Do you smell it? That smell. A kind of smelly smell. The smelly smell that smells...smelly.

For the last two weeks, I have been following the advice of a book recommended by “my good friend" Maggie Gyllenhaal (aside: For those who don’t know me personally, Maggie is my "good friend” in the same way that Viggo Mortensen and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are my “boyfriends” — using lots of “air quotes” — I don’t actually know them — I just love them!). So...

Maggie mentioned in a magazine interview that she’d been reading this book: Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. (It’s a big thick book with lots of advice, if you can get through it all.)  One nugget of inspiration I grabbed from it:

Take out your trash every day.

Therefore (as a personal experiment), I have been taking out the trash every morning.

Since then, the apartment always smells fresh and awesome like soap or something else equally nice. No more coming home to the smell of rotten tomatoes, old cheese remnants, or the worst!… fish from the previous night’s dinner.

Now, I return home feeling more relaxed and in-control of my evening. This tiny little change makes me feel like there’s one less thing that needs to get done, and so… I relax.

Experiment time!

Try this for one week—

As you make your way out the door in the morning (or evening) empty all those trash bins and take that trash out! See how you feel when you get home to a fresh-smelling house.  

Then, come on back here and let us know in the comments below how the experiment worked out for you!