Since I’m wrapping up my year, I thought I’d start by recapping the plans I had a year ago. Whenever you embark on any kind of long-term plan, I think looking back can be really revealing. Right now, I don’t think I feel as successful as I thought I’d feel, but when I consider snapshots, both actual and mental, I see smaller victories.
As an ex-teacher, I planned my year by thinking in terms of objectives and the steps I’d take to attain them. I worked backward, thinking about how I wanted my house to look, and my life. I envisioned something Pinterest-worthy, which I now know was unrealistic and not really worth the time.
Ultimately, I chose these four objectives to guide me through the year.
- To create a home which only contains things we need and love.
We live in a small house, and for a long time I found myself thinking we needed more space, even though we tended to hang out in one room and had a spare bedroom we seldom used. But I decided I wanted to leave my job more than I wanted to move, and deep down I did like my house and neighborhood. Remembering that I’d grown up fine in a smaller house with more people helped me see that we didn’t need a bigger house. We needed less stuff. So I decided to take a very critical look at everything we owned. I’ll go into more details later in the week about the process, but here’s a spoiler: I don’t miss any of it.
2. To implement routines and habits to help us manage our time, our house and our health.
I have a definite interest in psychology and learning about how people build habits successfully, and I realized that bad habits were the cause of many of our home and organizational woes. In the past I’ve had some success with implementing routines around cleaning but it took very little to derail me. So I wanted to devote more time to this area because I knew donating and tossing things was just the first step. Maintenance was going to be, and will still be, an ongoing challenge.
3. To improve the quality of family mealtimes through better planning and organization.
Prior to beginning my project, I’d attempt to plan meals but found the process frustrating and daunting. So instead I’d plan day by day, often waking up and not knowing what we were going to have for dinner that night. This is of course not the worst tragedy in the world, but we’d often default to dining out, which was bad for our budget and our health. This objective might be the one with the most trial and error throughout the year.
4. To utilize free time more mindfully, individually and as a family.
When Emma started school, I was determined to keep her from being overscheduled. I decided she could join Girl Scouts, which she wanted to do, and participate in one more activity. She chose dance, which met once a week. Periodically she’d take a class or do a sport that met for a short span of time which I felt was worth the time because I wanted her to pursue her interests. I’ve been successful here. Sometimes Girl Scouts gets very busy but dance follows the school calendar so she gets occasional breaks and we have some balance. But I felt we weren’t using our free time well. We’d go to the mall or spend a Saturday running errands, even though there were many things we could have done instead. I also felt I wasn’t using my own free time well enough. When I started I didn’t have a good word to describe what I wanted, but I recently realized I wanted to live with more intention.
I’ll be posting my final evaluations of each objective to wrap up my year, and I’ll also share my tally of how many bags and boxes I’ve donated.
We are still accepting proposals for someone to move ahead with The Simple Year 5. You can find the specifics here.