At the beginning of the year, I set some goals for myself, my blog, my family, my finances, and my home. I also decided on my word of the year {Persistence}. Since we are one month into the year and I’ve begun to whittle away at them, I thought it was time for me to update you on how things are going!
I don’t do this to make anyone feel bad. In fact, I have already fallen behind many of my goals for the year. However, I’m going to be Persistent and continue to work to achieve them! I hope this inspires you to set goals for yourself. Breaking them down into smaller, bite-sized pieces makes them much more manageable.
Personal
I will be persistent in the time I spend on improving my life by:
- Read through the Bible
- My first failure of the month. I started out with gusto and then fell off track for about 2 days and never got back on. I’m going to keep going with the realization that I may not catch back up for the year. That’s okay. It’s the year of persistence! ๐ I will be persistent!
- Read 2 books each month
- I read For the Love by Jen Hatmaker and How to Blog for Profit Without Selling Your Soul by Ruth Soukup (2nd time).
- Make 2 NEW recipes each month
- This was definitely fun this month! I think I actually made about 15+ new recipes this month thanks to my new Pioneer Woman cookbook I got for Christmas!
- Make one โMEโ project each month
- I have a project in progress. Remodeling our pantry kind of took precedence the last week of January so I was unable to finish it. That’s okay though because it will give me something to complete in February! ๐
- Be physically active a minimum of 3 days each week.
- I failed. Kind of miserably. This seems like such a small amount of exercise, that looking at that measly number 3, I’m kind of kicking myself for not accomplishing this goal. I will say that I got more consistent as the month went on so hopefully that means I will get there in February.
Financial
I will be persistent in handling my familyโs finances by:
- 365 Days of No Unnecessary Spending
- I will be doing an updated post on this soon. It’s definitely been wonderful in so many ways and has changed our mindset about so many things in just the month.
- Pay off my student loan in full โ $10,249.22
- We are trying to get our savings to a certain number and sink fund our vacation before we throw extra money at this loan. Hopefully next month I will have a little more to share! ๐
- Build emergency fund by $3000
- We were able to increase our savings during January which was our ultimate goal…to go up not down! ๐ It didn’t go up as much as we had hoped, but we had a lot of annual expenses (car registration, annual vet appointment, eye doctor) this month, so I’m just thrilled that we are moving in the right direction!
- Pay cash for summer vacation
- This is booked! We are going to Florida the end of May and we honestly couldn’t be more excited! Since we are going with family and splitting the cost three ways, it’s going to be much more affordable! We officially have just under 4 months to have cash in hand. We haven’t set an exact budget, but we are planning between $700-$800 for this trip.
Family/Marriage
I will be persistent as a wife and mother by:
- Spend 30 minutes of active play with Caleb each day.
- I would say I came very close to accomplishing this goal. I don’t think I played for 30 minutes all 31 days, but I would say I played at least 15-20 minutes each day and closer to 30 minutes most days. Caleb is in a “game” faze so we played a lot of memory. ๐
- Have one โdate nightโ each month.
- Does tearing out a wall count as a date? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Let’s just say our month kind of got consumed by shift change and home renovations. Maybe next month…
- Take Ben to story hour at the library.
- I obviously haven’t started this yet and after thinking about it, I may not actually start taking him to story hour at the library until early next year. I’ve decided to alter this goal to spending 30 minutes playing/reading with Ben each day. I’m hoping to start reading more books with Ben since his attention span is a little longer these days.
Blogging
I will be persistent as a blogger by:
- Increase page views to 50,000 per month by December
- My page views definitely increased in January from prior months, most likely due to my guest post on Money Saving Mom. i’ve been doing some research on how to increase page views and plan to work on a more definitive strategy in the coming month.
- Consistently make a monthly income by December of $100+.
- I actually had a small amount of affiliate income in January! My ads are beginning to pick up ever so slowly. There is definitely progress from November when I started and that’s all I’m looking for at this point.
- Write 3 blog posts per week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)
- Win! I have consistently posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so far this year and don’t see this changing anytime soon! I’m really enjoying this schedule and feel it’s very doable at this point.
- Keep at least one month of posts scheduled and 2 weeks of posts completed in my queue
- Currently, I’m about 3 weeks out with post ideas that are scheduled, but only 1 week worth of posts ready to go. I would really like to increase both of these out another week so that I can have a little breathing room. I’m also wanting to work more on submitting some guest posts, but don’t want my posts on my blog to suffer so I really need to get ahead a little bit more.
Home
I will be persistent as a homemaker by:
- Always go to bed with a tidy kitchen.
- I would say I did this about two-thirds of the time this month. I definitely noticed a difference in my mornings on the nights I went to bed with a clean kitchen verses the nights I left it for the next day. I’m going to continue working towards a clean kitchen at night.
- Continue to keep up with weekly cleaning.
- I kept up with this the beginning of the month, but the end of the month was consumed with a remodeling project so I’ve fallen off the wagon. Hopefully I will get back on track within the next week.
- House project list
- We have marked one project off our list so far {our pantry remodel} and have another one we plan to accomplish in February {replacing carpet in the boys’ rooms}.We are really looking forward to the warmer weather of spring so we can start marking off a lot more, particularly outdoor projects.
I feel like I’ve made progress this month. There are definitely areas of improvement, but I was expecting progress not perfection. I think that’s the beauty of persistence! ๐
Allison @ Frugal on the Prairie says
Girl, my jaw dropped, I’m just so amazed at the number of things you accomplished in 31 days! You are inspiring me to get more done.
I can’t wait to see your post on 365 days of unnecessary spending. We’ve been talking about doing something similar ourselves but haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet.
Allison @ Frugal on the Prairie recently posted…The Very Best in Blogging: 02/05/2016
Kaitlin says
Thanks, Allison! Although I totally feel like I wrote “I failed” so many times! Persistence though! I feel like that little fish on Finding Nemo, “just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” ๐
Daundra Becker says
I have many of the same goals! I am brand new to blogging and I’m trying to go all in! ๐ I hope you achieve your goals!
Kaitlin says
Thanks, Daundra! Your blog looks great!
Daundra Becker says
Thanks! I can see why people pay web designers to get everything looking pretty for them. It is more work than I thought. Haha
Daundra Becker recently posted…A $500,000 Productivity Strategy To Revolutionize Your Business
Andrea Jenkins says
Great resolutions! I also need to work a lot on my work and my housekeeping this year. I think that it is a fabulous idea to wake up to a clean kitchen. This is something that I will also try to do. Good luck with reaching all your goals! Thanks for sharing!
Kaitlin says
Going to bed with a clean kitchen is not always fund at night, but so worth it in the morning! ๐