Lazy Person's Guide to Home Management

Are mundane chores preventing you from reaching your true potential--like becoming thin and famous? Over the years, I have found several ways to make routine tasks easier—especially for a lazy, always-on-a-diet person like me. If you're lazy too (or busy saving the world or raising children) and need some advice, or have a tip to share, please read on:


1. Gardening

Laziest way: Buy fake potted plants and put them outside. That's usually what I do--I’m not kidding! It mortifies my mother who is a true gardener, but for drive-by's, I doubt they can tell the difference (one winter, however, I was too lazy to put my red begonias inside so they me gave away as they sat there getting faded yet still blooming in the snow).

Lazies who want to make an effort: Buy plants from a friend’s plant sale fundraiser and hire your friend’s kid to plant them (at least you're maintaining friendships when you do that). Warning: you’ll have to pray for rain all summer long or you’ll be out there watering them every few days.

2. Maintaining/cultivating friendships

Laziest way: Just give up. I saw a movie recently where the leading lady said, “I can’t have girlfriends, because then I'll have to remember their birthdays.” (By the way, if your friend is a true friend, she would just self-address a card and give it to you a week before her birthday.)

Lazies who want to make an effort: If you’re too lazy to enter your friends’ birthdays on a google calendar that can be set to remind you, then you’ll have to be thoughtful other times of year. For example, if your friend produces a CD, buy it, or if they approach you with a catalog from their child’s school fundraiser, buy something. If you don’t need it, give it away as a gift. If you can’t afford to buy anything, promise them that when you have to do a fundraiser, you won’t bother them!

3. Cleaning

Laziest way: Hire a housekeeper who doesn't speak your language (so they can't blab to all your friends about what a slob you are).

Lazies who want to make an effort: Get rid of all knickknacks—be honest, you never dust them and they cover your table surfaces that you need for piling papers on. When people ask you what you want for birthdays, Mother’s Day, etc., ask them to clean your house for a couple of hours or to hire someone to clean it. That way you get what you really want and you are making it known to everyone that you just can’t handle doodads in your house.

4. Meals

Laziest way: dine at a drive-thru.

Lazies who want to make an effort: it’s all about the crockpot and pre-washed salad, canned/frozen vegetables and prepackaged soup mixes. Never fall for those crockpot recipes that make you sauté or brown something first—we’re trying to save steps here. I am getting my “weight loss” crockpot recipes from a free weight loss site I joined (they give you a diet and track your weight—if you’re honest when plugging it in) at: http://www.sparkpeople.com/

Sorry, there’s no getting out of going to the grocery store. But if you’re buying a lot of frozen and pre-packaged, chemical laden foods like I suggested, you probably only have to do major grocery shopping once a month since that kind of food lasts forever!

5. Christmas/Hanukkah Cards

Laziest way: Just say “No!” (But you better be in mourning or sick or something--otherwise, your friends WILL be offended unless you all agree beforehand not to exchange greetings.)

Lazies who want to make an effort: If you’re bad about remembering birthdays, then you really have no choice—you must send holiday greetings. Other than sending a form letter or a family/pet picture postcard, the easiest thing to do is to send an e-mail with the excuse that you are saving trees or on the cost of postage in order to donate to some noble cause. Right after 9/11, I used the anthrax scare as my excuse!

Readers: Please post your advice in comments--thanks!