"Will a tidy house make you happier?", asks Leah McLaren.

It's not that I'm not good at it!

Today is my birthday, and I just got my first gift: Leah McLaren's hilarious article Will a tidy house make you happier? in this morning's Globe and Mail. When I read her intro: "A tiny perfect 29-year-old Japanese woman has arrived in the West to explain how we can all fix our lives from the outside in.", I knew I was in for a treat. (Update March 4, 2016: Leah just published a new and hilarious article in the Globe on the two books by Marie Kondo, Japan's Queen of Clean.)

Last week, a friend casually commented that I'm not good at housekeeping. It occurred to me as a curious comment. Who is not good at housekeeping? It's not rocket science. I could beautifully clean up my whole house with a box of Q-tips if I wanted. But I don't. 

I thought that pointing out that I choose to do other things (more interesting to me) would not be gracious so I let it go. As I'm writing this post, I'm surrounded by post-tax report piles, last weeks' visitors bedding has not been put away yet, I see lots of finger marks on the wall by the computer and I can barely see through my windows.

The thing is, who am I to judge how people spend their time. I'm hoping people who are "good" at cleaning get more pleasure out of it than I do.

Spoiler alert
Leah McLaren ends her article with the McLeah housekeeping method. "First you look around your house; second, you lower your expectations; and third, you select a book from a random pile and read it." What's not to love about that woman!

My own version would be:"First you look around your house; second, you lower your expectations; and third, you call a girlfriend and go for a walk."  What would be yours?

Excerpt from Leah McLaren's second article on the subject
One of the six fake TIPs she created in the voice of Marie Kondo:
2. Imagine your ideal lifestyle
"In your mind's eyes, you are a tiny, flawlessly dressed Japanese woman living in a 600-square-foot Tokyo apartment who eats a small bowl of fish and seaweed each night before retiring in silence to her tatami mat to count her enormous book royalties on a paper-thin smartphone."