Tag: goals

2017 Goals

Like many people, I enjoy spending some time at the beginning of the year drafting goals for the next 12 months. 2016 was a great year in some aspects (Ben potty trained and started school! We road tripped to Disney and Colorado!) but there were some hard bits as well, like Teddy spending time in the hospital with viral-induced asthma. There’s no doubt that there will be similar ups and downs in the coming year but perhaps having lived through 2016, we’ll be better prepared to deal with them. Looking back on my personal and our family life over the last year, I’ve come up with 3 goals to help focus my energy in 2017.

Less Waste

I’ve grown frustrated by how many resources I waste due to carelessness or laziness. I buy but don’t cook food because it didn’t feel convenient and it needs to get thrown out. I sit on my phone or computer instead of making use of the very little productive time I have and the house and family suffer for it. My goal is to waste less by planning more. If I plan our meals better, less food goes to waste. If I set daily goals, I don’t waste time trying to figure out what I should be doing with my free time instead of just doing it. This is a pretty far-reaching goal since the “less waste” mentality spreads into so many aspects of my life (waste less space in the house by purging things we don’t use, use up the craft supplies we have on hand instead of buying new, etc). I’m hoping there will be some positive financial side effects from this goal as well.

Grow My Business

I started working as a virtual assistant (VA) for Brian Krogsgard at Post Status in 2015. I’ve always had the capacity to work more hours but haven’t made an attempt to promote my VA skills and expand my client base. That stops this year. My goal is to increase my client load by 2 and max out my available work hours. As a subsection of this goal, I bought a domain and started creating a site by myself to promote my work. Marketing myself is a huge stretch; I didn’t know it would be so challenging! I foresee lots of learning in this area over the next year.

Complete One Large House Project

We bought and moved into my grandparent’s house in the summer of 2012, a few months before Teddy was born (I don’t recommend moving during the third trimester). We painted, cleaned, and did minor renovations very quickly so we could get settled with our then 22 month old before the new baby arrived. Since that summer, we have done very little to improve the house. It’s in great shape but, as expected since it was owned by people two generations older than we are, there are lots of aesthetic changes we’d like to make to make it fit our family better. I think this means we’ll finally be replacing the flooring in the kitchen, dining room, and bedroom hall to something more kid friendly (we currently have cream colored carpet in the dining room!).

Do you set goals or make big plans at the beginning of the year? What are your goals?

2015 Goals

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For our family, 2015 will be defined by not only the things we want to accomplish but also by things we aren’t doing. This is the first year in many that we do not expect to add to our family. This is the first time in 4 years that we are not saving for another house. It’s likely we won’t accomplish all of these but having them written down will give me the satisfaction of checking them off one by one!

Financial

  • Save to pay cash for a minivan
  • Save $3000 specifically for emergencies and repairs at the rental
  • Start a payment plan to repay my parents for their loan from when we bought this house

House

  • Strip wallpaper in kitchen, dining room, and hall and prep for painting
  • Remove chair rail in kitchen and dining room
  • Have kitchen, dining room, and hall painted in late February
  • Paint kitchen cabinets
  • Replace kitchen counter, sink, faucet, hardware (possibly)
  • Replace kitchen, dining room, and hall light fixtures
  • Decide on exterior trim color
  • Replace windows (or at least start saving for that to happen in 2016)

Boys

  • Potty train Ben should he continue to be interested and willing (eek!)
  • Sleep train Teddy (he doesn’t get a choice on this one)
  • Work on number, letter, shape, and color recognition with Ben
  • Throw a simple yet fun first birthday party for Teddy

Travel

  • Disney in February
  • Fort Myers in March
  • San Diego in March
  • Camping sometime this summer
  • At least one Civil War reenactment

Self

  • Continue my commitment to healthier eating
  • Exercise and be active to (attempt to) shrink the mommy belly
  • Buy and manage my own domain for this blog (I said it! It’s going to happen)
  • Read through the Bible again this year with Brian using a daily reading plan
  • Continue my quest to cook with unfamiliar foods in ways that my family will eat them

So how about you? Do you find goal writing as exciting and full of promise as I do?