January 26, 2016

Fresh Slate?

January is the traditional month for change. New year, new resolutions, new opportunities to make changes to ourselves, our lives, our homes.


I've been thinking for a long time of simplifying. Not downsizing because we really cannot afford to move right now. But we do have a lot of stuff in our home we could do without. And there are other areas which could stand a little more focus and a little downsizing as well.

Last year, Wil Wheaton had a blog post about making changes in some small areas, tweaks to make his life better in health, creativity, and overall living. He called it a reboot and I suppose that's what I need to do as well.

I need/want to:

Increase my exercise. I've been diagnosed as pre-diabetic for the last few years and I need to get serious about losing weight and keeping it off. I lost 10 lbs last year, but got lazy and regained it. I have an elliptical and I need to get on it no less than 5 times a week for at least 20 minutes.

Increase my intake of healthy fruits and vegetables. I fell down on the job of making sure I was eating more healthy foods and decreasing my carb intake to help my blood sugars. I need to buy veggies and get them chopped up on the weekend so that I have something easy to grab.

Decrease my screen time in the evenings. I need to put down the computer or tablet and pick up a book or my knitting. I don't need to be mindlessly scrolling through crap when I could be escaping into a good book or working on a gift for someone.

Read a variety of books each month. My hope is to read at least 6 different kinds of books a month: non-fiction, my book club's selection, YA, mystery, Christian (fiction or non) and fiction (whatever fits the category like romance, general fiction, SciFi, etc). So I really need to put the screens away at night.

Knit more. I have yarn, I have patterns. I have friends and family who enjoy receiving things I make and to whom I enjoy giving. I need to make my list of projects, put the yarn into bags with the patterns and just grab one a month.

Decrease the clutter in my home. I need to get down to the items I love, have meaning for me or serve a purpose. I've decided to do Snail Pace Transformations' 30x12 Challenge so I can month by month decrease the stuff in my home taking up valuable space better used for loved items or nothing at all. I also determined to be mindful about where I was going to donate the items, to not just use Goodwill, but also Salvation Army and more local charitable thrift stores.

Purpose to spend time in Bible study. I really suck at keeping this up. I do well for a week or two and then find myself doing rapid catch-ups on the weekend to be ready for Monday evening Bible study.

The above is enough.

I'm hoping to once a month do a check-in post to see how I'm doing. Since I also suck at posting, we'll see how that goes.