And So It Begins

I am not the greatest housekeeper. Quite honestly I sort of suck at housekeeping. I also have a problem finishing things. ANY thing. I have started many projects both around the house as well as at-home businesses that have crashed and burned because I have a lack of follow through. Oh look something shiny! That is me. Always finding something awesome to start but as soon as the "fun"wears off I spiral head first into the abyss.

And as I follow these adventures my family suffers. I spend hours upon hours working on or researching whatever my new thing is and I neglect to plan dinner, "forget" to do laundry and somehow allow them to spend hours playing video games or watching television. Then I get frustrated that things are a mess. Well that changes today. Things can no longer stay the same. Over the last few weeks I have been planning how to make slow changes. Fast changes only leave me exhausted and unable to keep up our home. I don't mind the cleaning necessarily. It's the maintenance that is a problem.

So today I begin my year long experiment to make peace with my spirit, develop my writing skills, make my home and my family my main focus and build new, exciting relationships with my family/kids/friends.

I will start each day with a clean slate, celebrating my daily accomplishments and any things that go undone will be released without guilt.

This week I will completely reorganize my kitchen as I incorporate an actual schedule into my daily life.

Daily:

• 3 loads of laundry: This will include washing/drying/folding and putting clothes away. There are 6 of us and the laundry is constantly a mountain which takes over the bathrooms and a corner of my kitchen where the washer and dryer are located.
• Make my bed
• 30 min on organizing the kitchen (this does not include making sure the kitchen is clean after every meal)
• Sweep the hardwood floors (mop twice a week)
• 15 min a day purging the file cabinet with important papers: This normally would not be a priority but we have our taxes done in February so if I spend 15 min for everyday in January then I should have everything organized and ready for our accountant as soon as the W-2 forms arrive
• Writing: Along with this blog and my healthy eating blog I will be writing for a paying client. After the project for my client is completed I will be working on my picture books and novels. The goal is a minimum of 1 hour a day but until my paying project is finished I will be putting in closer to 5-6 hours per day. 
• Packing lunches the night before for kids and hubby
• Take 5 minutes to pickup/put away things before bed

Weekly:

This week is about getting my act together so I will be:

• exercising for at least an hour 3 times per week
• keeping to my meal plan for the week
• make a list of sewing and home improvement projects to start on next week
• home cleaning day: This is going to take place on Thursday this week. I will ignore the clutter and tackle every room: vacuum, sweep, mop, dust, wash all sheets, clean bathrooms.
• Keeping up with our spending and recording it on our budget excel sheet

Monthly:

This month I am instigating the eat-at-home rule where we only eat out once a week. This is to get our budget under control and work on our junk food addict eating habits.

Other new additions to our life are a monthly date night and a monthly family outing. We have busy schedules and our teenagers don't exactly love spending time with Mom and Dad and their younger siblings. So I sat down and designated two weekends: one for each of these. Just so happened that the grandparents let the kids sleepover this past weekend so hubby and I moved up our date night. So far I have the actual date planned for our family outing, I just have to come up with what we are going to do. Thinking of hiking unless it is just freezing here in Georgia. 

This sounds like a lost but as long as I take it one step at a time and take each day as a new start then here's to a new start to go along with a new attitude. I'll keep posting to keep myself honest.