Goal #1 was Body Image
Goal #2 was Finances
I decided to separate Home & Family from my personal goals. So there will be a fourth in this series, sorry! *G* This one sort of ties into Finances a bit…and it’s not as many ‘big dreams’ as the ‘baby steps’ part of it.
My family is wonderful, but there can always be improvement, right? My big dream is to be June Cleaver…okay, not REALLY. But I want to be the Mom that does things…and I’ve taken steps toward that in the past couple of months (minus sick time) – but I want to take better and more proactive steps.
Big Dreams
1. Be the Mom that does things – goes places and plans at home activities
2. Have family sit down dinners 6 out of 7 nights
3. Have a tween that talks to us, and comes out of his room more
4. Be a fine tuned grocery shopping machine
5. Have a clean, uncluttered home (more likely if/when we get a BIGGER house..but this is BIG dreams 😉 )
Baby Steps
1. Start making meal plans weekly, based on coupons and grocery flyer (and helpful hints from frugal blogs)
2. Set grocery limit of $350/mo for now, decrease as I become better.
3. Have family game night at least once a week (already started)
4. Start with kitchen – cleaning it fully once/wk. Dishes daily.
5. Continue experimenting w/ recipes, it’s been fun.
6. Make breads as regularly as possible – send out for new sourdough starter.
That’s it for now. I’ll revisit it monthly and edit…just like the other goals!
One more tomorrow – Personal. This will include my crafting ADHD and my writing (which I’m resuming).
You’ve got some trickier behaviors to manage here….a grocery limit might work if you have been allowing yourself the more expensive stuff (impulse buying) and you convert to the more economical stuff.
Just for reference we have been “the” family to have the most family meals of anyone we know (Texan saying: no brag, just fact). An excellent goal, but a huge commitment if you are starting from 1-2x week. We are now transitioning to fewer family meals per week with one in college and one in HS. I’m starting to realize the huge amount of time cooking and cleaning dishes requires. Enough about me – no – one more. I stopped clipping coupons because of ALL THE TIME IT TOOK – including in the store to calculate if the coupon was a better bargain or not.
Last, I AM keeping my resolution to comment on others blogs less. I skipped others so I could comment here. chkl.
Good luck getting the tween out the bedroom. No electronics in there?
A grocery limit will work if I limit myself to a list and stop roaming the aisles aimlessly. A few months ago I went shopping on a budget weekly and managed to never go over and average of $50/wk. I’ve raised it a little because my girls are now eating more. When I don’t make a list and plan ahead I end up spending up to 3X as much.
As far as the family meals go…like I said. 6X a week is a BIG dream…right now I’m happy with 2X/wk. Baby steps…baby steps 😀
I’ve learned that clipping takes too much time if you start that way. I’ll be keeping the full inserts and just going w/ the grocery ad once a week, clipping out what I need. It usually takes me only 1hr/wk to plan my grocery list – tops.
Thanks for the advice…and for reserving your commenting for me 😀