Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

by Gretchen Rubin

  Also by Gretchen Rubin

  The Happiness Project

  Forty Ways to Look at JFK

  Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill

  Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide

  Profane Waste (with Dana Hoey)

  Copyright © 2012 by Gretchen Rubin

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN ARCHETYPE with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rubin, Gretchen Craft.

  Happier at home: kiss more, jump more, abandon a project, read Samuel Johnson, and my other experiments in the practice of everyday life / Gretchen Rubin.

  p. cm.

  1. Happiness. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) 3. Life skills. I. Title.

  BF575.H27R8298 2012

  158—dc23 2012001733

  eISBN: 978-0-307-88680-4

  Photographs courtesy of the author

  Jacket design by Michael Nagin

  Jacket photography © Neonlight/Shutterstock

  v3.1

  For Elizabeth

  To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.

  —Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 68

  “Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”

  —Virginia Woolf, “A Haunted House”

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  PREPARATION

  SEPTEMBER: POSSESSIONS

  Find a True Simplicity

  OCTOBER: MARRIAGE

  Prove My Love

  NOVEMBER: PARENTHOOD

  Pay Attention

  DECEMBER: INTERIOR DESIGN

  Renovate Myself

  JANUARY: TIME

  Cram My Day with What I Love

  FEBRUARY: BODY

  Experience the Experience

  MARCH: FAMILY

  Hold More Tightly

  APRIL: NEIGHBORHOOD

  Embrace Here

  MAY: NOW

  Remember Now

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Your Happiness Project

  The Eight Splendid Truths

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  A “happiness project” is an approach to the practice of everyday life. First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse. Second is the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness. Then comes the interesting part: keeping your resolutions.

  Happier at Home is the story of my second happiness project—what I tried, what I learned.

  In the five years since my first happiness project, people have pressed, “But did your project really make a difference? Your life didn’t change much. How much happier can you be?”

  It’s true, my life has remained the same: the same husband and two daughters, the same work, the same apartment, the same daily routine. Nevertheless, my happiness project really did heighten my happiness; when I made the changes I knew I ought to make, and followed my personal commandment to “Be Gretchen,” I was able to change my life without changing my life.

  “I can’t start a happiness project,” you might protest. “I don’t have any extra time, or extra money, or extra energy. I can’t add one more item to my to-do list.” But for the most part, my happiness project doesn’t require much time, or much money, or even much energy. It takes work to be happier, but it’s gratifying work; the real challenge is to decide purposely what to do—and then to do it.

  Why, I often wonder, is it difficult to push myself to do the things that bring happiness? So often, I know what resolutions would make me happier, but still I have to prod myself to do them. Every day, I struggle to give a kiss, to get enough sleep, to stop checking my email, to give gold stars. Every day, I remind myself to accept myself, and expect more from myself.

  My first happiness project was broad; Happier at Home is narrower, and deeper. Because I realized that of the many elements that influenced my happiness, my home—in all its aspects—was most important, I decided to take some time to concentrate my efforts there. This is the account of the strategies I used to feel more at home, at home.

  Of course, because this is my happiness project, it reflects my particular circumstances, values, interests, and temperament. Everyone’s idea of home, or happiness, is unique, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit from a happiness project.

  “Well,” you might think, “if everyone’s happiness project is unique, why should I bother to read about her project?” My study of happiness taught me that, perhaps surprisingly, I tend to learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sweeping philosophies or wide-ranging research. It’s from the experience of a particular individual that I learn most about myself—even if we two seem to have nothing in common. Some of my own best guides, it happens, continue to be an argumentative, procrastinating lexicographer, a nun who spent more than a third of her short life in a cloistered convent, and one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence.

  This book is the story of an education.

  I hope that reading about my happiness project will encourage you to start your own. Whenever you read this, and wherever you are, you are in the right place to begin.

  PREPARATION

  The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.

  —William Morris, “The Aims of Art”

  One late-summer Sunday evening, as I was unloading the dishwasher, I felt overwhelmed by a familiar but surprising emotion: I was hit by an intense wave of homesickness. Homesick—why? Perhaps the hint of some scent, or the quality of the light, had triggered a long-forgotten memory. Homesick—for what? I didn’t know. Yet even though I stood in my own kitchen, with my family in the next room, where Jamie watched golf on television while Eliza and Eleanor played Restaurant, suddenly I missed them terribly.

  I looked around me, at the blue stove, the wooden knife rack, the broken toaster, the view from the window, all so familiar that usually I forgot to notice them.

  “May I offer you some dessert this evening?” I could hear Eleanor asking in her best waitress voice. “We have apple, blueberry, and pumpkin pie.” I glanced into the next room, where I could see the tops of the girls’ heads; as usual, they were both wearing their straight brown hair in long, messy ponytails, and Eleanor sported a crooked waitress cap.

  “Blueberry, thank you,” Eliza answered primly.

  “What about me?” Jamie asked. “Isn’t the waitress going to take m
y order?”

  “No, Daddy! You’re not in the game!”

  What was this yearning I felt? I was homesick, I realized, with a prospective nostalgia for now and here: when Jamie and I live with our two girls under our roof, with our own parents strong and busy, with two little nephews just learning to talk and play, everyone healthy despite a few longstanding, nagging medical concerns, and no disaster looming except the woes of sixth grade.

  A line from the British literary giant Samuel Johnson floated through my mind. (My life differs in practically every way from that of Dr. Johnson, the eighteenth-century, dictionary-writing, eccentric genius, yet whenever I read Johnson, I understand myself better.) Johnson wrote: “To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.”

  That’s true, I reflected, pausing for a moment to think, before starting again, absentmindedly, to put away the dishes. Johnson was right; home was at the center of my life—for good and for ill. But what was “home,” anyway? What did I want from my home?

  Home is where I walk through the door without ringing the bell; where I take a handful of coins from the change bowl without asking; where I eat a tuna fish sandwich without misgivings about the ingredients; where I rifle through the mail. At the heart of this home is my family; where my family is, is home. If I lived by myself, home would be the place peopled with reminders of everyone I loved.

  My home is a place of unconditional belonging, which is part of its pleasure, part of its pain—as Robert Frost wrote, home is “Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” At home, I feel a greater sense of safety and acceptance, and also of responsibility and obligation. With friends, my hospitality is voluntary, but my family never needs an invitation.

  Although the people in it are its most important element, home is also a place of return, the physical hub of my schedule—and of my imagination. In my mind, the entire globe revolves around a single spot, where a bright red “You Are Here” arrow hovers undetected above our roof. When Jamie and I moved from our old apartment just ten blocks south to where we live now, I remember how all of New York City seemed to wobble and reorient itself, just slightly, to put us back at the very center.

  Behind our unremarkable front door waits the little world of our own making, a place of safety, exploration, comfort, and love. The dry scent of the coat closet, the faint clankings from the service elevator, the sight of our library books lined up by the front door, the flavor of the toothpaste we all share—this is my foundation.

  “Why have I never thought about home before?” I asked myself. Suddenly the idea of home exploded in my mind. “Home!” I exulted as I put the last mug on the shelf, “I’ll start another happiness project, and this time I’ll focus on home!” My mind began to race with ideas.

  I’d done a happiness project before, when for one year, I’d tackled many aspects of my life to try to boost my happiness. They say that research is “me-search,” and that the best way to learn a subject is to write a book about it; I’d undertaken my first happiness project for just those reasons. In particular, I’d realized that although I possessed all the elements of a happy life, too often I took my circumstances for granted and allowed myself to become overly vexed by petty annoyances or fleeting worries. I’d wanted to appreciate my life more, and to live up to it better.

  To address my aims systematically, I’d devised a plan: twelve months, each month dedicated to one theme (friendship, work, eternity, and so on), with each theme accompanied by a handful of modest resolutions. My plodding, methodical, and arguably excessive approach to happiness struck some people—such as Jamie—as a bit comical, but it suited me.

  And, although I love hearing about other people’s radical happiness projects, such as Henry David Thoreau moving to Walden Pond or Elizabeth Gilbert traveling to Indonesia, I’d aimed to find more happiness within my daily routine. I’m not an adventurous soul—I eat the same food every day and rarely stray from my neighborhood, and my idea of living on the edge is to leave the apartment without a sweater—and anyway, even if I’d wanted a big-adventure happiness project, I don’t think I could have pulled it off. (For me to leave town, even for one weekend, requires a NASA-level amount of advance logistical planning.) Given my two young children, my work, my husband, my multiplying to-do lists, and my homebody nature, a move to Paris or a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro wouldn’t have suited me. Instead, I’d set out to find greater happiness within my everyday life.

  In my first project, I’d worked out many general theories of happiness; for this project, I would build on what I’d learned. I foresaw an ambitious scheme covering all the elements that mattered for home, such as relationships, possessions, time, body, neighborhood.

  And I’d definitely replace our dud toaster.

  I closed the dishwasher, grabbed a handy Hello Kitty notepad and a pen, and sat down to take notes on which resolutions to undertake.

  I wouldn’t wait for January to pursue a list of new resolutions, I determined immediately. Instead I’d begin next month, in September. After all, September, too, marked the start of a new year, with the empty calendar and clean slate of the next school cycle. Even though I was no longer in school myself, September nevertheless remained charged with possibility and renewal. Each year, Labor Day was a milestone that provoked my self-evaluation and reflection, just as New Year’s Day, various major birthdays, high school and college reunions, and the publications of my books did. (These days, September was also the season of the Mother Olympics; with all the health forms, supply lists, and emergency contact sheets, I could barely keep track of everything I had to buy, fill out, or turn in.)

  This September marked two particular milestones for our family. Five-year-old Eleanor would start kindergarten, and the era of finger-painting, strollers, and noon dismissal would end forever. At the same time, eleven-year-old Eliza would enter sixth grade, the year that often marks the beginning of teenage drama; her childhood was drawing to a close. It seemed a good time to reevaluate my life.

  For the nine months of the school year, from September through May, I vowed, I’d strive to make home more homey. First, I’d address some basic tasks: I should make sure that we had some working flashlights and a fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink, and it was probably time to spring for a new toilet plunger. Beyond those rudimentary steps, however, what should I do?

  In perhaps the most famous first line of any novel, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Whether or not this sweeping statement is true, it suggests that happy families share certain elements. How could I cultivate these elements in my own family, in my own home? That was my central question.

  One important lesson from my first happiness project was to recognize how happy I already am. As life goes wheeling along, I find it too easy to take my everyday happiness for granted, and to forget what really matters. I’ve long been haunted by a remark by the writer Colette: “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” I didn’t want to look back, at the end of my life or after some great catastrophe, and think, “Then we were so happy, if only we’d realized it.” I had everything that I could wish for; I wanted to make my home happier by appreciating how much happiness was already there.

  As I thought about this new happiness project, I realized that unless I restricted my innovations to my own bedroom closet, Jamie, Eliza, and Eleanor would be swept along with me. My home was their home, and whatever I did would affect them deeply. But although I cared immensely about their happiness, I felt certain that I should focus on resolutions that I would follow. While I might enjoy giving them assignments to make them (and also me) happier, in the end, I could change no one but myself. Fortunately, I thought, a Gretchen-centered approach to a happier home would surely make Jamie, Eliza, and Eleanor happier, too.

  But as ideas flooded my mind, I warned myself not to pursue any resolutions that would directly conflict
with their happiness. My desire for more affectionate gestures shouldn’t become a focus of nagging, and my clutter-clearing zeal couldn’t justify a sneak purge of Eliza’s dusty stuffed animals or Jamie’s teetering bedside book stack. A guiding principle for all who undertake a happiness project is “First, do no harm.” Along those same lines, I must guard against becoming the happiness-project version of Charles Dickens’s Mrs. Jellyby: pursuing happiness at the expense of my happiness.

  As I scribbled notes at top speed, Jamie walked into the kitchen and headed straight for the chocolate cake he’d baked with the girls that afternoon.

  “Listen,” I said excitedly. I waved the paper in front of him as he cut himself a generous piece. “I just had the greatest idea! I’m going to do another happiness project!”

  “Another one?” he asked.

  “Yes! I got the idea from Dr. Johnson. He wrote, ‘To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.’ I think that’s true, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” he smiled. “Everyone wants to be happy at home. But aren’t you already happy at home?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, “but I could be happier.”

  “How could you be happier? You already have the perfect husband.”

  “That’s right!” I shot him a fond look. “Still, I could be happier. We could all be happier!”

  “The thing is,” he said, more seriously, and with a mouth full of cake, “you’ve already done all that happiness stuff.” He waved his fork around the room. “You know, all those resolutions.”

  “The first happiness project worked so well. I want to do another one!”