Blog by Beebe Cline, PREC*

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What Bad Habit Is Driving You Absolutely Nuts at Home?

Most of us have been going through a roller coaster of emotions these past few months in response to sheltering-in-place orders. Many of us also have learned more about ourselves and our partners, kids and roommates than we ever thought possible — or maybe ever wanted to know. A once-quiet and tidy household can look like it was ransacked by a family of raccoons these days.

Noisy kids battling cabin fever, dueling video meetings between spouses and partners, that smelly sourdough starter and nobody — I repeat, nobody — cleaning up after themselves … many of us could use a break. And while it’s of course more helpful to try to focus on the positives, to conjure gratitude for the things we do have and so on, sometimes we just need to vent. So here’s your chance.


It’s often said that bad habits are easy to make and hard to break. How can something that appears to some of us to be so trivially easy to do, such as closing the toilet lid, be so mind-bogglingly difficult for someone else to undertake?

Over the years, we’ve compiled a list of 14 things you should be doing at home for someone else’s sake, and seven more specifically in bathrooms, and a review of those lists offers little hope that such behaviors will ever become things of the past.

Replacing the toilet paper, cleaning toothpaste out of the sink, squeegeeing the shower glass — why do these small things create such a huge headache when people don’t do them? Sorry, but there’s no meditation guru in the world who will ever teach me how to breathe through a yearslong repeated offense of tossing dirty clothes on the floor right next to the laundry bin!

But sometimes just expressing our frustration with these behaviors can help us be a little more forgiving. If anything, vocalizing feelings can offer a good laugh, and that has the power to transform these minor infractions perpetrated by our loved ones into things that might even be considered endearing. (I said might.)

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