Resolutions

I don’t usually do New Year’s Resolutions.  I tend to think the newness of a new school year in September is a better time of year to get into new and better habits, instead of the middle of a New Hampshire winter.  This year, however, I do have a couple of resolutions.  

I think the trick to making the resolutions is the same as the trick to making goals: Specific, achievable and measurable.  Have I chosen specific and measurable resolutions?  Of course not.  The things I want to improve in my life are so nebulous that I don’t think you really can measure them except in how I feel and what I see, etc.

For example, my bureau seems to be a dumping ground for many things that I can’t seem to find a place for, or for items I know must have a home but I don’t have time to find that place. These are not limited to bedroom items, they are all kinds of things that go someplace else in the house!  I would like to get into the habit of taking care of those items right away.  Some might suggest a pretty basket where I could put these items until I have time and then just empty the basket and take care of them at one sitting periodically.  I’m not sure this would really work for me because I think the basket would just become what the top of the bureau is right now!

So what are my resolutions?  I want to keep better track of what needs to be done and the steps for doing it (I’m going to try using a planner again and making it work for me), I want to get our finances in order, and I want to get into habits that will mean the house is at least picked up nearly all the time, if not exactly clean.

I’ve been working full time for the last two years.  Before that I worked full time at an elementary school for two years, but that still meant that I was home by 3:30 or so, which meant I had time to throw in some laundry or do dishes, etc.  The house still wasn’t great, but it was better than it is now.  Now I don’t get home until  5:30 at the earliest, we have dinner, the kids do their homework, and we have a bit of time before they go to bed.  Then I sit on the couch.  Admittedly, I am often knitting or crocheting or surfing while I’m on the couch even if we are watching TV, but it does mean I’m not getting anything else done.  Then when I finally drag myself off to bed (usually much later than I should) I berate myself for not getting more done.  

There is often a pile of papers of various sizes and urgency at my spot at the kitchen table, as well as a mess of mail and papers on the counter.  At work I think of things that need to be done at home or something I want to look into when I get home.  So I write it down. Then I stick it in my purse or my lunch bag and add it to the pile on the table when I get home.  Repeat as needed.  I believe the way out of most of this is getting into the habit of dealing with things sooner (i.e. not just looking at the mail, but immediately putting it in the place where it belongs – bills into a spot, things that need to be dealt with later into a spot, that kind of thing).  The other part is getting out of the habit of thinking I’m too tired when I come home to deal with anything and using that as an excuse for not getting anything done.

Pinterest can be a complete Time Suck, for lack of a better term.  But I have also discovered many things on there not just that I want to make (quilt, sweater, shawl, paint projects) but ideas that will help me get organized.   One was having a bill binder.  A monthly calendar in the front where you write the dates each bill is due when it comes in, a pocket to put those pending bills into until the next bill paying time, and tabs for each bill.  Once a bill is paid it gets three-hole punched and goes behind the tab. At the end of the year, discard the stubs you no longer need and file the ones you need to keep for taxes.  Done.  No sticking the stubs in a pile somewhere and then dragging it and a lot of other sundry things down to the basement office and leaving them in a pile until either the husband or I get around to filing it.    How cool is that?!!

Yesterday I spent about a half hour or so on putting together the binder.  I re-purposed another binder I had (from when I went gung ho with FLY Lady a few years ago).  That was all it took to set it up, a half hour.  So now we just need to train ourselves to use the binder.  The husband and I are on the same page about having to do something about our finances, so hopefully we are at the right point that we can be retrained without too much angst.

I read a few blog posts about organizing one room at a time (also discovered on Pinterest), one per week for X number of weeks, but they seemed so involved.  I don’t have the emotional energy to take everything out of all my kitchen cabinets, sort, then put them away in an organized fashion.  One cabinet at a time, maybe, over a series of days.  But I have seen some good ideas.  The first one was to keep everything in a drawer visible.  

My bureau has three smaller drawers across the top row, then two columns of larger drawers below that.  I took about 15 minutes or so the other night and redid my underwear drawer. Exciting, huh?!  But boy the last couple mornings have been great!  I can see right off what is there and take what I want.  So last night I moved on to my sock drawer, which was a volcano.  I hated opening it.  It took about 20 minutes or so to sort through everything, finally find matches for socks that got separated in the wash, etc.  What a pleasure it was to open that drawer to find socks this morning!

So I’ve done some little things, and I hope to just continue to do these little things and make it work.  I do not want to crash and burn like I have with so many other things.  I want to make the routines stick and make my life and that of my family better.  A great side benefit to this would be to teach my children that you can teach an old dog new tricks, and to pass some better habits on to them than what I have passed on to them so far!  (Yeah, you don’t want to see their bureaus…..)