Change in plans: Weeks 7 & 8
03 Mar 2011 1 Comment
in Weekly Update Tags: family, goal, Goals, housekeeping, mommy, mother, organize, parenting, routine, spouse, time management, wife
Sorry I didn’t get a post up last week. I was out of town on the day that I normally write my new posts.
During week 7 I was supposed to start adding in a new routine for the girls with unique daily learning activities. I tried to plan this while I was out of town but I started feeling overwhelmed by how much this would add to my day. I decided that when I got back I was going to evaluate my goals, make some changes, and plan a catch up week. I didn’t realize that week 8 was a scheduled evaluation week anyway. Here are some of the changes I made to my week-by-week plan:
- I did some reorganizing so that some of the more intense tasks are paired up with easier ones.
- Instead of having an evaluation week every 4 weeks and a catch up week every 12, both are now every 4 weeks.
- On tasks that will take longer than a week to complete (but aren’t added permanently to the weekly schedule), I have them listed for each week that I’ll be working on them. Example: to make a good price book, I am going to need to spend more than 1 week on it. So it’s listed for 4 weeks. This helps me to visualize and think about how much I have planned to do for each week.
- I’ve added 4 more weeks to the schedule. At first I was bummed about this because I really like the even 6 months. But when I remind myself that originally I thought it would take me a year to accomplish all these goals, I’m okay with 7 months.
- I’ve added 2 new tasks to accomplish: 1.) I want to start blogging more. As I get more done on my lists, I want to be able to give you more details on my goals than just how my week went. So be prepared to see more blog posts throughout the week. 2.) Start using cloth diapers. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and planned on adding it to my goals for the second half of the year, but I’ve decided to start it earlier. Here is the story on why. This past weekend I went to a friend’s baby shower and she is planning on using cloth diapers. I got jealous. After the shower I was thinking about why I don’t use cloth diapers yet and my reason is that I still haven’t been able to catch up on the laundry. There’s no way I would be able to add cloth diapers to the laundering schedule right now. But… if I could get caught up on the laundry, then it would become a possibility. That evening I was talking to Matt on the phone (he didn’t go with me on this trip) and he told me that he had all the laundry done. Isn’t he wonderful? So now all I have to do is keep up with the laundry for 2 weeks to prove to myself that I can do it, and then we will start using cloth diapers. I’m very excited because there are many benefits. The biggest benefit is that it will save us lots of money. It’s also good for the environment of course and it will help with potty training too (something that we have started earlier than I scheduled).
I think that is all the changes I made but you can check it out yourself to make sure.
Week 6: the shower and its curtain
20 Feb 2011 2 Comments
in Weekly Update Tags: clean, cleaning, goal, housekeeping, routine, shower, shower curtain
I’m torn on whether I should call this a good week or not. There were 2 days that I got everything completed on my lists, which up to this point hasn’t been done before, and one of those days I got it all done before dinner. :) But there were also a couple of days that I barely got anything done. Here are the details:
Add 2 more tasks from Weekly Chores list each day (4/day total)- I’m starting to get into some stuff that hasn’t been done in a very long time. One of those: clean the shower. I’m a little embarrassed to show you these before pictures, but this is what my journey is all about. From now on my shower should always look like the after pictures here.
Before
After
Before
After
My shower curtain liner was even worse. Here are the before pictures:
I was very tempted to throw this out and buy a new one, but I decided to try and clean it first. I threw it in the wash with 2 towels, some detergent, and 1/2 cup of baking soda. I set the washing machine to the largest load and hottest temperature. After it ran through the cycle, I did an extra rinse and added a cup of vinegar. When it was finished, I was prepared to take out the towels and wash it once more with bleach, but to my surprise it was pretty clean. In fact it looked so good that I realized that it was actually quite a bit dirtier to start with than I originally thought. Here are the after pictures:
Sign up at tutor.com- this one has been put on hold. I’m still studying my calculus and as soon as I complete the book, I will sign up.
Begin selling clutter- uh-oh. This task fell on those couple of days that I didn’t get much done on my lists. But I’ll add it to next week’s tasks.
Your challenge for this week
Find one thing in your house that desperately needs cleaning and clean it. This shouldn’t be a room or an area that needs organization, but something that needs a scrub brush and a little elbow grease. Then come back here and tell me what is you cleaned and any other details about the project.
Two-in-one: Weeks 3 & 4
07 Feb 2011 2 Comments
in Weekly Update Tags: appreciate, budget, children, coffee, family, goal, housekeeping, husband, mother, rewards, routine, sleep training, waking up, wife
Alright, I’m gonna jump right in and tell you what got done and what didn’t in weeks 3 & 4. Then I’ll share a little what I’ve learned from those weeks and what’s going to be different about week 5.
Week 3
Plan for February- done. But I realized that when I plan for the next month I should also budget for that month. So, I’m going to revisit this one sometime this week.
Add all daily tasks to routine- if you’ve been following along, then you should know that this refers to the chore planner I purchased here. I emailed The Project Girl (I think her name is Jen) to get permission to post a picture of each week’s page after the week is over. I haven’t heard back yet, so no pictures this week. Hopefully next week, you’ll get a glimpse of what I’ve been working off of.
Anyway… I added the tasks, but I have to be honest. They didn’t get done. More on this later.
Deliberately appreciate Matt on a weekly basis- I’m going to have a special post on this in a couple of days. But for now, I’ll tell you that this did get completed, sort of.
Week 4
Make bath nights for girls part of weekly routine- I picked out bath nights and will be implementing them this week.
Evaluate goals and make changes as needed- done and done. Which leads us into…
Changes for week 5 and beyond
When I evaluated my goals, I realized that on the days I managed to wake up earlier, I got so much more accomplished. And as you know from this post, waking up early has not been going very well. Last week I had a discussion with my dad about sleep cycles and how to make sure that I’m getting enough good sleep in so that waking up is easier.
He helped me come up with a plan on what time to go to bed and what to do in the morning to help get out of bed. It all sounded good and made perfect sense to me, until Matt pointed out later, that my sleep cycles are totally messed up because I get up a few times a night to feed Kennedy.
So we are trying 2 new things to combat my sleeping-in problem. First, we started sleep-training Kennedy last week. I promise that we didn’t start doing this for my benefit only. We could tell that Kennedy was really needing to start working on her sleep habits. She isn’t able to sleep through anything like she used to be, she’s too big for her bassinet, and she started getting very fussy without her sleep. Also, she was making it a habit to wake up every couple of hours and not go back to sleep without nursing. I won’t go into detail about how we are doing this because I don’t want to bore you or get into a heated debate about sleep-training. But if you let me know that this is something you are truly interested in, I’ll write a post on the topic later.
The second thing I’m going to start trying is rewards. I know a lot of sources suggest using rewards to help you accomplish your goals, but I’ve been trying to avoid them. First, I always have trouble thinking of good rewards that are free. And second, I would rather my rewards be intrinsic: the feeling accomplishment, knowing that I’m setting a good example for my girls, peace of mind, being able to relax with my husband at the end of the day.
But in this case, intrinsic rewards aren’t working. So here’s the plan: every other morning I’m going to get a coffee from McDonald’s if I have gotten up at 7:00 am both days. That’s 3 coffee’s a week. The first one will be a regular small coffee, the second a medium iced coffee, and the third will be a medium or large McCafe drink (I need to look at the cost of these drinks to make sure it fits in the budget before I pick a size).
I’m hoping that after a while, my body will naturally wake up at 7 and I can start weaning myself off my McDonald coffee runs. We’ll see how it all goes.
Is this journey going to be all bumpy roads?
If you have been following my blog from the beginning, I hope you aren’t too depressed. It seems like my journey so far has been more bumpy roads than smooth. I’ve had 3 not-so-great weeks and only 1 good week (2 if you count week 0) since I started again. But I am determined to keep on truckin’. I could give up at any moment and declare, “this just isn’t me. I will never be the woman with her life in order.” But I refuse. Part of this journey I’m taking is about learning what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, in the beginning, its more about what doesn’t. I haven’t given up yet, so don’t you give up on me either!
Week 1
29 Jan 2011 4 Comments
in Weekly Update Tags: chore planner, cleaning, family notebook, goal, God, housekeeping, laundry, mommy, mother, quiet time, routine, waking up, wife
As I said in my earlier post, I plan an adding at least one new post every week. These posts will update you on how I did that week on achieving my goals. I won’t go through everything; instead I hope to share helpful information for you on your journey and other things of interest from the week.
I’m already a little behind on my posts. Right now I’m finishing up week 3, but this post will be about week 1 (to clarify, in my last past I referred to week 1 as being my goal-forming and planning week, I will now call that week 0, it just makes more sense if you are referring to the Week-by-Week Plan). I want to add week 2 later this week and if I’m feeling really ambitious, I’ll add week 3 so that I’ll be completely caught up by next Sunday.
Week 1 Goals
Continue daily kitchen cleaning tasks- I would consider this one a success! I mentioned in the post here that I started using a chore planner from Motivated Moms. I loved it and would still suggest people use it. However, I wanted something that was a little more customizable. So I found this planner. It’s a little pricier, but worth it for the customization. You’ll hear me refer to this planner often and I’m hoping to get permission to post pictures each week so you can see what I got done on it and how I’m using it.
Get caught up on laundry – I’m still working on this one but I feel pretty good about the progress I’m making. And if I had posted this right after week 1 I would have felt even better about it. I’m doing 2 loads of laundry a day until I get caught up and then it will just be 1 a day. I’ve also made a point to put the laundry away as soon as it comes out of the dryer. I’m shocked by how easy that actually is and how quickly it can be done. In my opinion, putting the laundry away is the worst part.
Have daily quiet times- GREAT! I have an app on my phone called You Version that includes several helpful tools for reading your Bible (including the Bible). I started a reading plan and devotion called the 21 Day Fast. I have been fasting from TV as I work through this study.
At first, I really struggled about whether I should share this information with you or not because scripture talks about not being obvious when you are fasting. But then one of the devotions talked about doing the fast in a group. The devotion asked about motives when sharing this information with others. My goal is not to make myself known or to seem better than thou. But instead, I hope that this can encourage and inspire you. By fasting from the television, I have been able to put aside the biggest distraction that keeps me from becoming the woman God wants me to be.
Wake up no later than 7 am- not going so great. The first week I progressively was waking up earlier and earlier but never at 7 am. The second week I got sick then had some snow days, and waking up early just went down hill from there. Anyone out there have any good tips for getting up early? Seriously, I need help on this one.
Create a family notebook- check. I want to do it more in-depth, but I have something functional for now. What is a family notebook, you ask? It’s where I keep my chore lists, grocery lists, my goals, calendar, and other information that pertains to the family. One day I will do a post on how to make your own, complete with pictures from mine.
Create a routine- done
And that is week 1! Did you make some goals and a plan for the new year? If so, how is it going so far?
