BREASTS!) Just make the appointment and the good news is that if it’s in your calendar you’ll probably show up.
• I got a new prescription for eyeglasses and let’s just say I’m seeing facial expressions so much clearer on all the shows I watch. Now I can see that tough-cool nurse from The Pitt with clarity! And I’m pretty sure anyone who needs reading glasses has more than one pair, but if you don’t, step it up. One in every room and every drawer is sound advice for a squint-free life. (OMG my new phone has a magnifying feature and it’s almost as exciting to me as a cheese plate.)
• I have had this little rash on the side of my mouth for two months now. I’m a vain person! I don’t like rashes on my face! Obviously I love them on the rest of my body, but not my face! Have I done anything about it? No. Because I am just waiting. Tolerating. Letting the days go by. I’ve had enough of this face rash bullshit and I’m calling the doctor so I can get some kind of cream or a face amputation or whatever it takes. It will be a 30-minute appointment out of one day and maybe a bit of drugs, but then hopefully I will get on with my life. My better, rash-free life.

Alright, you know me—I could keep going with examples. I want nothing more than to list out 740 bullet points with you right here, but you’ll probably only stick with me for the first 700 or so. You have a bunch of ideas about how you’ve enhanced your own life, too. Can I be nosy/inquisitive and ask for you to share them with me, so that I can compile a list? Email me at jodi @ fourthousandmondays dot com.

Never underestimate the impact of a tiny life change. Life is a cacophony of fuckery! It’s hard enough making it through a day or a week or a month or a year of our lives, what with larger scale forces at work. If we can eliminate some of the minor inconveniences/ settlings/ snafus in our lives and make some seemingly trivial adjustments, why wouldn’t we do that to enhance our experience of being alive?

Life’s too short to have a teeny tiny garbage can in the bathroom. You with me?