New Year’s Resolutions are awful. They basically set you up for failure. I remember my parents ‘giving up smoking’ every January 1. After about three days, the six of us kids would literally be begging to walk down to the corner store to buy their nicotine-starved cranky selves some cigarettes (we could do that in those days).

I haven’t noticed myself losing twenty pounds any other January in the last decade or two, so no point in making that a resolution. I really should pick something environmental- like, I recycle everything, but my environmental dirty secret is paper towels. I am all about saving Mother Earth until someone tells me I can’t clean my counters with paper towels. Then, I’d pretty much chop down the last rainforest tree myself to get more. Sad. So, maybe this year I will try to find like recycled paper towels that will make me feel less guilty.

I think we should all resolve to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves and to accept just being good enough. In that spirit, I offer the following list of

10 New Year’s Resolutions for Being Good Enough:

1. I resolve to only worry about cleaning the kitchen floor when it is so sticky that my shoes come off when I try to walk across it.

2. I resolve to eat extra dessert only when it something really, really good.

3. I resolve to not gossip about people unless it is so steamy and so juicy that it absolutely cannot be avoided.

4. I resolve to exercise, as long as hauling laundry up and down three flights of stairs counts as exercise.

5. I resolve to have the children be clean enough so that it is evident they have been bathed sometime recently. Nails trimmed, teeth brushed, and faces unsticky as often as reasonably possible.

6. I resolve to have no more than 1 foot of ‘stuff’ on the floor of my car, not including McDonalds bags that can be crunched down to less than one foot.

7. I resolve to send thank you notes, but only for gifts with a value exceeding $5000.

8. I resolve to water the garden and plants so that 75% have a fighting chance for survival. In fact, I will practice Darwinian Gardening: Survival of the Fittest plants and flowers.

9. I resolve to supply my family with healthy meals, providing ketchup, French fries and sweet potato chips can be counted as vegetables and fruit snacks with a reasonable percentage of something healthy-sounding can be considered fruits.

10. I resolve to learn to appreciate the dust bunnies that gather in the corners of the rooms in my house, as they can be considered family pets after a certain amount of time.

So Happy New Year everyone! Let’s celebrate our mediocrity together proudly!