The January Cure is one of Apartment Therapy’s longest traditions of helping you reset your living space for the upcoming year. See how my progress stacked up this year while cleaning my home during The January Cure 2022!
What is The January Cure 2022?
The January Cure before is a free 20-day program from Apartment Therapy dedicated to help you love your home. It gives you one task each day to help you prepare your space for the new year – all without stressing you out.
Cleaning and organizing your home doesn’t have to overwhelm you! If you don’t know where to start then this is a good assignment for you to take on. Once you sign up for the email list, you’ll receive one task each day during the week. There are no tasks on the weekends. But, if you’re like me, you’ll probably get busy during the week and end up completing some tasks on the weekend.
January Cure 2022 Summary
If this is your first time participating, then you’ll want to take your time with the tasks! Apartment Therapy tends to keep the tasks super specific so they aren’t overwhelming. These tasks can be handled in a short amount of time. But they also want you to think of a bigger “project” that you’ll want to focus your time and energy into this month that will help you feel refreshed and renewed!
I think the tasks are designed to be small that you can “get over the hurdle” of getting started. The January Cure is a great way to get over the busy-ness of the Holidays and set you up right in the new year!
Week 1
- Day 1: Declutter a drawer – I decluttered what used to be my utensils drawer into a spice drawer. I picked up these Ikea spice racks for the drawers for only $3.49 each. Now I only need to purchase two more to complete the drawer because I didn’t measure.
- Day 2: Create a to-do list – I always have a to-do list going! Closet clean out, makeup organization, and clean my office.
- Day 3: Create an outbox – I have a huge outbox! For the past month we’ve been collecting a lot of items to take for donation, so it’s been filling up our garage. We haven’t finished remodeling our pantry just yet, so I know we will have more to donate by the end of this month.
- Day 4: Clear expired items – As we’ve been working on our pantry, it gave us a chance to go through some of our food items. Lots have been tossed already!
- Day 5: Clean the floor – We didn’t clean all the floors, but we made sure to clean up the areas with bleach where Hank had a couple accidents. And on that note, I also bout a iRobot Roomba i7 to do a daily cleaning so I don’t have to sweep. It takes 18 minutes for it to cover the main areas – just about the same amount of time for me to workout in the mornings.
- Day 6: Pick a project – I purchased some items from West Elm to help style my pantry. This includes two sets of tiered can storage, a breadbox, and a tea organizer.
- Day 7: 30-minute closet cleanout – I didn’t do this task until the end of week two, but I did get it done! I tried on all my tops to see how they fit. Anything that was too worn or didn’t fit me correct are either going in the outbox or being sold on my Poshmark Closet.
Week 2
- Day 8: Kick off a living room reset – As busy as our living room is, it is the least cluttered room in our home. The only “clutter” that is currently there is that I have 3 different chapsticks and some lotion sitting on my end table…but I need those!
- Day 9: Plan a get-together – I will be skipping this one. The pantry isn’t done and there’s still a lot we want to do before I can clean up the rest of the kitchen. Besides hiding all that mess in cupboards, I would rather wait until we have it fully finished before having guests.
- Day 10: Clean the kitchen – I’m trying! We are using our island as our landing strip because we have so many projects going on. I make sure the dishes are in the dishwasher after dinner and make sure to do a sweep across the counters each day.
- Day 11: Find and frame some art – I’ve had a piece sitting on the floor since we moved in. This was the perfect day to take care of this piece and get it hung on my walls.
- Day 12: Work on your project – I organized my makeup drawer! Not only did I buy the dressing table, mirror and drawer organizers this month, but it was time well spent getting organized!
- Day 13: Get your sofa into shape – Our sofa is new. We just got it in October, but the cushion I sit on regularly was looking a little flat compared to the others. This was a good time to adjust it! No more sad cushions.
- Day 14: Do a 3-minute surface sweep – My office desk has become a nightmare! During my 3-minute surface sweep, I did a quick financial review of the receipts that had been stockpiling on my window sill. I eliminated almost half of them. I’m saving all the receipts from the pantry remodel until I have time to write up a post and tally the overall cost of the project. The 3-minutes also lead to finding a solution for my headphones to hang on my monitor to help save desktop space.
- Day 15: Clean the bedroom – I hung the art on the wall so that covers cleaning the bedroom!
Week 3
- Day 16: Set up a home landing strip – We’ve been using the island as a landing strip. As we finish our various projects around the house we will be using that steady.
- Day 17: Clean up and declutter around the bathroom – The carpet cleaner is sitting on the bathroom floor for about half the week. The cat threw up on the rug and the carpet in the closet and I left it sit there instead of putting it away. I made sure to clean the carpet cleaner. To finish, I wiped off the vanity and emptied the trash bins.
- Day 18: Take stock of your linens – We are actually good in this category. I want to buy nice bedding for us, but we don’t share the same blankets. I have the guest bedroom setup with new sheets and the old comforter was donated. We purchased new towels when we first moved into our home so they are less than one year old.
- Day 19: Reset your living room and empty the outbox – Our living room has been full of dog toys. I found this wonderful cotton rope basket for the living room. Now I have a place to store all the toys!
- Day 20: Relax! – I’m so glad that this ends on a Friday! During my lunch hour, I took all of my closet clean out to Plato’s Closet for resale. Afterward, anything that was sold was donated with the rest of my outbox.
See my progress from the January Cure 2021!
January Cure 2022 Final Thoughts
I am very proud of myself this month! I accomplished a lot around my home. Overall, I did overwhelm myself with the closet clean out. Only because it took me several hours to complete! I am donating more than twenty pieces of clothing and I got rid of anything that didn’t fit well or had holes.
I am having so much fun finding organizational and functional pieces to use in my pantry and kitchen drawers. Finding my spices has never been easier now that I can see them all when I open the drawer.
Loving your home includes cleaning out spaces that don’t make you happy (also re: The KonMari Method of Tidying Up Your Digital Life).
Did you participate in The January Cure 2022? What was your big project?! Let me know in the comments below! You can also view my past participations in the January Cure.
