March Goal Check-In

1. Plant a garden this year and hopefully end up with edible produce. Everything is ready. We're planting seeds for cooler weather plants in the next week or two (spinach, lettuce, broccoli) and we have all we need for our summer plants. I can hardly wait to start tomatoes in May.

2. Eat at-home prepared meals only for a week. This really is going to happen sometime, but not until work slows down for me- probably over the summer.

3. Read 20 fiction books this year. I'm almost done with my second fiction book of the year. Why do I keep picking gigantic fantasy novels? I need to remember to choose a page count for next years goal or pick lighter reads.

4. Start Bible memory with Big Kid and build it into a habit. We got this off the ground last month then promptly stopped with all the illness around here

5. Keep my nightstand area completely clear for 30 days except for vitamins, Bible and 1 current book. This hasn’t happened yet. I'm starting to doubt it ever will for even a week, much less 30 days. Current contents of the nightstand: 4 books (3 non-fic, 1 fic), 1 giant basket of knitting, wireless mouse, number cards, baby monitor- oh, I lied-- there's another pile of 5 books hiding behind the knitting, my lamp, cell phone . . . and in an effort to be honest, 5 abandoned cheetos and 2 cans of coke. The coke cans are mine (SHAME! I know) and the cheetos were collected off the floor earlier. I'm not sure why I didn't throw them away, but for some reason my nightstand seemed to be the proper place.

6. Keep/Toss/Donate 15 items each day for 30 days. Finished in January/February! And the house feels lighter.

7. Move systematically through the house to declutter and re-organize. I made it through the living room/dining room in the last month. We moved things around, and I think we finally settled on a good way of working my sewing area. Because Ezra has access to my desk I'm forced to keep it picked up at the end of every crafting session, so that has helped the tidiness tremendously. I had planned to move on to the master bedroom this month, but with the way my calendar is shaping up this month I'm changing the plan- April is going to be about getting our closets in shape. I need to get out and wash the boys warm weather clothes and then pack up their winter things, and do the same for my own clothing. I also need to change out the coat closet. I'm going to add a little bonus goal of taking care of the laundry room- it seems to be growing extra clothes. Something must be done about that.

8. Drink water. Make juice an occasional thing and soda a rare thing. Um, wow. Can I say I forgot this was on here even if that's not true? Does it make it better if I say I feel *really* guilty every time I have a soda? This is the goal I really need to make happen for health reasons, and I'm such a weakling when it comes to Dr. Pepper. And if it's vanilla Dr. Pepper? Heaven.

9. Move to using as many fresh ingredients as possible in our cooking. I've been really happy with this goal and our progress here! Superman is eating homemade things for lunch each day, we're all getting good amounts of fruit and veggies every day, and I'm finding that it doesn't take much time to make from scratch what I made out of a box before. I'm learning a zillion things about cooking- I'm loving Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food.

10. Re-evaluate my goals every 3 months. I still need to check in monthly- I need the accountability!