Five gifts to help with your New Year’s resolutions

HAPPY 2012, everyone!!! I hope your New Year’s celebrations involved lots of friends, fireworks and confetti!

I’ve always believed the way you spend the first day of the new year is a good indication of how the rest of your year will go, which is precisely why I spent the countdown watching Dexter and drinking hot tea in bed, while cuddling my dog as he struggled violently.

I can definitely say that’s more than I can hope for for this year, especially in the way of puppy compliance.

Anyway, here are some awesome gifts for your friends and family to kick off the good karma cycle and help them with their New Year’s resolutions.

1.Organize Now!: A Week-by-Week Guide to Simplify your Space and your Life
There is no better way to start off a New Year’s resolution than to “try to be more organised”. It’s probably the most common resolution and the one that always gets forgotten as soon as work begins after the holiday season and people start getting abusive.

Hopefully, this guidebook will help make 2012 less hectic and more… well, organised! It has six main chapters:

1. Organise yourself
2. Organise your papers
3. Organise your things
4. Organise your personal space
5. Organise your storage areas
6. Organise your special events

Doesn’t that just seem like so much FUN already?

2. “Life.Doc” Organiser
To get a start on being organised and heed the advice of gift number one, get yourself a Life organiser. I know we live in the age of technology where writing tools have almost become obsolete, (Hey Ma, what’s a pencil sharpener?) but I still find myself being more productive when I actually write things down. There is nothing more satisfying than checking off my To Do List. Sometimes, I write down things I’ve already done just so I get to tick them off. Ha.

Life.Doc is divided into:

1. Family Basics
2. In Sickness and Health
3. Insurance
4. Dollars and Sense
5. Legal Ease
6. Emergency Plan
7. Caregiver Information
8. Home Sweet Home

3. Exercise Ball
Another commonly thrown around New Year’s resolution is to, “Lose the five kilos I’ve been meaning to lose since 2007 or the 10 kilos since 2008 or the 15 kilos since 2009…”

I know I know, it’s just too hard to care since Taco Bell happened.

But hey, did you know that you can lose weight just by sitting on this exercise ball? Not only is it good for your posture and balance, but you can burn up to 350 calories a day just by swapping your chair for an exercise ball. No joke. Call the press!

4. Mingling Plates
Another good idea for the new year is to try very very very hard to grow up.

You can start by having adult parties. And by that I mean having conversations about boring things like property prices, while holding on to these mingling plates filled with fancy cheese that have names you can’t pronounce. I did not mean poles, costumes and silicon in any form.

Anyway, these mingling plates allow you to simultaneously eat, drink and converse while holding on to your snacks and drink with ease. New Year’s resolution #104: Learn to Multi-Task. Check!

5. Amazon Kindle
Is there any better gift in the world than this tiny little device that holds thousands of literary treasures? NO! So get it for anyone that means enough for you to even think of getting them something in the first place.

Happy 2012, people! 🙂

Belinda Tan gets excited over smiley faces and creative ideas. In her spare time, she trains to be a ninja, wonders about the genetic similarities between unicorns and rhinoceros and enjoys discovering new hiding places. She also sneezes in even numbers, doesn’t like coconuts and uses spell checker to spell rhinoceros. She also chronicles her adventures on her blog.