Reinventing Myself

I've always heard that you should never set New Years' Resolutions because more often than not, you will fail. Maybe that's because many people keep their resolutions to themselves. My thinking behind this post is that if I throw my goals out there into the interwebz, somebody can help keep me accountable. I have no idea who actually reads this, as I don't get much feedback. I do know that from time to time I'll get comments from friends on Facebook. I do know that others read this too...at the time that I'm writing this, my 32 posts have over 2,500 page views coming from all over the world. Hopefully this post will inspire someone to take this journey with me.

This year, I'm planning on reinventing myself. Probably not a terribly original resolution. I want to make my home and life less stressful (which, if you know me, I don't stress much....but right now home and life is adding grey hairs). I also want to work on my physical appearance (again....how original). Lastly, I want to work on inner self. I am not adding in spiritually, because my family has already begun working on this in the last few months. Plus, I haven't really looked into that aspect on Pinterest. Considering that's the whole concept behind my blog, I'll address the items that I can help conquer via Pinterest.

First I want to start with making my home and life less stressful. To me, that means keeping the house cleaner and decluttered. For the past couple of years, I've been a stay at home mom. I have all the time in the world to keep up with the housework, cooking, and cleaning. But I don't. The house looks like the Wood-Man and I work full time. I stumbled across a pretty feasible housecleaning and laundry schedule that works for me now, when I have all the time in the world, and that will work for me when I do start working again (anyone out there hiring???). However, for whatever reason, I didn't pin it. At the time I came across it, our printer wasn't working so I copied the cleaning chart by hand, stuck it on the fridge, and got to work. Each day's cleaning takes about 15 minutes (weekdays only!), and includes one load of laundry. I always dread cleaning and laundry day because it lasts all darn day. Usually by the end of it, I have stacks of clean clothes around the house that we never put away, which then adds to the clutter situation. BUT....I can handle putting away one load of clothes a day, and cleaning for 15 minutes! Here is my copy. If you know where this came from, let me know and I'll give credit. Also, I'm not super blog savvy so if you want a copy of this to alter for yourself, give me your email address in a comment and I'll send it to you.

Another new project the Woodman and I are tackling is a year-long declutter program. The best part of this program is that it gives you daily tasks in a calendar format that should only take about 15 minutes a day.

I first came across this calendar on a friend's Facebook page, but have also seen it on Pinterest. It comes from the Home Storage Solutions 101 website. This link takes you to a printable version of the January calendar (to get the rest of the year, you just have to subscribe to her email list). As seen in the picture above, most tasks have a link to further explain each task and/or offer suggestions.  Wood-Man and I easily completed today's task in about 3 minutes!

Task 1: Set up a donation and selling collection station

For the physical appearance, obviously I want to eat better and lose weight. We are going to start cutting out processed foods. I came across this 14 week program that slowly eases you in to clean eating.

A friend shared a blog post recently that also talked about losing weight. It basically said that most people focus on the outcome of pounds or inches lost. The author points out that its much easier to instead of focusing on an outcome, focus on the process of getting there. She listed three numbers. The first number was her pants size. The second was weight. The third was the amount of miles she ran in the past year. I'm going to take this approach. With the hope of focusing on the healthier eating and the increasing of mileage (mine will be walking instead of running), my first two numbers will shrink. 

So, I've sat here for about 10 minutes contemplating on actually listing my numbers. I physically feel sick to my stomach throwing out there what they are. If you know me, you know that I'm very overweight. I think for the moment, I'm just going to say that my mileage goal is 180 miles for the year. At the end of the year, I'll revisit this post and will post what my numbers were on Jan. 1, 2015 and what they ended up being on Dec. 31, 2015. You can hold me to that. 

Lastly, in order to improve my inner self, I am going to start a gratitude jar for our family. During the last half of the year, we have been really swamped with dealing with my broken ankle and the subsequent medical bills. For me, it has been a bit depressing and I'm struggling to remember the good stuff that happened (which I know we had a lot of good things occur). At this moment, when I think about 2014, my thoughts are, "Damn, that year sucked." Anyway, this jar will sit in the kitchen and as something good happens, we will jot down what it was and drop it in the jar. It can be something funny, something unexpected, something really awesome - basically anything good. On December 31, 2015, we can all sit down and read the slips of paper.