Organizing My Life - Week 2

Last Sunday, I posted about some routines that I want to change to make my home a better place and to make a healthier me for this year. It's now the end of week one and I'm here to report back to you on my progress so far.

As you can see (click on the image if you want to see it bigger), the goal that I had set was to be up for the day every day by 7am. I most definitely accomplished this every single day, with the exception of one, which was actually Thursday but I see now that I mis-marked it as Wednesday. It is a bit difficult to make that image so I am not going to fix it. The number is right though. I achieved my goal on 6 out of 7 days this past week.

The ironic part of that day being the ONLY day I was not up by 7am? I had an appointment for all 4 kids at 8am. I woke up at 7:52. In my defense, I had a cold this past week and was feeling terrible and the night before, I took some NyQuil. I got some wonderful sleep, I just did not wake up to my alarm.

Luckily, I was able to call the dentist's office and let them know that I would be half an hour late (it's a good 25 minute drive over there) and that they would only be seeing three of the kids because the youngest one was sick. They said that would be fine, so I started throwing clothes at kids and urging them to get dressed and of course to "QUICKLY brush your teeth!"

We actually made it there in about 35 minutes. I called the office at 8:30 (when we were supposed to be arriving per the second arrangement) and let them know that I was at a stop light and about 5 minutes away from them and asked if that would still work. They said yes again. Phew!

So, dentist visit went well for the kiddos. One (flossing) cavity among all of them. The five year old, Oralee, is our best brusher out of the older three kids. Then it is ten year old, Cephas, then eight year old, Koren. Koren is the one with cavity as well. It only showed up on his x-ray because it is so tiny and in a spot between two teeth where they meet.

He will need to go back in February to get sealants put on his teeth and to fill that cavity. Cephas and Oralee passed their dental exams. Cephas, to date, has had one cavity, Koren, to date, has had one cavity, Oralee to date has had no cavities and same with Jeriah. I think that is an okay record. I would have loved for it to be zero for all of them, but this is okay too.

Oh wow. I was here to write about goals and got off on a tangent about dental appointments. Sorry. I do that a lot. I'm guessing you already know that though.

Okay, so anyhow, getting back to the regularly scheduled blog post, I accomplished my goal of waking up at 7am for week 1 on six out of seven days. My goal for the coming week is to continue with last week's goal and then add to it the new goal of walking for at least 10 minutes, 3 times each day. I should be able to accomplish this goal fairly easy every day of the week, particularly if I am getting up at 7am each day. I will get this. It will become a habit and I will do it every day! If these goals are something that you'd like to join me in or if you'd like a blank copy of that chart, please leave me a comment and I can email it to you. Or you are welcome to just jump in as well and join me where I am for that week.

2012 Resolutions

Yesterday, while the kids were working on their chores (and they did a very nice job on them for the most part) Cephas came up to me and was asking about resolutions. He said that he wants to make some for this year. Miss Lil Oralee already did make two, which she shared with me, and it got me to thinking that I should make some as well. I have my goals for Organizing My Life and a number of those goals actually directly correspond with some of my resolutions.

But without further ado, here are (some of) my resolutions:

1. Improve my health.
a. I plan to do this by getting into a consistent sleep schedule. I want to be able to have more energy to spend on the things that really matter and that requires me to get adequate sleep. It would also improve my health and wellness.
b. Another way that I plan to do improve my overall health is to start exercising on a more consistent basis. Sadly, I do not even walk on a daily basis.
c. I also plan to eat balanced meals, at home, at the right time of day, so that it has the best possible effects for my body.
d. I would like to lose 90 pounds by this time next year. I bought a scale yesterday. That is the first step. (Get it, step?! I crack myself up!)

2. Improve my spiritual life.
a. I plan to pray specifically and to journal those prayers and answers on a regular basis.
b. I plan to read my Scriptures daily and to continue to journal about the things that I am covering in my reading.
c. I have also accepted a teaching position at church and will be spending time once a month (at minimum) teaching others and being there for them.
d. Attend church every week.
e. Read the Bible with my children daily.

3. Improve my homemaking skills.
a. The kids have their regular chores and they are fairly good about doing them. I need to be better about doing my own personal chores though as well.
b. I need to be able to say no to things that would interfere with my own goals of what I want my house to be. My home needs to be a higher priority.
c. Continue to teach my children how to thoroughly clean a home so that they are able to do this when they become adults and don't have to struggle with it the way that Hubby had to.
d. I need to develop a regular cleaning schedule that works for me and for my house and my life.
e. I have a vision and a goal of what I want my house to look and feel like and I will know that this has been accomplished when my house feels and looks the way it does in my head.

4. Continue to build new relationships.
a. I have started building new relationships and have been rebuilding some current relationships. I have found this to be most pleasing overall and really want to be purposeful about this.

5. Improve my education.
a. Ideally, I would love to continue to work on a degree, but honestly, I don't foresee that happening at this stage in my life. I am okay with that though. Or mostly okay with that at least.
b. There is a plethora of online resources for learning and I plan to utilize these to increase my education this year.

6. Improve our financial well-being.
a. This is an interesting thing for me to list in here, as I have actually stopped working regular hours and am just on PRN status with two different families, but maybe that is also while it is even more important.
b. I want to get all of our bills caught up and current within the first 3 months of this year.
c. Beginning in March, I want to pay off every bill IN FULL that we receive every month.
d. Beginning now, I do not want to accumulate any additional debt this year.
e. I also want to start putting money aside every paycheck (maybe 10%) to begin building a nest egg for a rainy day.
f. I want to get rid of our storage unit by March as well. That is money that we are spending each and every month that serves no real purpose for our lives. I do need to go through it and make it work into the space that we have available for long-term storage or make some tough decisions.

7. Get rid of 2012 items in 2012.
a. I have seen this on people's blogs this year and I would like to do that this year. It goes along perfectly with Resolution #6, part F, don't you think? I love it when things work together like that!

I think that is it for this year. I may come back and add more or even do a new post in which I change them or add to them or whatever, but I feel good about this list. I expanded on general goals and clearly defined what I want to happen. I will check back in with you all and let you know how they are going.

Organizing My Life - Week 1

You all might remember when I first introduced this idea here and if so, you can see here and now that I remembered this and am still planning to stick to it. And for day numero uno, I have succeeded. I am awake and present and accounted for by 7am. It feels good to accomplish this goal already this morning! Yay for a good start to the year!

Organizing My Life - Intro

I have decided to start a new plan for myself for the year 2012. I want to start implementing a number of different things. I want to give myself a new task to incorporate each week. It will be something minor each week but little things that will help me to get and stay on track as I progress through the year.

What do you think? Does this look like something that would help you as well? I'd love to hear your feedback so that I know if this is something that I should maybe stock in an etsy shop. Also, I would love to have 3 people try it out and let me know what they think of it. I want to know if it helps you.

No matter what I do online, I have to have a physical paper version of it to really get me to stick to it. My problem with online things is simply that. They are online. Which involves me sitting at my desk (if I am using the desktop computer) or on the sofa (if I am on my laptop) where I am not exactly motivated to get whatever it is done that needs to be done.

This way, I can put it on a clipboard or inside a page protector and hang it somewhere that I am sure to see everyday. Like the wall next to my desk or in the kitchen. Shoot, even in the bathroom would work but I'm not sold on hanging it there. Unless I had multiple copies of the same sheet and hung them up in the room where each job would end up occurring so that I would be sure to see it while I was in that room. I don't know, I guess it could work. We'll see though. I'm going to start out with just one copy put up in a central location.

Who knows? If this works for me, it might even work for the kids to develop personal responsibility habits? It just might work to help them out as well.