It’s been a wonderful Christmas Eve at our house! We’ve had a fun day, went to church, had some nice time with family and now I’m back on here before I go finish wrapping the last of my presents.
Your decluttering challenge today was to declutter your mind by sitting down with a pencil and paper and thinking about 2-5 of the biggest problems you faced this year. You were supposed to grab your pen and write them down and come up with a few ideas on how to fix these problems for next year!
My first item was time management. It’s been an adjustment adding blogging to my daily routine. Some days it feels like I’m flying around by the seat of my pants trying to get a post up and others I have lots of time. The first idea I came up with to help with this problem are to implement a time budget and this is probably one of the best solutions I came up with. The second solution I had was to implement a blogging calendar (which is also something I’m going to try to add to my planner. I want to continue blogging daily so that would be a good addition to help me stay organized.
Another problem that I’ve had this year was being intentional with my money (I used to be very good at setting a budget, sticking to it, using coupons for items, and saving.) This year I have been lazy. I feel that we are wasting money in certain areas, especially groceries and that I could be doing better. A few ideas on how to fix this problem for next year are revamping a realistic budget, sticking to the grocery list when I’m shopping, avoiding Target where I do most of my impulse shopping, trying to shop with the least amount of people possible to avoid their impulse purchases, and by watching the sales flyers.
A third area that I face every day is intentionally spending time with my family. Once again, I feel that a time budget is the best solution so I can do the majority of work when the big kids are at school and intentionally scheduling quality time. I also felt that as a family we need to look at our activities and try to eliminate some that take up a lot of our free time. I want to do Kingdom work, not busy, worldly work.
Finally, I’m sure you will all find this as a shock (not really) but self-care is an area I feel a need for improvement, especially in the exercising, healthy department. I go through spurts when I love to exercise and others when I loathe it (which is where I’m at right now). I also need to do a better job of taking care of myself when I’m feeling run down. I am very good about remembering to give the kids medicine but when it comes to me taking allergy medicine (which I need 75% of the year) I am terrible about staying on schedule and then I develop sinus infections.
The bottom line is I lack discipline. Guess what I’m going to be focusing on in 2014? I know what I need to do, what direction I want my family to go, and how I want the picture to look but without discipline I’m a hamster in the wheel, spinning and spinning but getting no where.
Were you able to narrow down a few areas to work on yourself and come up with a few solutions to the problem? I’d love to know what you will be working on in 2014!
Here are the previous challenges in this series:
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