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Tackle One of These Home Projects to Build Character, the Calvin and Hobbes Way

Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She's been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
updated May 3, 2019
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Although the smock sequence is far and away my very favorite, the Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin styles his hair like his father, waltzes into the room where his parents are and orders imperiously, “Calvin, go do something you hate. Being miserable builds character,” leaving his mother dissolved in laughter, ranks high on my list of knee-slappers.

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Apartment Therapy Weekend Projects is a guided program designed to help you get the happy, healthy home you’ve always wanted, one weekend at a time. Sign up now for email updates so you never miss a lesson.

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(Image credit: Ghazalle Badiozamani)
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

This Weekend’s Assignment:

Build character by doing something you hate.

There are as many reasons to hate a certain chore as there are chores to hate. Maybe there’s no immediate or visible “before and after” gratification, maybe it’s a task we find particularly disgusting, maybe it’s just soooo tedious, and maybe it’s offensive in its sheer boredom level. We all have loathed to-dos, but, as much as we still identify with Calvin, we’re the incomprehensible adults now (incomprehensibly).

This weekend we’re going to do a chore that we hate. But, hopefully, instead of being thoroughly miserable, we’ll all do it with little smiles on our faces as we think of our pal, Calvin. And whether or not we’ve built some character by the time it’s done, we will at least have a dreaded something ticked off our list so it can’t taunt us from the sidelines. (At least for a while!)

Here’s a list of commonly hated and often-neglected chores to choose from:

  • Clean window tracks
  • Dust baseboards
  • Deep clean the toilets
  • Wash windows and screens
  • Deep clean the shower
  • Change HVAC filters
  • Change fire alarm batteries
  • Wash curtains
  • Clean out the fridge
  • Vacuum under the furniture
  • Scrub the grout
  • Weed the landscaping
  • Clean your oven

What’s your most hated, most put-off chore?

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You can catch up with weekend projects right here. Share your progress with us and others by posting updates and photos on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #atweekendproject.

Remember: This is about improvement, not perfection. Each week you can either choose to work on the assignment we’ve sent you, or tackle another project you’ve been meaning to get to. It’s also completely okay to skip a weekend if you’re busy or not feeling the assignment.

 

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