Gretchen Rubin https://gretchenrubin.com/ One important element of happiness can be a feeling of lightness, of fun, of levity. Fri, 19 May 2023 06:28:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://gretchenrubin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/FavIcon-512x512-1-150x150.png Gretchen Rubin https://gretchenrubin.com/ 32 32 Hacks for Entertaining https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/hacks-for-entertaining/ Wed, 17 May 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135465 In episode 430 of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, we discuss our favorite hacks for entertaining. Why does this issue matter for happiness? As I explore more deeply in my book The Happiness Project, ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree that a key—perhaps the key—to happiness is strong relationships. We need strong, intimate bonds; […]

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In episode 430 of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, we discuss our favorite hacks for entertaining.

Why does this issue matter for happiness?

As I explore more deeply in my book The Happiness Project, ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree that a key—perhaps the key—to happiness is strong relationships. We need strong, intimate bonds; we need to feel like we belong; we need to be able to confide; we need to be able to get and give support.

One of the quickest ways to deepen and strengthen relationships is to invite people into our homes. But that can require a lot of time, energy, and money!

These hacks are meant to make entertaining easier and more fun.

From our mother, who is great at entertaining:

  • Use place cards, and, if you’re feeling ambitious, menu cards.
  • Seat people on the ends of rectangular tables, to make conversation easier.
  • If you can afford to, hire someone—such as your children—to help with serving and clean-up.
  • Make your own printed invitations.


From Elizabeth:

  • Have a theme.
  • Set your event after dinner,  so you provide dessert or snacks and drinks.
  • Brunch is easier than dinner.
  • Set up a recurring event like a book club or lunch club.
  • Entertain at the last minute.
  • Have a party favor.
  • Co-host with someone else.
  • Have a planned activity, such as mahjong, a taste party (I describe a taste party in my book Life in Five Senses), a board game, or a podcast club


From Gretchen:

  • My mantra: “It’s always the right number of attendees at a book club.”
  • Look for an opportunity to celebrate—anniversary of a book group, holidays, etc.
  • Need wedding readings? Click here.


Hacks from listeners

Get help:

  • As discussed in episode 393, First Lady Jill Biden suggests putting up sticky notes with suggested tasks. People can choose their own task, take the note, and you can see what remains to be done.
  • Ask for help!


Be prepared:

  • Make a checklist for shopping and prep.
  • Stock up ahead of time.
  • Create index cards for each holiday with a menu and shopping list.
  • Toss dirty dishes in a laundry basket and hide them in the bathtub before guests arrive.
  • Keep your house “company ready” (with a baseline of cleanliness and some snacks and drinks on hand) so that it’s easy to invite friends over. (Need inspiration for clearing clutter? Check out Outer Order, Inner Calm.)
  • For kids’ birthday parties, the night before, pre-scoop ice cream into cupcake liners and put them in the freezer on a baking sheet.
  • Have a birthday box containing everything you need for a birthday party in one place: balloons, a reusable happy birthday sign, birthday candles, photo props, streamers etc. 
  • Run the dishwasher and empty it before guests arrive so you have somewhere to put dirty dishes as the night goes on.


Lower the bar:

  • Embrace limitations, such as the number of people who will fit on your porch.
  • Host a themed potluck.
  • Invite another family over for take-out. Only one rule: you’re not allowed to clean up!
  • Host an open-house cocktail party from 4-6 pm.


Make it easier:

  • Choose a “signature” event to host a few times a year. You develop a system, and guests look forward to it.
  • Nothing beats instant brownie mix: It’s easy to customize with different ice cream flavors or mix-ins.
  • Try the Aussie way of entertaining: Bring your own meat and drinks.
  • Ask each guest to bring a side dish, drink, or dessert so you only have to make the main dish.
  • Serve tacos—they work for meat lovers, vegans, gluten free, dairy and nut allergies, and picky kids.
  • In his book Your Invisible Network, Michael Melcher talks about being a “Secret Agent at a Party.” Make it your mission to make the party go better.
  • Give yourself the job of Party Photographer.


What other hacks do you use to make entertaining easier or more fun? Entertaining should be…entertaining!

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]]> Highlights from the “Life in Five Senses” Book Tour https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/book-tour-highlights/ Tue, 16 May 2023 20:45:59 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135466 I had a great time on my book tour for Life in Five Senses—I love getting the chance to talk to readers and listeners about a subject that still absolutely fascinates me. Some highlights: On the Happier podcast, I talked about why “Wave” is my one-word theme for the year. One reason I chose “Wave” was […]

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I had a great time on my book tour for Life in Five Senses—I love getting the chance to talk to readers and listeners about a subject that still absolutely fascinates me.

Some highlights:

  • On the Happier podcast, I talked about why “Wave” is my one-word theme for the year. One reason I chose “Wave” was because I was looking forward to being able to “wave” to people in public as I traveled around—and in fact, it was terrific to be able to say hello to so many readers and listeners.

  • I got many excellent reading recommendations from readers, booksellers, and librarians, so my giant list is now even more giant. A few times, I couldn’t resist buying a book on the spot, which meant that my bulging carry-on bag was even more packed.

  • I felt renewed appreciation for my beloved Uniqlo vest. It’s light, it’s warm, it has great pockets that hold a lot of stuff—I wore it every minute I wasn’t on stage.

  • Many people had already taken the “What’s Your Neglected Sense?” quiz, so I had many interesting conversations about their results and responses.

  • For this tour, to suit my subject, I chose very brightly colored outfits. Plus with just about every outfit, I was able to wear my new, favorite, gold shoes. Gold shoes feel very happy.

  • Many people mentioned how much they like the endpapers of Life in Five Senses, which display some of my favorite five-senses-related quotations. I spent far too much time agonizing about what quotations to include, so I was pleased to hear that people appreciate this small touch.

  • Hundreds of people signed up for my “Five Things Making Me Happier” newsletter, which made me very happy.

  • People were also intrigued to hear about the hidden icon on the dust jacket! One of these icons is hidden in plain sight somewhere on the Life in Five Senses dust jacket—can you spot it?

    5_senses_icons

  • A few event organizers greeted me with a bottle of Diet Peach Snapple, a flavor I write about with great enthusiasm in Life in Five Senses. So fun.

  • In a recent episode of the Happier podcast, I mention my new hack: While waiting for a flight, get some exercise by walking around the airport. Several times on this tour, I clocked more than 5,000 steps (true, I do like to arrive early at an airport.)

I love to hear from readers and listeners, so if you have any experiences, observations, questions, and resources related to the five senses that you’d like to share, email me at info@gretchenrubin.com. 

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]]> Tips to Put Down Your Phone and Connect with the Real World https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/tips-to-put-down-your-phone/ Thu, 04 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135392 Our digital devices are important tools for engagement, and they can be powerful aids for happiness—when used mindfully. But, as most of us have experienced, spending hours staring at screens can leave us feeling disconnected, drained, or overwhelmed. Technology is a good worker but a bad boss. We connect to the world through our bodies, […]

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Our digital devices are important tools for engagement, and they can be powerful aids for happiness—when used mindfully.

But, as most of us have experienced, spending hours staring at screens can leave us feeling disconnected, drained, or overwhelmed.

Technology is a good worker but a bad boss.

We connect to the world through our bodies, and by tapping in to our five senses, we can make our experiences of the physical world richer, more compelling, and more gratifying.

If you’re spending too much time looking down into a screen, and you want to lift your head up into the real world, consider these ideas:

  1. Turn your phone to “grayscale” so the display is limited to gray, black, and white
  2. Turn off your notifications sounds, so those pings and buzzes won’t interrupt your train of thought
  3. Use your lock screen to remind you of an important aim—use an image of a tree to remind you to go outside or the word “READ” to remind you that you’d rather be reading than scrolling
  4. Delete time-sucking apps, or make them less accessible by putting them inside a folder on your last home-screen page, so you have to touch the screen repeatedly to open them
  5. Use the Strategy of Scheduling: Schedule screen-free time in the evenings or on the weekends, plan dedicated times to check the news or social media
  6. Use the Strategy of Inconvenience: To focus, put your phone out of reach, not just out of sight


If you feel dazed from being stuck behind a screen, get a hit of the physical world by tapping into your senses:

  1. Smell something with a strong odor first with one nostril, then the other, to compare how each nostril registers a slightly different smell
  2. Squeak some cornstarch between your fingers
  3. Light a match and notice the sight, sound, smell, and touch (no tasting!)
  4. Hold an ice cube in your mouth
  5. Pet a dog or cat and really notice the texture of their fur
  6. Visit a place you often visit—a drugstore, a park, a friend’s kitchen—and tune in to your five senses
  7. Take a deep whiff of five items from your fridge or spice rack
  8. Tap in to your neglected sense for a new source of comfort, energy, or delight (don’t know your neglected sense? Take the quiz here)
  9. Make a tiny sculpture from tin foil
  10. Eat with your non-dominant hand
  11. Put on lip balm and really notice the texture

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]]> Behind the Scenes: In the Recording Studio for “Life in Five Senses” https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/audio-book-recording-studio/ Tue, 02 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=134863 I narrated the audiobook for Life in Five Senses myself. I’ve recorded most of my previous books, and it’s always a fascinating process. For three days, I sat in a small dark recording booth, carefully placed in front of a microphone with a pop filter (which I definitely need; I have an issue with plosives, […]

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I narrated the audiobook for Life in Five Senses myself. I’ve recorded most of my previous books, and it’s always a fascinating process.

For three days, I sat in a small dark recording booth, carefully placed in front of a microphone with a pop filter (which I definitely need; I have an issue with plosives, I’ve been told).

My terrific director May Wuthrich—with whom I’ve worked many times—and engineer Zach Giberson sat in the next room, where I could see them through a soundproof glass window and talk to them through my mic and headphones.

Inside the booth, I read the book from a script on an iPad. I paused often to drink water to keep my mouth from going dry and to move my body to keep my energy high.

I had to keep reminding myself to relax in my seat. It takes tremendous concentration to read with expression and emotion, while articulating clearly, at the right pace (I tend to go too fast). Over and over, I’d find myself tensing up. That makes the process unnecessarily draining, so over and over, I reminded myself, “Drop your shoulders!”

My director had sent a list of 59 words she’d checked for pronunciation ahead of time—such as names of people (e.g., Dorothy Kunhardt), artworks (Sarcophagus of Harkhebit), places (Eleusis), materials (maiolica), foods (ke-tsiap sauce).

Despite the long list, we had to stop several times during the recording to check challenging words such as “centaur,” “aesthete,” “cumin,” “satiety,” “lazuli,” “Weimaraner,” “madeleine,” and “Worcestershire.”

Unfortunately for me, I found it hard to pronounce the ordinary word “tastes” clearly—a word that comes up often in the book, as you can imagine.

Pronunciation hack: Zach told me about “youglish.com,” a site that shows you clip after clip of videos where real people pronounce a certain word or name. From what I can tell, it does seem to favor clips from experts—and it also shows that there’s a lot of variation in how people pronounce a word.

I found this phrase to be a particular tongue-twister: “park’s refurbished spring landscape.” It took me five tries to get it right.

While recording, I experienced an amusing example of a sensory illusion related to how our brains match sights and sounds. When we watch a movie, the sound comes from speakers far from the screen, not from the actors’ mouths, but our brains move the sound to the correct place. In the same way, while recording, I heard May through my headphones but could see her through the soundproof glass of the studio booth, and my brain corrected the information, so her voice seemed to come to me through the glass.

I was encouraged when, after a break on the first day,  Zach said to me, “I tried turning my phone to grayscale the way you talked about. That’s genius!” (Discussed on p. 54 in the book.)

Throughout the recordings, I kept a pillow in my lap. I know from experience that I have a tendency toward “stomach noises,” and a pillow muffles the sound. TMI?

One embarrassing thing happens every time I record one of my books: I have to stop because I’m overcome with emotion. For Life in Five Senses, I had to take a break several times while recording the last few pages.  I wrote those words, I’ve read and edited them dozens of times, yet when I read them aloud, I still got choked up.

The very last line of the book was very tricky to deliver. When you look at a copy yourself, I think you’ll understand why it was hard to read aloud those words in the way to capture the experience of reading them to yourself.

This actually wasn’t the first time I’d read much of the book aloud. As one of the last stages of my editing process, I read aloud all important passages, as well as those that were particularly tricky to write. Reading aloud is a great way to catch issues such as wordiness, accidental rhyme or alliteration, repeated words, poor rhythm, or general clunkiness.

Want to see more behind-the-scenes footage from the recording studio? Watch this short video.

People sometimes ask, “Does it count as ‘reading’ a book if you listen to the audiobook?” In my view—absolutely!

If you’d like to order a print copy Life in Five Senses or the audiobook, you can find information and purchase links here.

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]]> Five Senses Gift Ideas https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/five-senses-gift-ideas/ Thu, 27 Apr 2023 16:25:49 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135372 One of my aphorisms is “Sometimes we can minister to the spirit through the body, and sometimes we can minister to the body through the spirit.” If you want to give a thoughtful gift, a whimsical gift, or a useful gift, or you want to make a loving gesture, consider items that stimulate or comfort […]

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One of my aphorisms is “Sometimes we can minister to the spirit through the body, and sometimes we can minister to the body through the spirit.”

If you want to give a thoughtful gift, a whimsical gift, or a useful gift, or you want to make a loving gesture, consider items that stimulate or comfort the five senses.

Note: Some of the links to products in this article are affiliate links. That means I may earn a commission if you click through and buy any product, at no additional cost to you. Many of these items I’ve bought for myself or as gifts throughout my research into the five senses.

Gifts for the sense of sight:

Gifts for the sense of sound: 

  • The Gift of a Podcast
  • Wind chimes 
  • Tabletop fountain
  • Bird call whistle
  • “Record your own message” ornament, book, or picture frame 
  • Hand-cranked music box 
  • Party crackers 
  • Noise-canceling earbuds
  • Playlist
  • Concert tickets
  • Otamatone electronic instrument
  • Koshi chimes

Gifts for the sense of smell:

Gifts for the sense of taste: 

  • Nice coffee or tea
  • Reusable ice cubes
  • Tasting sampler, for instance, for cheese or honey
  • Szechuan flowers (also called “buzz buttons”)
  • Recipe and ingredients for a special dish
  • Mints or candies

Gifts for the sense of touch:


Sensory gifts are great for everyone, whether for a birthday, a care package, or to say “I’m thinking of you.” It’s always helpful, too, to choose a gift that’s tailored to a person’s  interests or lifestyle.

Five-senses gifts for her:

Some gifts have proved especially popular for occasions such as Mother’s Day—and are great for anyone:

Five-senses gifts for him:

Some five-senses have proved especially popular for occasions such as Father’s Day—and are great for anyone:

Five-senses gifts for grads

These five-senses gift ideas are perfect for teens or recent graduates, to fill their dorm room or desk with inspiration.

Sight:

  • Creative enamel pin like this color wheel pin
  • Set of fun postcards or notecards
  • String of twinkle lights
  • Polaroid camera
  • Movie tickets
  • Blue light blocking glasses
  • Color-Changing Compact Umbrella
  • Sleep mask
  • Prism
  • Fine set of colored pencils or markers
  • Light box 
  • Hues and Clues board game
  • Terrarium
  • Flower press 
  • Newton’s cradle
  • Eskesen floating action pens

Sound:

  • Waterproof mini bluetooth speaker 
  • Concert tickets
  • Ukulele
  • Headphones
  • Record player

Smell:

Taste:

Touch:

Five-senses gifts for kids

These toys, games, instruments, and activities engage kids’ senses, inspire creative play, and will keep them busy for hours. Adults enjoy these items, as well!

Sight:

Sound:

  • Harmonica 
  • Slide whistle 
  • Kazoo
  • Wind-up music box
  • Whistle
  • Recorder instrument
  • Walki-talkies
  • Children’s play-a-sound books
  • Whoopie cushion 
  • Xylophone
  • Rock and Roll It Rainbow Piano

Smell:

Taste:

Touch:

  • Slinky
  • Children’s touch-and-feel books
  • Sidewalk chalk
  • Play-Doh
  • Etch A Sketch
  • Whimsical erasers 
  • Slime
  • Board games such as Mouse Trap, Operation, Twister and Hi Ho! Cherry-O
  • LEGO set
  • Hula hoop 
  • Piñata
  • Magic grow capsules
  • Booboo bear  
  • Janet & Allan Ahlberg’s picture book The Jolly Postman
  • Dorothy Kunhardt’s Pat the Bunny
  • Wikki stix
  • Model Magic 
  • B’loonies


When I want to give a gift, but am stumped for a good idea, considering the five senses often gives me inspiration. There’s something concrete about thinking about “taste” or “touch” that unleashes my creativity in thinking of an item that would be unexpected but welcome.

And with the five senses, we can find ideas that are inexpensive or luxurious; calming or energizing; whimsical or fine. We can find gift ideas for co-workers, family members, old friends or new acquaintances, and for grab bags—and at every price point.

What great ideas did I skip?

Also, in my book Life in Five Senses, I describe how I gave a “sensorium gift” to a friend who was going through a very tough time. I decided to assemble a sensorium gift for my friend to please or ease each of her five senses:

  • Sight: A set of beautiful colored pencils
  • Sound: A tiny hand-cranked music box that played the song “You Are My Sunshine”
  • Smell: A box of three small candles, each with a different scent
  • Taste: A sampler of salts
  • Touch: A soft, light throw blanket in a deep blue


As I packed these items to mail to my friend, I was reminded of one of my favorite passages from Ann Patchett’s extraordinary memoir, Truth & Beauty:

I figured even if I couldn’t make Lucy deeply happy, I could provide the kind of happiness that would seem hollow if we had the money or the time to stay in it too long…I booked Lucy a massage and had her eyelashes dyed. I took her for a pedicure. I bought her the best pâté I could find in Nashville along with Spaghetti-O’s and Hungry Jack biscuits and everything else I knew she liked. We went to a bad movie and then stayed for a second bad movie. I took her shopping and bought her whatever she wanted. And she was happy, and I was happy.

While bodily pleasures may be fleeting, they do bring their own energy and comfort.

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]]> How People Are Getting Outside for the 23 in ’23 Challenge https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/go-outside-challenge-progress/ Tue, 25 Apr 2023 22:40:52 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135311 Nearing the end of April, Happier™ app users around the world participating in the “Go Outside 23 in ’23” Challenge have logged nearly three million minutes outside…  Getting sunlight to improve mood and sleep cycles Being in nature to encourage calm, creativity, and mindfulness Doing physical activity to support health and energy levels When we spend time […]

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Nearing the end of April, Happier™ app users around the world participating in the “Go Outside 23 in ’23” Challenge have logged nearly three million minutes outside… 

  • Getting sunlight to improve mood and sleep cycles
  • Being in nature to encourage calm, creativity, and mindfulness
  • Doing physical activity to support health and energy levels
 

When we spend time outside, good things happen. Gold star to everyone who has gotten outside in 2023.

Finding the tools that work

When it comes to building habits, different tools and strategies work for different people, and Happier app users are relying on a diverse set of tools to track their progress. The key is finding a tool that works for you. 

A helpful starting point is to identify your Tendency—how you respond to inner and outer expectations. Looking at the Tendencies represented in the Happier app users offers some interesting insights:

  • Obligers, who readily meet outer expectations, often benefit from accountability when trying to meet inner expectations. More Obligers use the Accountability Partners tool than any other Tendency.
  • Questioners have a more even spread across the different tools than the other Tendencies. Rather than selecting the tool recommended for them by the app, they’re weighing the options and selecting the tool that works best for them. 
  • Upholders are more likely to select the Don’t Break the Chain tool than any other Tendency. This is the tool recommended for Upholders by the app because it sets clear expectations and gives you a satisfying check mark.
  • Rebels resist all kinds of expectations—they appreciate choices and spontaneity. More than half of Rebel app users have chosen the Photo Log to track their progress, a tool that allows for flexibility and creativity. They’re also the only Tendency for which Don’t Break the Chain was not the most popular tool.


When we find a tool or strategy that works for us, we can apply that self-knowledge to other aims and cultivate an atmosphere of growth that is a key to happiness.  

Cultivating an Atmosphere of Growth

To be happier, we need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. This means pursuing aims that help us feel positive emotions, eliminate sources of negative emotions, enact our values, and find experiences of growth, learning, and teaching.

Often, building one habit boosts our feeling of self-control, and helps reinforce other foundational habits. For instance, going outside and getting sunlight and exercise helps people sleep—and sleep helps people do everything better.

More than 60% of those participating in the “Go Outside 23 in ’23” Challenge are tracking multiple aims using the Happier™ app, building habits that make them happier and healthier.

Want to see more? Download the full infographic here.

Join the Challenge

It’s not too late to join the “Go Outside 23 in ’23” Challenge. Now is always the best time to begin, and every entry in the Happier app counts toward our goal to unlock a donation to One Tree Planted. Learn more about the challenge, and download the Happier app for free.

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]]> Nine Tips for Tackling Sentimental Clutter This Spring https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/sentimental-clutter/ Thu, 06 Apr 2023 16:33:20 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135328 One of the best ways to recall happy times is to view and hold mementos and keepsakes. We use physical items to remind us of the people, places, and activities we love. Whether these objects take the form of souvenirs, photos, children’s art, or well-loved clothing, they connect us to important memories. However, because mementos […]

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One of the best ways to recall happy times is to view and hold mementos and keepsakes. We use physical items to remind us of the people, places, and activities we love.

Whether these objects take the form of souvenirs, photos, children’s art, or well-loved clothing, they connect us to important memories.

However, because mementos hold special meaning, it’s easy to accumulate too many. It’s one thing to recycle junk mail; it’s another to toss your child’s kindergarten artwork.

The key to clearing sentimental clutter? Focus on curating your keepsakes, so that you keep only the most meaningful and evocative items. (And, when possible, smaller items.)

Research shows that recalling happy memories increases positive emotions and decreases negative emotions such as stress and loneliness. Mementos are a powerful way to keep those happy memories vivid.

Perhaps paradoxically, having fewer mementos allows us to evoke more memories, because each item has been carefully chosen. When we’re less overwhelmed by the sheer volume of items, and we keep only the ones with deep meaning, we’re better able to appreciate each one.

This spring, clear sentimental clutter using the following tips.

Nine Tips for Curating Your Keepsakes:

  1. Make a plan. Set aside dedicated time to edit your mementos and make the activity itself meaningful. Consider asking a friend or family member to join you—it often helps to have someone listen to the memories evoked by an item. After revisiting your associations behind certain possessions, it can become easier to choose which ones to keep.
  2. Give to a good home. It’s much easier to let go of items when we can envision others getting good use from them, so identify people and organizations who will appreciate your contributions.
  3. Get creative with photo displays. To get more memories from photos, create a rotating gallery of seasonal photos. You might curate a holiday gallery, a vacation gallery, or a back-to-school gallery. Every year, I put out a Valentine’s Day gallery and a Halloween gallery. Because these photos appear only for a short time, we notice them more—and then we make room for other photos, with different memories attached.
  4. Take a photo of an object, then get rid of the object. Sometimes, all we want is a memory prompt, and a photo can do that just as well as an actual item. And it takes up much less room! Speaking of which…
  5. Think small. I asked myself, “Do I need to keep this enormous desk to remind me of my grandfather, or can I keep his pocket watch?” I chose the pocket watch. It serves just as well as a reminder, but fits on a shelf instead of taking up half a room.
  6. Choose one representative item (or a few). If you have several objects that are important for the same emotional reason—such as old college t-shirts—identify your favorite and get rid of the others. You don’t need multiple mementos, just one iconic thing. Of my big collection of childhood dolls and stuffed animals, I keep three. I display them on a shelf, so I see them all the time; if I kept two big boxes of my old toys, they’d be stuck in storage where I’d never look at them.
  7. Frame or display paper mementos. Playbills, postcards, handwritten letters, children’s artwork, or holiday cards—select the most visually pleasing or meaningful, and frame them as art. Highlighting your favorites makes it easier to recycle the rest. Alternatively, you might select several paper keepsakes per year and file them by date.
  8. Do a digital edit. Thanks to the ease of taking photos with our smartphones, we store far more visual memories than we need. Set aside a regular time to edit your phone’s photos. Delete duplicates, screenshots, closed eyes, and anything that you don’t need to revisit.
  9. Create a collection. Arrange items on a tray, shelf, or in a basket. These keepsakes should be carefully curated—a dozen seashells, not one hundred—and ideally small in size. By creating a visually-pleasing display, you’ll appreciate these reminders more.


As you clear out sentimental clutter, watch out for items that feel meaningful but don’t actually hold significance for you. Two chief culprits? Inherited items and gifts.

Inherited items: Maybe you inherited a big box of family photographs but you don’t recognize anyone in the pictures.Or your mother gave you her old set of holiday china, which she loved but that you don’t really care for.

Gifts: Maybe you’re keeping a gift you don’t need, use, or love out of respect for the giver. Be honest about what items hold value and which items are merely taking up space.

Don’t save mementos that hold no memories for you.

If you’ve curated your collection of keepsakes but are struggling with how to organize them, consider using the Memento Keepsake Journal.

This journal is made for those who want to collect tangible representations of their memories, but are overwhelmed by the prospect of organizing or scrapbooking. The Memento Keepsake Journal provides safekeeping pockets to help you curate the most meaningful mementos, with space on every page to add notes, photos, and stickers to take the guesswork out of your personal storytelling. Use this journal to save family memories, records from school, travel souvenirs, artifacts from your year, or any other keepsake you’d like to save.

What strategies do you use to clear nostalgic or sentimental clutter? Do you find that saving fewer mementos enhances your appreciation of them?

The post Nine Tips for Tackling Sentimental Clutter This Spring appeared first on Gretchen Rubin.

]]> Revisit Happy Memories Using Your Senses https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/revisit-happy-memories-using-your-senses/ Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:02:56 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135313 If you’re looking for ways to boost your happiness in the present, try reflecting on happy memories from your past. Recent findings on nostalgia suggest it can help us become happier. While “nostalgia” is, by definition, a blend of positive and negative emotion, the positive tends to outweigh the negative. Reflecting on happy memories can […]

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If you’re looking for ways to boost your happiness in the present, try reflecting on happy memories from your past.

Recent findings on nostalgia suggest it can help us become happier. While “nostalgia” is, by definition, a blend of positive and negative emotion, the positive tends to outweigh the negative.

Reflecting on happy memories can help us to:

  • feel a greater sense of well-being
  • feel less lonely
  • give us a sense of continuity in our lives
  • make us more optimistic about relationships and more eager to connect
  • feel more connected to the past


Often, however, we may have a happy memory—but we forget that we have it! Because we don’t try to dredge up the memory of our grandparents’ kitchen, or our favorite college class, we don’t access those memories.

A quick, easy way to evoke memories is to tap in to our five senses.

When writer Marcel Proust ate a tea-soaked madeleine cookie, he was famously flooded by memories of the past, and today the “Proust effect” refers to an intense, emotional memory sparked by the senses.

Our five senses link us to our past, tie us to the present, and help us create memories for the future. They even help us conjure up memories that we’ve forgotten that we possessed—and to recall a pleasure is to experience it twice.

Asking people about their sensory memories is a great way to get to know them better. Even a question as simple as “Growing up, what was your favorite candy?” helps me feel closer to other people.

Sight

  • Get out a photo album and look at each photo closely. Don’t just look at the faces, but also look at the clothes, the decoration of the room or the outdoor scene. Note how dated (or not) things look. Try to recall the memory of the moment when the picture was taken.

  • Try to recall your childhood bedroom

  • Review old photographs, home movies, yearbooks, and other souvenirs

  • Look online to find photos of places you’ve lived in the past

  • Walk through a neighborhood where you used to live to see how it has changed

  • Go on a “memory visit.” So relax in a quiet place, choose a place from your childhood, and imagine yourself walking through it. Really open the front door, step in, and look around. Take your time.

Sound

  • Recall some auditory memories. In grade school, what was the sound of the bell that announced the end of class (was there a bell)? What was the theme song of your favorite TV show?

  • Make a list of sounds or songs you associate with different periods of your life

  • To listen to the most popular music of different years, check out The Nostalgia Machine, thenostalgiamachine.com

Smell

  • Reminisce with others about the smells of grade school, high school, etc

  • Are there any smells that instantly evoke strong memories for you?

  • Have you or someone close to you ever had a signature perfume or cologne?

  • Make a list of smells associated with your favorite holidays

  • Try to recall the smell of your grandparents’ kitchen?

Taste

  • As a child, did you have a favorite junk food that your parents refused to buy?

  • Invite friends or family to share their experiences and memories around food, and sample those tastes together

  • Write a Tastes Timeline of your life–of the flavors you most associate with different periods

  • Fix an old family recipe

  • What did you eat for breakfast as a child?

  • Is there a specialty food that you eat only when you visit your hometown?

  • Identify one of your favorite foods from childhood and make a plan to eat it again

Touch

  • As a child, did you have a favorite soft stuffed animal or blanket?

  • Are there any touch sensations you remember especially vividly–sanded wallpaper, cold floor, favorite T-shirt from college?

Sharing these sense-memories with other people is a great way to connect, so you might reminisce with family or friends. You might also want to experience again sensations from your past—to walk through an old neighborhood, buy a favorite snack from grade school. If you’re writing or presenting information, think about including information about the five senses to make your work more concrete.

During an experience—a birthday party, a museum visit, a day with family members—try to identify the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures you’re experiencing. This exercise will make the experience far more vivid—and so it will be easier to recall the memory later.

By tapping in to our five senses, we can connect more easily with happy memories from our past—and in that way, become happier in the present.

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]]> 16 April Fools’ Day Prank Ideas to Trick the Senses https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/april-fools-prank-ideas/ Mon, 27 Mar 2023 20:29:03 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135300 One of my favorite happiness-project resolutions is to “Celebrate minor holidays,” and one of my favorite minor holidays is April Fools’ Day. I always try to prank members of my family—in an easy, fun, gentle way. Nothing too upsetting—and nothing very taxing for me to set up. I’ve turned a carton of milk bright green […]

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One of my favorite happiness-project resolutions is to “Celebrate minor holidays,” and one of my favorite minor holidays is April Fools’ Day.

I always try to prank members of my family—in an easy, fun, gentle way. Nothing too upsetting—and nothing very taxing for me to set up.

I’ve turned a carton of milk bright green with food dye, frozen a bowl of cereal, and posted a giant photo of swimming fish inside my daughter’s toilet bowl.

As I write about in my new book Life in Five Senses, last year I used “Gelling Joke” to turn my daughter Eleanor’s beverage into (non-toxic) sludge. Even I was startled by how effective this stuff is!

This year, I was out of ideas, so I asked listeners of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast for their suggestions.

I asked for pranks that made use of the five senses, but as I read people’s answers, I realized that many April Fools’ pranks play on the five senses, by confounding our expectations in some way.

Something doesn’t taste the way we expect, or it doesn’t look the way we expect, or it’s a surprising color, or it pops out unexpectedly…that’s the fun of the prank!

A different kind of prank is by surprising someone with (false) information.

Once, on a family spring-break trip, I told my young daughters that they couldn’t use the pool, because it had to be drained for some reason. They were so disappointed, but tried to be so reasonable about it! I broke down and told them the truth right away. Now I prefer sensory pranks.

Here are some of my favorites ideas from listeners, which are all of the sensory kind:

  • Turn every piece of clothing in the drawers and closet inside out. Bonus hack: A year later, you can identify and donate any unworn, still inside-out clothes.
  • Eat dessert before dinner.
  • Cut out many of the letter “E” from brown paper, put them in a pan covered in foil, and offer your family or coworkers some delicious “brown-Es.”
  • A classic: short-sheeting.
  • Hide card stock between the frosting and cookie of an Oreo.
  • Save packages from the mail and place a huge stack of empty boxes outside the front door, to make your family think you’ve gone on a giant spree.
  • On the toilet-paper roll, draw a spider with a Sharpie or glue a plastic spider, so that it will pop out whenever someone pulls the paper.
  • Switch bags of cereal into different boxes, so that when a family member pours out their favorite cereal, the wrong kind lands in their bowl.
  • Put googly eyes on things all around the house. [This is my very favorite idea!]
  • Put a drop of food coloring in the bottom of a glass, so that when a beverage is poured in, it magically turns into another color. [Food dye is a great tool for the April Fools’ trickster.]
  • Swap vanilla frosting for toothpaste.
  • Shape Starbursts into “baby carrots.”
  • Fill a cardboard box with dirt and decorate it like a cake.
  • Substitute sugar for salt or vice versa, swap mayonnaise for pudding, or use shaving cream in place of whipped cream.
  • Swap items in a homemade school lunch with wrapped wood blocks or fake food (but don’t forget to include lunch money).
  • Breakfast for dinner, or dinner for breakfast.


For more ideas, take a look:


I love these kind of fun, easy traditions. They build happiness because they mark the passage of time in a special way, they’re memorable, they’re light-hearted, and they contribute to a sense of group identity. The things that go wrong often make the best memories—even if those things are intentionally “wrong.”

And anything that makes us laugh is good!

What are some of your favorite April Fools’ Day pranks—either ones that you’ve played on others, or that others have played on you?

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]]> How to Heighten Your Senses https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/how-to-heighten-your-senses/ Thu, 23 Mar 2023 16:57:47 +0000 https://gretchenrubin.com/?p=135295 These days, it’s all too easy to feel stuck in your head or trapped behind a screen. You might feel disconnected from your body or the world around you, or as though time is slipping away. One cure? Tap in to your five senses. There are many easy, quick steps you can take to enhance […]

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These days, it’s all too easy to feel stuck in your head or trapped behind a screen. You might feel disconnected from your body or the world around you, or as though time is slipping away.

One cure? Tap in to your five senses.

There are many easy, quick steps you can take to enhance your senses—and by strengthening your awareness and appreciation of your senses, you’ll make your life happier and richer.

Boosting your senses will help you to…

  • stay focused and productive
  • connect more deeply with other people
  • evoke and create strong, vivid memories
  • spark creativity
  • have fun
  • feel calmer, less stressed, and more energetic
  • be present in the moment and appreciate the ordinary


How to strengthen your senses

To boost your senses, you can experiment with a variety of approaches:

  • Immersion—immerse yourself in one or more of your senses
  • Deprivation—deprive yourself of a sense to heighten your awareness of it
  • Knowledge—take a class, read up; the more you know, the more you notice
  • Splurge—make a modest purchase of something gives you pleasure or comfort through one of your senses
  • Confound—do something to startle or surprise your senses
  • Notice—take the time to pay attention to the ordinary experiences that are easy to ignore


How to heighten your sense of sight

  • Turn your smartphone to “grayscale” so that the screen appears in black, white, and gray. Depriving yourself of color will make you aware of its power.
  • Splurge on a set of colored pens, so you can enjoy colors beyond black and blue when you’re writing.
  • Look closely at something that’s usually in the background and notice shapes, colors, patterns—a pet’s fur, a painted wall, wood grain in the floorboards or table, a house plant, the packaging of an everyday item.


How to heighten your sense of hearing

  • Turn off your devices’ notification sounds so you can focus on what you want to hear without being distracted by pings or buzzes.
  • Deprive yourself of the sounds of conversation by scheduling a day of silence, when you don’t talk to anyone, listen to music or podcasts, or watch TV or movies.
  • Notice how music can change your mood, then create an “Audio Apothecary” playlist of energetic, upbeat songs to play when you’re feeling low


How to heighten your sense of smell

  • A tip I learned from perfumers: Run up and down the stairs a few times. The exercise will increase blood flow to your nose and strengthen your sense of smell.
  • Take a deep sniff of a strong smell (a bottle of capers, a clove of garlic) first with one nostril, then with the other, to appreciate how each nostril perceives a slightly different smell.
  • Notice the smell of a place you often visit: hardware store, liquor store, department store, ice-cream parlor, coffee shop, library, pet store.


How to heighten your sense of taste

  • Pinch your nose closed, then take a bite of something with a strong flavor, such as a chocolate bar. Notice the taste—then unplug your nose, and notice how much more complex that flavor becomes. Without the sense of smell, we taste only sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. We need smell for complex flavors.
  • Confound your tongue by trying the “miracle berry,” a tablet that you pop into your mouth to make sour things taste sweet.
  • Put a dollop of Heinz Ketchup on your tongue and try to distinguish sweet, salty, bitter, umami, and sour. (Then try to think of anything else that manages to combine all five tastes.)


How to heighten your sense of touch

  • Give a loving touch to another person—appropriately, of course—with a hug, handshake, fist bump, or pat on the back. Notice how physical touch changes your emotional response.
  • Make a modest splurge by buying a fun touch toy, such as a pop toy, fidget spinner, therapy dough, kinetic sand, or Silly Putty.
  • Make a non-Newtonian fluid out of cornstarch to be confounded by its strange qualities.


There are also a few general behaviors that will strengthen your senses, as well as make you generally healthier:


When you make the effort to strengthen your senses, you’ll feel more connected to the world, to other people, and to yourself.

Many of us have foreground senses and background senses; we appreciate some senses, but neglect others. Take the free, quick quiz to identify your neglected sense, and get concrete ideas for tapping into this sense to have more fun, love, energy, and calm.

By going through your body, you can reach your spirit, and through your spirit, you can reach your body.

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