New Near, New Goals

A new year always brings with it a fresh spark of motivation to focus on personal development and making wanted changes. 2014 brought with it so much unexpected heartache and hurdles, we are optimistic as we look forward to a progressive 2015. But listing resolutions and reaching them are two completely different stories, and we have our eyes set on some pretty ambitious goals this year. I am a little concerned we are aiming too high and may set ourselves up for failure but at the same time when I look at the things we have managed to accomplish together already, I am convinced we can do anything we set our minds to together.
Jon and I sat down yesterday and literally made PAGES of goals for the year. We made a handful of long-term goals and then listed ways we can work towards achieving them, both together and individually. I am excited to work on this. We bought a white board that we are going to hang in the dining room, where we can see it as we sit to dinner every night as a family and keep our goals fresh in the forefront of our minds. We both do pretty well with list-type systems and I'm hoping that this proactive approach to reaching our long-term goals will help keep us on track this year.
I listed the couple of long-term goals we have chosen to focus on first, and then we have a few tasks we can do each week to work towards them. We have always been pretty good at regularly regrouping and having a "family meeting" to discuss what needs to be done but since we don't put it in writing a lot of things get missed. We plan to use this board to prevent that.
This week:

1. Long Term Goal: Purge
1. Go through all upstairs bedrooms
2. Organize "to-sell" piles garage sale style in the basement
3. Sell 5 items
2. Long Term Goal: Emergency Preparedness
1. Inventory food storage with expiration dates 
3. Long Term Goal: Budget
1. NO fast food stops
2. NO unplanned/ impulse spending
3. $25 grocery budget
4. Make a list of ALL monthly expenses

The grocery budget may seem extreme for three people for one week, but it's to help us clear some stuff out that's either been in the pantry or freezer too long so we can eliminate food waste. Really, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to go one week spending NOTHING on groceries, but I wanted to leave a little wiggle room to pick up things to complete meals. $15 of the $25 is spent on our produce basket from the co op we participate in. I see stir fry in the future. This goal list is for Saturday through Friday, and then we will keep our same categories, but list new ways to work towards them. 

I also listed on our board the tasks that seem to get forgotten that really need to be done on a more regular basis, such as de-cluttering and vacuuming our vehicles, properly filing all bills, invoices, and other paperwork, and a couple of other basic things that seem to get easily put off longer than they should. 

I think what it comes down to, mostly, is just time management. We are awful at it and both tend to have some lazy habits. I really think if we can be more disciplined in budgeting our time a lot of things will ultimately fall into place as a result. 

Another thing we are working towards, which I never thought I'd do but.... I have decided it's time to get Chase weaned. We desperately want to add to our family, and feel strongly this is a vital part of doing so. He is down to only nursing at night to fall asleep, through the night, and once in the early morning. We are moving him to a mattress on our floor because it has been very frustrating for him to be so close to me all night and not have nursing time. I'm hoping that he takes it not too hard. I have every intention of keeping him close and not pushing him out of our room until he wants to. Truthfully, cosleeping has worked beautifully for us, and I'd have no,problems continuing indefinitely if I felt it was possible to do so AND night wean.  He will continue to get breast milk for several more months thanks to my massive freezer stash. We had a very early pregnancy loss this month, which we confirmed at the doctor this last week and while we are both feeling heartbroken over it, we are being proactive. Thankfully my doctor took one look at our difficulties with conceiving and said she is not going to make us wait the usual 12+ months of actively TTC before doing clomid, and she will write a RX for it as soon as I'm done nursing. My goal is by the end of the month. We'll see.