Forget New Year's resolutions, these are my household New Year's resignations

People usually make New Year’s resolutions when New Year’s comes around, but I prefer to make New Year’s resignations – I just resign myself to another year of achieving nothing, changing little, and pretty much making zero effort for the next 12 months. So here are my household-job resignations for 2019:

1. I resign myself to not fixing the wonky TV table that I resigned myself to not fixing every year since I moved into the house, a decade and a half ago. On the day we moved in, I noticed the TV table was wobbly, because the floorboards are uneven, because the stumps are sinking, because the house is built on a play-centre ballpit. So I jammed a folded napkin under the table leg to prop it up temporarily, just for a week, until we settled in.

And that folded napkin has served us well over the years – we’ve never needed to upgrade to folded newspaper or a torn flap of cardboard box. Though the table is still slightly angled: every month or so I have to shove the TV back into the centre so it doesn’t slide off the end.

2. I resign myself to doing nothing about the rotting side fence, which is held together with nothing but dead vines and borer excrement. Once a year my neighbour says to me, “Hey we should get the fence fixed” and I say, “Yeah let’s do it!” and the neighbour says, “We should both get quotes and compare prices” and I say, “Great idea, I’ll get onto it asap!” Then we both go into our houses and avoid each other until four BAS quarters have passed.

3. I resign myself to never potting the pot-plant that I bought at a nursery, left in the backyard, then completely forgot about. Eventually the plant got so fed up waiting, it potted itself – it pushed its roots through the bottom of the plastic pot, then it grew big and thick, so now it looks like it’s wearing a pair of black plastic Spanx.

In 50 years time, it’ll probably still be in that plastic pot, and future homeowners will say,“I really should put that in the garden”. But they won’t.

4. I resign myself to never cleaning the filthy spot on the top of fridge where all the cooking grease settles, which also happens to be my wine cellar. There are several bottles of wine up there but they’re so coated in cooking grease, you can’t read the labels – I’ve just scrawled R and W into the grease with my finger so I know which is red and which is white. And if I need to take a bottle to a party I’ll clean off the grease with turps, then use washing-up liquid to neutralise the turpsy smell. Hey I’m a classy guy, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.

That’s it, I’m done, there’s just four of these, because … well … you know. So let me wish all of you a half-arsed New Year. May your 2019 be bountiful with lack of effort. May you not waver in your domestic unenthusiasm. May you be steadfast in your quest to do sweet nothing around your homes, and do it with gusto and determination.