Putting Grandma's New Year's Superstition to the Test

My maternal Grandmother was a superstitious, sometimes mean, sometimes sweet, controlling, manipulative hypochondriac, so a bit of a whack-job.  I do non envy my Mother and Aunt's childhood.  Grandma had a lot of superstitions, and a lot of them were pretty common; 'don't open an umbrella inside', 'don't walk under a ladder', 'a black cat crossing in front of you is bad luck', etc.  I don't think that all of them were common, she believed dreams came true, she believed in omens, she thought it was bad luck to put shoes on a table. Even knowing that Grandma was a bit of a nut case, and growing up believing in science and evidence, I still have found myself following her superstitions.

There are a lot of different superstitions and rituals surrounding the New Year.  One of my favourites is one that a friend grew up with, at mid-night she would open the front door to let the New Year in and open the back door to let the Old Year out.  Grandma's belief was that anything left undone as of New Year would stay undone for the year.

For many year's of my life I have tried to get everything done for New Year's; clean the home, do all the laundry, mending, cleaning out closets, repairs, etc.  This year that did not happen.  I was home with both the boys for the week prior to New Year's.  BBJ2 was sick which meant a baby stuck to me and a 3 year old running wild.  The weather was yucky, rainy, snowy, windy, and cold so we didn't venture out much.  The boys did not want to sleep by themselves, especially BBJ2 who went 4 days straight only sleeping if he was attached to me.

I have decided to look at the lack of getting stuff done as an experiment instead of a failure.  I'm going to see if the superstition comes true or not.  Here are the things that I would have wanted done prior to mid-night New Year's:
- take down & put away the Christmas tree and decorations
- clean the apartment, including washing the floors
- paint the boys' bedroom
- clean out the storage locker - specifically rearrange so that the sleds are in easy reach
- fix the toy problem (there are more toys than fit on the toy shelves and they are taking over)
- put up new pictures of us and our loved ones (very quickly after the boys' father left I took down all the pictures with him in them, but there are holes in the picture wall that have not been filled, plus there isn't one picture of BBJ2 hanging up)
- mending and altering of clothes
- find the missing pillow case that matches my duvet cover
- print pictures of the boys and put together a photo album for them
- get my hair cut & a pedicure

That is it, I think, probably should be a longer list, but that seems like enough.  Next New Year's I plan on checking back to this list to see if the superstition holds true or not.