New Week, Tweaked Plan

I'm sorry I didn't get this up last night.  :) I was quite honestly being lazy.  Here is my new weekly plan split into habits/routines I want to develop and then weekly to-dos that break my goals into manageable steps.

Routines to work on:

• Up at 6 everyday (6:15 just wasn't early enough to squeeze even my basics in...sigh...this will be moving even earlier eventually)
• Exercise for 100 mins (same as last week)
• Empty sink after each meal (I always have a few knives and misc. things that don't go in the dishwasher and I'm trying to keep these from building up)
• Have kids helps me with clean up time each night before bed
• One special (i.e. memorable and fun) activity for kids per day
• Lay out clothes each night before bed (I wasn't going to add this yet, but I've discovered it's very hard to get dressed in the dark every morning now that I'm up before my family)
• Drink 64+ oz. of water per day (Another I wasn't going to add yet, but I've been working on this off and on for a while so I figured it wouldn't be too hard to include)

To Do List:

• Plan an at home date for Saturday
• Complete a Pantry Inventory Sheet
• Complete a Freezer Inventory Sheet
• Clean out Recipes Binder
• Create a full Menu for next week (we do our shopping on Thurs, so mine run Thurs-Wed)

My main focus is to try to get my meal planning, grocery shopping and anything else food oriented under control.  It's been driving me crazy for the longest time, but it feels like such a big task I keep putting it off.  No more!  This week it begins!  :) I'll keep you updated.

P.S. The printables I use for the inventories are found here, and the menu sheet I use is here (I like this one because it's in list form by category rather than day).  

Overwhelmed...Again

I love to plan.  LOVE IT.  Working the plan and following through, however is another story.  Oh I usually make some forward progress for a while.  And some of it actually does stick, but usually I end up just sliding back into my old lazy ways.  Over the long run, I can see that I have made progress during my six years of being married.  I've grown spiritually, I'm in much better shape physically, my eating is better (though still needs a lot of work), and my housekeeping skills are improving (to list a few).  I am getting there, but the day to day efforts still don't seem to be doing much.

I had forgotten just how much better I've gotten on my housekeeping especially.  I feel in some ways a little under the microscope here in Orlando where our family drops by at least once a week, usually more.  Before moving back here, the day to day condition of my house wasn't really a big deal.  I kept it clean-ish, but not like I am concerned with now.  Plus, I had fewer mess makers running around.  So, even though I don't feel like I'm currently doing well, looking back I have to admit I have made quite a bit of progress.

Which brings us to today, or more generally, the whole week.  I have accomplished very little, which is really frustrating me, even though I have some very legitimate excuses (the biggest being that my son got sick Wednesday and has kindly shared it with me).  But even with the excuses I'm upset with myself.  I have so many things that I need to change up and then others that I just want to do and it ends up overwhelming me so I just sit and don't do anything.

So here are the things I'll be changing for next week:

• Split things up into routines/habits and one time to-dos
• Only add ONE new habit per week
• Have no more than five one time to-dos (this gives me only one a day to worry about)
• I have tons of areas that need to be worked on, but I really need to stay focused to be able to ever get anywhere, so I'll pick one and break it down into teeny, tiny, ridiculously small goals.  Hopefully then I'll have no excuse and it will get done.  I'm just not getting anywhere by trying to do it all at once.
• I may have to add more to my "not right now" list...the list of things I'm just not going to stress over anymore.  

So there it is.  Sigh, I just love the idea of making progress so much that I end up over-reaching.  Hopefully these changes will help next week, if not you'll see another post like this next Friday (if necessary!).

Sweetly Broken

The church that we went to on vacation played this song during the worship service.  I hadn't heard it in FOREVER, but I can't get it out of my head now (even two weeks later).  :) I love a song that gives me shivers every time I hear it no matter how many times I play it.

Wednesday Update

I meant to write a bit more throughout the week to work through my process here a bit more, but...I didn't.   I don't have an excuse other than laziness and putting it off, but I'm also working on it.  :) Maybe next week will be more detailed, and I DO have some time still left in this week after all!

Let's see, so far I've kept up with my wake up times, prayer time, exercise and laundry (well, up until today...just realized that I didn't fold up Nathan's stuff and he's already in bed, so my goal of having it all put away before the end of the day won't happen...opps).

I've also set up a list of activities for the kids, and we've actually been doing them!  I feel so much better just knowing that I've done something special and semi-out-of-the-ordinary with them.  :) And it makes them so happy.  I do have a few activities planned that take some prior set up, so the challenge for me with be to actually set things up before hand for these.  But so far, I've done well.

I got some reading and crocheting done yesterday, but if you've got a good memory you know that means I still have quite a few things left on my list for the week.  I may have been a little over zealous when planning this out on Sunday, so next week I'll try for a few less.  I'll keep working until I find the balance, because I'm convinced this blog-accountability will be good for me.

This Week's Goals

I tried to limit my goals to around ten for the week.  It keeps it a manageable amount.  I hope :).

Personal

• Get up at 6:15 everyday
• Do 15 mins. of solid prayer time every morning
• Exercise for 100 mins. total (ideally 5 days of 20 mins.)

Marriage

• Plan two date nights

Mothering

• Plan activities for Sept.
• Read Chapters 5-7 of The Strong Willed Child

Home Management

• Finish one complete load of laundry Mon-Fri 
• Complete pantry and freezer inventory
• Create a menu for next week

Ministry

• Write to Rose (our child we sponsor through World Vision)

Fun

• Spend at least one day working on my crochet blanket

Some of these are things that I hope to become habits over time, while some are one time items.  I hope eventually to get everything settled enough to be able to stick with one time projects, but I have to get my maintenance cleaning to be a habit first.  A few of these may pop up next week and for the foreseeable future if I really struggle with them.  Well, we will see how the first week goes :).

What I'm NOT Worried About

Here are the things that I'm not worried about at this point.  We are all human, and our time is limited.  There are only a certain number of things any one person can do in a given week, so something has to give.  Here are the things that I'm not worried about at this point.

1. Cooking from Scratch.  My family is hard enough to please when it comes to food.  I struggle each week simply getting a decent menu plan together.  Until I get better at planning food, I feel it gives me a bit of a break to use cooking helps.

2.  Doing my hair and makeup everyday.  I want to be able to do this, I really do, but I don't want to get up early enough to do this along with my devotional, my exercise, and my daily planning.  So, again, something has to give :).  Until I can discipline myself to get up earlier, a ponytail is just going to have to suffice for some days.

3.  Crafts.  I want to be crafty, I want to make things by hand, but the time is just not there.  I don't have a lot of knowledge in how to do things like this, so I'm learning a lot from the very beginnings and that is time consuming.  So, for now, these will be regulated to a small part of my week.

4.  Gardening.  It might sound like a strange one, but my family is big on gardening, so I really want to try to do this, but it's another thing that I don't have the time to put it it right now.

Those are all that I have come up with so far.  I'm sure I will come up with more as I go along, but this is good for now.  Mostly, my goal with this is to simply give myself permission to NOT do everything.  I'm not SuperMom or Wonder Woman, and I cannot accomplish it all.  And that's okay :).


If you're interested, here's the link to Money Saving Mom's blog on the same topic: here.

Focus Areas

I've broken down the things that are important to me (or important that I do) into 6 areas.  I have personal, marriage, mothering, home management, ministry (which for me includes my extended family), and fun.  I got these basically verbatim from Money Saving Mom, if you're interested in what she has said about them.  She also has a printable you can use if you're into that sort of thing :).

To break them down a bit more, here's what they entail:

Personal: spiritual disciplines, my relationship with God, exercise (I consider it not only vital to my health, but also my mood and outlook tend to be much better when I've gotten some exercise in)

Marriage: Don't expect to see too much posted on this as it is a bit private.  I do plan on restarting my goal of weekly at home dates.

Mothering:  Basically anything I can think of to help me be a better mother, anything from activities to Bible verses to help me through my day.

Home Management: Another self-explanitory category.  Will include cleaning, decorating, finances, anything to do with running my house.

Ministry:  I want this one to be ways that I can specifically get myself to find ways to minister to those around me each week.  Too often we are guilty of thinking about doing something and then never getting around to it.  Ideally, this will rid me of that excuse.

Fun: A way for me to still dabble in projects but hopefully get me to finish them at the same time.  I have some serious trouble when it comes to finishing what I start, so maybe that will keep me on track.

As I said, I'm still working on the goals within these categories.  I'll post them in a few days, but first up (hopefully tomorrow) I want to focus on things that are NOT on my list of things to do right now. This is another idea I got from the Money Saving Mom website, and I'll link the specific page in the post.  (Honestly, right now I need to be getting to bed, so goodnight!)

A New Start on an Old Plan

Kent and I spent the last four days on vacation.  It was wonderful and fun and everything a vacation should be, but beyond that it was a time for me to sit and reflect.  The craziness of the summer has really gotten me out of my rhythms and I'm struggling now that summer has ended.  Abigail started preschool a few weeks ago and that has sent my already struggling routines further into the realm of undone things.  Sooo, back to basics it is!  I'm going to start Monday with posting my goals for the week (okay, probably Sunday night, just to be sure).  Hopefully by focusing on a few things at a time I can get things back into shape.  I have a few more long term goals to set down before I can break things down weekly, but I plan on finishing that up this week.  I'll try keep this updated as I go along, but there's so much running through my head that I have trouble knowing how to get it all down in writing!  So, here's the beginning :).