A Simple, Sweet Way to Celebrate Yourself (and Your Home!) This Month

Whether you’ve participated in this year’s January Cure from day one or joined us on day 10, you’ve taken amazing strides toward renewing your home. Even if you didn’t complete all the assignments or you pivoted and adjusted the plan to fit your needs, you should still be proud of every single step you took to clean, organize, and revamp your space this month. 

Any progress is worth celebrating, and that’s why today’s assignment is all about relishing in your accomplishments and enjoying your newly cleaned and refreshed space. I hope you’ve enjoyed the January Cure as much as I have, and I look forward to guiding you again in the spring for our next Cure program (stay tuned!) 

To close out our program, we have a very special guest cure-ator dropping by again — Apartment Therapy’s founder and CEO (and the creator of The Cure), Maxwell Ryan. Here’s a special message from him and your assignment! 

Dear Team Cure,

Congratulations on reaching this final day! I’m honored to be joining you again for this final lap of the year’s most important Cure, The January Cure, to share what I consider the most important part of every Cure.

Early on in working with clients, I came to realize that people tend to focus on their homes and really get things done when they know they’re having guests over. It turns out, the pressure really does work. I also learned — somewhat surprisingly — from clients that the top thing they all wished they did more at home was to entertain on some scale and to share their home more. I was surprised: I didn’t realize how many people long for something that they don’t think they can have. The desire to have friends over usually came after admitting that they didn’t think their home was ready for it — hence the need for a Cure. 

It was then that I realized that decorating, cleaning, and organizing a home to one’s liking has a very clear life purpose, and that is the deep satisfaction you get out of sharing it with friends and family. Of course, a good home performs many great functions, but this one really stuck out to me. Then I picked up Terence Conran’s most famous book, “The House Book” from 1982, and he says it so beautifully right on the first page. 

I couldn’t agree with him more. As a total home junkie, I get a lot of joy out of working on my home constantly and having guests over often (it’s the cleaning that I’m not fond of!). 

So, your final assignment is very simple: sit down in your refreshed home or room today and send out an invite to a friend or two to come for a drink or a meal sometime in February. It doesn’t have to be a big affair. I just want you to be able to show off your work and then enjoy it with company.

When you’ve shared your space you will have completed a very important part of the cycle because it is through sharing that you manifest yourself fully in the world. It also recharges you for the next project. 

I wish you the best of luck and I know that because you’ve come this far, you’ll crush this final assignment. Thank you for joining all of us who do this work regularly, and be sure to come back again once winter is over for our Spring Cleaning Cure, when we get to throw open the windows, sweep out the house and give our houseplants some long-awaited fresh air!

Best,

M

• Sign up for email updates or SMS alerts
• Visit the 2023 January Cure page and catch up on assignments
• Join the Apartment Therapy Cure Facebook group
• Download the January Cure calendar
• Check off that you’ve completed this task and track your overall January Cure progress here!

The Cure Program is a tradition here at Apartment Therapy — it happens every January, April, and September. Click here to learn more about the year-round program and when to sign up.