2018: Celebrating the Successes

So, after reading through my last post, I feel like I gave off the impression that 2018 was a rough year and everything fell apart. And while that's a bit how it felt at the end there, that is not true of the year as a whole. In fact, 2018 was a pretty great year, all things considered. So I thought it would be nice to just take a moment and reflect on the positives: the wins, the good habits that thrived, the happy parts of the year. In no particular order, here we go:

Reading Life

I've already talked about how 2018 was one of my best reading years ever, but my reading life was rich and good in other ways too this past year. We've always had read aloud time with our kids as part of the bed-time routine, but the read-alouds with my oldest son have just gotten so fun this year (Harry Potter, lots of Roald Dahl, Beverly Clearly... just some great classics) that I look forward to our reading time almost as much as he does. I'm absolutely loving to continue sharing books with my kids as they get older. It's amazing.

And on reading-related hobbies, I (barely) managed to keep posting around here (at least, I do when it's not the thick of the semester), and having a place to write about books for fun saves my soul from the grind of academia. Although, on that note, I did have a really fun academic semester studying just such topics as book culture, bibliomania, and book fandoms, and I've decided that there really doesn't have to be all that much distance between hobby/pleasure reading and my academic research (if you're thinking, "Duh! You're studying English! Of course the two are related!" then my answer is, clearly you've never taken a graduate-level English course, because often, there is zero relationship between "pleasure reading" and reading the way it's done in an academic English department).

Also, back in July, I opened the Such Stuff Bookstagram account on Instagram, and that has been a surprising source of joy for me. I find it kind of ironic that I started that up in a year when I've gone on two social media fasts and have in general tried to spend less time on my phone, but I have decided that as long as I never get caught up in a numbers game looking for likes or followers, and just post what makes me happy whenever I want, then this can only be fun for me. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what my style/content is over there, but what I've loved is having a place for shorter conversations about books, thoughts that don't necessarily need a full blog post, or as an extension of a blog post. I also love having a place to talk more about children's books, which I do a lot more over there than here. Despite my poor photography skills, it's been a fun bookish little enterprise and I'm excited to keep up with it. Just more ways and places to talk books!

My New Breakfast Habit:

I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but here's the story: I've struggled with breakfast foods for a long time (pretty much my whole life). I'm not the biggest fan of cold cereal (outside of pregnancy, when it's the only thing I can handle), and most other breakfast foods just don't sound appetizing to me first thing in the morning. However, I wake up starving every morning (do I not eat enough for dinner? Can my body just not handle 8 hours without food? I don't know!) so going without breakfast is just not an option for me (unless I want to be hangry and lightheaded by 10 AM).

For many, many years my go to breakfast was a bran muffin, but something changed after my last pregnancy and I seem to have lost all tolerance for carbohydrates in the morning. Do you know how many breakfast foods have carbohydrates? Pretty much all of them (at least, the ones that are quick and easy). While I was nursing I ate oatmeal pretty much every day (I always crave oatmeal while I'm nursing and then can't stand it at any point in between), but after the nursing petered out, I couldn't go back to muffins, and I suffered from serious morning breakfast blues.

When I read How Not To Die a few years ago, one of the pieces of advice that stuck out to me as something that sounded sensible was the advice to try and incorporate vegetables in some way in every meal, including breakfast. I know a lot of people do this with morning smoothies (they're so huge right now), but guys, I can't do smoothies. It's just not my thing. So I was brainstorming some other possibilities, and last January I decided to actually try making myself a hot breakfast of sauteed veggies with a fried egg. I eat this kind of meal for dinner all the time, so I thought, why not try it in the morning?

Life. Changing.

Something about having a savory instead of a sweet breakfast just completely works better for my body. Veggies and protein in the morning make me feel a million times better than carbohydrates. I only expected to be able to eat this sort of hot veggie breakfast on weekends and holidays, as it is rather time consuming in the mornings (and morning time is at a premium, don't we all know), but I was so in love with how this breakfast made me feel that I couldn't stop. I prepped veggies on the weekend and somehow found the time to make this breakfast for myself almost every morning this past year. Of course, when we traveled or stayed away from home or something, I would eat other things for breakfast, but my body missed this breakfast. This breakfast is my total jam.

The usual recipe is zucchini, bell peppers, red onion, and a handful of kale. I saute that up in a little bit of oil with some garlic salt, then fry up an egg to go on top. When avocado is at a good price, I throw some of that on the side and it just takes this breakfast to the next level delicious. This is my happy place. I wake up anxious and eager to eat breakfast now, and it is the best part of my day food-wise.

I'm a little bit anxious about how well this breakfast habit is going to last in 2019, considering this upcoming semester has me leaving the house 30 minutes earlier that normal most mornings. Will I wake up 30 minutes earlier just to have this breakfast? Or will convenience win in the end? We shall see.

Meal-Planning

On the note of food, meal planning in general turned out to be a huge win for me last year. I used to be a much more fun and experimental type cook, but that is not the season of life I'm in right now. In 2018 I streamlined my menu planning down to the best system I've had so far, rotating through my easiest tried-and-true meals that my family can handle eating on about a two week rotation (variety is not the name of the game right now). Occasionally on Sundays I'll experiment with new meals, but otherwise, my rotation has got me in a place where meal planning on a weekly basis is significantly easier, and meal prep on weekdays is fairly doable. Maybe we'll get totally sick of these recipes and I'll have to reboot at some point, but you guys, home-cooked dinner is happening. Every day. Even though I'm getting a PhD. Win-win-win.

Professional Development

So, if any of you remember (or care), one of my goals from January 2018 was to present a paper at a conference. Well, it just so happens that I presented papers at not just one, but two conferences! And only one of them required travel (avoiding travel is a win, at this stage in my motherhood career). I'm still pretty early on in this PhD thing (4.5 years to go, can you believe it?) but I'm doing work that I find interesting, I've got an amazing set of mentor professors to work with, and I've had some very lucky opportunities. I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this PhD thing once I earn it (become a professor? Go back to being a stay-at-home mom? Something in between?) but until then, I'm putting my heart and soul into this. It's hard work, but I'm pretty proud of the stuff I'm doing there.

Travel

Remember that awesome trip to England we took early last summer (here, here, and here)? Life highlight for sure. And we also had a pretty great weekend getaway with some friends in Chicago, plus my trip to Madison for the conference, so 2018 had some fun bits of travel in it for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any really cool trips planned for 2019 (we do have a family reunion in Idaho, super exotic, I know), but hopefully 2020 will make up for that.

Family

I don't know how to really describe this one, other than to say that 2018 was just a great year for loving my people. I spent a glorious summer hanging out with my kids that I just didn't want to end. You know, they can be exhausting and distracting and frustrating, but when I pay attention, I really have some awesome kids that are growing up into really fun little people. Also just loved getting to hang out with my husband on our trips. I just really like that guy. Our family life felt happy and peaceful to me in 2018, so while there's not one specific thing I can really point to as a highlight, I just need to say this is a big part of the reason 2018 was awesome.

All right, there you go. 2018 was a really great year, all things considered. And just going by the word count devoted to each one of these categories, apparently a large part of why last year was awesome is because of breakfast. Food man, it's important!

What was great about your 2018?

Resolved: To Get Back on the Wagon

I crave routine.

I crave habits. They are the glue that holds my days together. They help me accomplish all the things I need and want to do every day without the exhaustion of making a million small decisions. They automate my life, so I can focus my mental energy on higher order things.

But the conundrum I've been dealing with forever is that so many of my routines get disrupted frequently, regularly, annoyingly. I implement practices with the best intentions, trying to squeeze the most value out of my time and life, when something comes along and throws a wrench in all the delicate cogwork of these routines and I get all out of sorts. Everything falls apart.

Here are my disrupters:

-New babies (massive disrupters, and super tricky because they disrupt things for months, then years).
-Illness (my own, or anyone in my family)
-Lack of sleep (usually due to babies, but also due to deadlines, illness, peer pressure)
-Vacations/holidays
-Children (like babies, very needy, just older and able to express those needs)
-Husbands (particularly ones who have habits that conflict with my own, like staying up late when I'd like to get to bed early)

At one point in 2018, I was doing really pretty good with my routines. My morning routine is the most important, as it sets the tone for my entire day. Over the summer and through the first part of fall semester, I was doing great at getting to bed early, and then waking up at 5:30 every morning to get all of my personal care in (exercise, scripture/mediation, shower/dressed, etc.) long before the kids were awake. The routine felt solid, and life felt good.

But then things got tougher. Everyone kept getting sick. My youngest rotated through periods of teething (2 year molars are beastly) and minor colds that kept her nose so clogged she couldn't sleep. So instead of the routine of solid sleep we developed the routine of waking up crying several times a night, leaving me exhausted and ragged in the mornings. Poof, there goes the morning routine of virtue!

Then things got busier at school. Papers and projects started piling up, and other things started slipping, like the laundry and any semblance of cleanliness. Our already chaotic mornings were now in even worse shape due to the prolonged searches for wearable clothes through the piles of mostly clean, sometimes dirty laundry strung around my bedroom. I shamefully ushered guests out of the boys bathroom on the second floor, redirecting them to the (marginally) cleaner guest bathroom in the basement, because at least that toilet wasn't encrusted in layers of urine from two young boys with terrible aim. Every floor of every room was barely visible under the layers of clothes, books, legos, and general grime.

Then the holidays happened, with all the chaos and disruption those bring. My schedule relaxed once the semester ended, but life was still full with to-dos and activities and birthdays and family parties and more illness and less sleep and still no routines.

I suppose I could pat myself on the back for the routines that did manage to survive the chaos. I seem incapable of losing my death grip on our meal planning/dinner making routine (I just don't have a drive-through/take-out easy button in my personality, and the only time I've ever served cold cereal is in the depths of first-trimester pregnancy). I managed to keep up my routine of a hot vegetable breakfast almost every morning (more on this later). I showered mostly every day. So you know, we're not talking newborn-stage chaos here.

Just life.

Just a busy, full, wonderful life, and life is full of disruptions. I'm am (slowly, oh so slowly) coming to terms with the fact that I must make peace with disruption. I must figure out, mentally and emotionally, how to roll with the punches, pick myself back up, and, metaphorically speaking, get back on the wagon.

My habits are only habits if they resurface after the disruptions are past. It takes months and months of effort sometimes to establish healthy routines, but it only takes a day to derail everything. And once a routine or a habit is derailed, it can take just as much effort to get it back on track as it took to start it initially.

Which is why my New Year's resolution, or intention for the year, or whatever we want to call it, is to simply get back on the wagon.

When everyone gets sick, take care of the bodies and when things feel healthy enough, get back on the wagon.

When life gets busy at school, pare life down to the minimum to get through and when the deadline is past, get back on the wagon.

When it's been a while since I've done something I want to be a habit, stop berating myself for the failure and just get back on the wagon.

Disruptions will come. Life will change. People will need things. So I must change and adjust and be flexible too, and as soon as life lets me, I must get back on the wagon.

Here are some habits and routines where I particularly want to cultivate this mindset in this year:

The Morning Routine
I've talked about this one enough that I'm sure you all get it. This is foundational to my day, my self-care, my everything. When I get up early and get things done, I feel awesome about life.

My biggest disrupter here is lack of sleep. Sometimes I'm in control of this (see later on, about getting to bed earlier), but recently I've not had much control over this. As any new mom will tell you, when you wake up multiple times a night, you're just dead the next morning, and my two-year-old has been as bad as a newborn recently (and when it's not her, it'll be my middle child getting disoriented after a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip, or something else, it's inevitable). But that just means I need to work extra hard to make up the lost sleep elsewhere so that I can get back to waking up early without feeling like death.

Also this next semester, I'm going to have my earliest leave-the-house time on Monday/Wednesday/Fridays (I have to get myself and the two littles out the door by 7:45 AM AT THE LATEST), and I'm anxious about how this will affect my morning routine. On the pro side, it will force me to wake up early because I actually have to get out the door. On the con side, I'll probably be tempted to cut corners and drop my ideal morning routine to make it out the door on time. My goal is to make my mornings feel as satisfying as possible, so we'll see how this goes.

Exercise
Usually this one is part of my morning routine, so when the morning routine dies, I don't get any exercise. But I'd like to work on the mindset that if it doesn't happen in the morning, it can happen at some other point.

Like I mentioned earlier, I had a rough semester at the end this past year, and I was feeling the tension of it. So for Christmas, I asked for a massage. After getting all situated on the table, my masseuse came in, and barely graced my neck with her fingers before she exclaimed, "Oh my goodness, are you in pain?!?!" Apparently I was hard as a rock, and she just couldn't believe that I was functioning. Throughout the entire massage, she kept dropping comments like, "Wow, are you sure this isn't hurting you? I mean, you've got a lot of issues here, and that's kind of an understatement. Are you sure you're not in pain?" While I'm not in pain most of the time, yes, I can feel the tension in my shoulders and neck, and I have a history of debilitating neck problems caused by stress (one happened right before my wedding, another after the birth of my third child and before our cross-country move). The long story short is that, if I don't want to end up a dysfunctional stress basket, I NEED to stretch more. I need to keep up with my yoga. I need to take care of my body.

I need exercise to be more of a priority, and I need this habit to stick in my life even when the routine it's tied to gets disrupted. The mindset is not if I'm going to exercise today, but when am I going to fit it in.

Spiritual Care
This one on a daily level, like exercise, is usually tied to my morning routine, which means if my morning routine falls apart, this one can be neglected. However, I've been much better with this one about moving it around to other times of the day when it doesn't happen in the morning.

I still need a better routine for getting to the temple. This past year I finally reconciled myself to the fact that at this stage in our lives, going alone is easier than finding childcare to go as a couple, and that drastically improved my attendance. But the second mental hurdle I'm still grappling with is the fact that the most convenient session to get to is the 8 PM one on Friday evenings. We have the long standing tradition of Friday night movie night followed by an in-home date night, and it does feel like a sacrifice to miss out on that family/couple time, but I just need to tell myself that missing once a month is not the end of the world.

Cleaning
Laura Vanderkam, an author I follow who writes a lot about time management, suggests that home cleaning is one area where maybe we could all afford to lower our standards. This isn't the 1950s anymore, she counsels, and we can let standards go to free up time for other more important things. She suggests that women should step back from house-cleaning chores and just see what happens... eventually, if things get bad enough, someone else (a husband, maybe even an older child) is bound to step in and pick up the slack.

Hahahahahahahahaha!

No.

From my experience at the end of last semester, what happens when I stop cleaning is that things degrade to bachelor pad levels. Okay, that's not entirely fair. The one cleaning routine we did manage to hold on to was the daily dishes routine. So at some point every day, at least the dishes would get done, either by me or my husband. And often, that means counters would get wiped and occasionally even the kitchen floor would get swept. But honestly, that was it. Every other room in our house was pretty much a cesspit. I've already mentioned the state of our bathrooms. There is a point where it just becomes unlivable. In this new year, something's got to change. This has got to be a higher priority, or the quality of my daily happiness and life will seriously deteriorate.

I would love, of course, to be able to hire a regular cleaning service, but frankly, we have too many other financial goals that are a higher priority. And while a cleaning service would definitely fix the problem of pee-crusted toilets, they wouldn't do much in the way of solving my daily laundry problems, or the endless piles of paper clutter that seem to build up everywhere, nor will they do the dishes for me everyday. So I've just got to figure out some new routines, or at least some new mindsets, to help me tackle this area of my life.

One of my big problems is that I always feel like I need a good chunk of time, two or three hours, to really tackle an area or a room and get it back up to snuff. I don't have that kind of time. But (as I learned here) I do occasionally find fifteen minute chunks of time. Doing something small may feel like not nearly enough, but it's got to be loads better than doing nothing at all. Right? (Well, not according to Laura). That's the mindset I want to cultivate. Do as much as you can, when you can. A little bit is better than nothing. Small habits build up. Cleanliness does a lot to improve my mood and sense of control, so it's okay for it to be a priority.

Nighttime Routine

My ideal here is to start the nighttime routine by 9 PM and be in bed/asleep by 9:30 PM (9:30 to 5:30 = 8 hours of sleep = my happy place). But I've got several major disrupters here. There's the pull of all the things I could do once the kids are asleep (and during the busiest parts of the semester, evenings are my work time). There's also the peer pressure from my husband, who is a natural night owl and likes to hang out in the evenings. This is my biggest problem because, you know, I like the guy, and I only get so much time with him (and kid-free time is at even more of a premium).

But (as my husband is well aware of) I am just not a happy person when I don't get enough sleep. So this is definitely one of those areas that I just want to keep pushing at, keep reaching for, keep getting back on the wagon with. Maybe I'll have a late night of work stuff, but that doesn't have to be every night. I just need to keep working at getting enough sleep, because everything else is better when I do.

Play

What do I mean by this? How do you have routines of play? I don't know, but this is definitely something I need more of in my life, and when I need more of something, I try to figure out how to make it a routine. This one is actually almost a contradiction to everything I'm trying to establish in all my other routines, because what I want here is more time with my people, more time relaxing, more time just being chill. But usually to get there, I have to sacrifice sleep, or time spent on personal care, or work, or cleaning or whatever. There are just never enough hours in the day, ever. But play is important too. Giving my kids and spouse quality time with me is important too. So what does this mean? I don't know yet. Only that I don't get enough of it and I need more. So I'll spend this year thinking about it and see if I can't figure out what it means to have a routine for play.

So I'm not mentioning here the routines that already seem to be pretty well in place, the ones that don't seem to be getting disrupted as much (like how I manage to make dinner every day, or read to my children every day). Nor does this include other areas of my life that I'd love to implement routines for but that just aren't reaching the right priority level for me right now. But they all play into the idea of how I want my life to run: automatically, in grooves that are familiar and help me find time for all the best things in life. These may not be SMART goals here, but this is what I want to spend this year focusing on. The mindset. The priorities. Find a way to make these things a regular part of daily, weekly, monthly life.

And when life gets in the way, when the disruptions come and everything falls apart?

Get back on the wagon.

Am I an Addict? (and 2019 Reading Goals)

2018 was an awesome reading year for me. My initial goal at the beginning of the year was to read 75 books, and I blew past that in October. By counting some read-alouds, I'm claiming the nice round number of 100 books read in a single year (see my last post for the full report).

That number equals just less than two books a week. Two books a week! Considering I'm getting a PhD and raising three kids, that shocks even me. But at the same time, I seriously owe it all to the power of audio books and a nice long commute every day. And listening at double speed.

I was feeling very proud of my progress, very proud of my count number, firm in my identity as a reader, until I took a class last semester all about "Theories of Reading" and came across this passage in one of the books we were assigned. It was written by a German clergyman named Rudolph Gottlieb Beyer in 1795.

He describes seeing "men and women book readers, who get up in the morning and go to bed in the evening with a book in their hand, who sit down at the table with it, who put it next to them at work, carry it with them on walks, and who cannot separate themselves from it, until they have finished reading. But they have hardly devoured the last page of a book, they are already greedily eyeing up, where they might get the next one from, and devour it with a voracious appetite. No smoker, coffee-friend, wine-drinker, gambler could be so addicted to their pipe, bottle, games or coffee table than many a book-hungry reader is to his reading."

Reading this quote stopped me dead in my tracks. It may be over two hundred years old, but I kind of felt like he was describing me perfectly.

Guys, am I a reading addict? And is this a bad thing?

It was the comparison to coffee addicts, smokers, alcoholics, and gamblers that really gave me pause. Because what is the difference? Addiction is addiction, whether it be to books or nicotine, and addiction is always bad, right?

So am I addicted to books?

I've been thinking about this question, because in many ways, I might be. I feel extremely restless if I don't have my next five books queued up ready to go. I've got to keep the supply-line filled, just like an addict. I sometimes (not all the time, but sometimes) use books as an emotional escape when my life is stressful. Don't want to face the piles of laundry and homework and whatever in life? Let's just spend time reading instead and escape into that lovely fantasy world where life is much more exciting! Using something as a numbing device and as escape from hard life problems sounds exactly like an addiction.

But on the plus side, it's not exactly harmful to my health (at least, not when I don't stay up too late finishing a book and miss sleep and death-spiral into the zones of exhaustion). (Oh, and also, listening to all those audio books actually might be destroying my hearing, hours of ear buds blasting in my ears every day, that can't be good...)

And at least I'm not endangering my family! (Except when I ignore my children because I'd rather be reading, but that's more neglect than endangerment...)

In all seriousness, though, reading is profoundly different from other addictive activities in that the cumulative effect of the activity of reading is actually positive. I mean, sure, there may be a hit of endorphins on starting a new novel, and there may be that all-consuming need to finish an addicting story, but at the end of the day, how many people actually regret reading more? How many lives does reading destroy?

Even those light and fluffy addictive books that we are so often prone to dismiss as unworthy of our time have a place. Every time I berate myself for reading something fluffy or cotton-candyish, or feel like it's turning my brain to mush, I remember this story that a previous bishop shared with me once. His wife was really into Twilight. I'll be honest that I judged her up and down for being such a Twilight fanatic, until he told us this story. He described coming home from work one day to find the house a mess, unhappy kids watching TV, and no dinner preparations in sight. It was chaos. He finally found his wife holed up in their bedroom, her nose deep in some book (he didn't say it was Twilight, but I imagine it was something along those lines). Needless to say, he was frustrated. Not just frustrated, he was downright angry. And I've got to admit that if I was in his place, I'd be upset too. How can a wife and mom neglect her responsibilities so thoroughly because of some fluffy, cotton-candy book? I was judging his wife hard at this point.

But my bishop was a good man, and he did not like being upset with his wife. So instead of yelling at her, he went into his office, shut the door, and prayed for how to respond to his wife. How to help her get over this "addiction" (not his word, but his sense) and be more responsible. He did not get the answer he expected. The voice of the spirit came to him and said, "Why are you upset that your wife is reading? Don't you know how important these books are to her spiritual and intellectual growth? Don't you know that it pleases me to have her grow this way?" And so, thoroughly humbled, my bishop left his office, ordered pizza, cleaned the house, put his kids to bed, and let his wife read away.

Now, the lesson I took away from this story is not that it is okay to neglect responsibilities in the name of a good story (I used to read that way when I was younger, but I have become far too practical in my old age to lose myself to reading like that). No, the lesson that I have never forgotten, aside from the power of the spirit to change our perspective and help build our relationships, is that fluffy reading has it's purposes. Addictive reading, pleasure reading, reading for fun, books that we call "light" and may not feel like they are helping us grow... even that kind of reading is better for us than no reading at all.

We actually spent a lot of time talking about this in that course I took. We talked about the (scientific!) benefits of reading for pleasure. Reading for fun. Reading everything you want. Because unlike coffee or nicotine or alcohol or gambling, reading actually makes you a better person (yes, even the fluffy stuff). Like all things, moderation is always best (you can't expect your husband to order pizza every night so you can read), but I must admit that I really do think the more books the better.

That brings us to the topic of reading goals.

I've been going back and forth (and back and forth) on what kind of reading goals I should set for this year. Should I make it official and spring for the 100 number in 2019? If more is better, should more be the goal? Is this the year I finally challenge myself to read certain types or titles of books that would be "good" for me?

And the more I've thought about it, the more I've decided that I don't think I need to change a thing. 2018 was an awesome reading year for me, and all I want is another year exactly like that. So, because my goal was reading 75 books last year, that's the goal I'm keeping this year. It's a number that's high enough I'll feel pressure to reach it, but not enough pressure to be discouraging or out of reach. And if I happen to actually hit 100 again, well, that will just be the cherry on top. (After all, we're one week into the new year and I'm already half-way through my 4th book, so I'm already above pace).

And for one more year, I've decided not to "assign" myself titles that I "should" read. First off, I'm still in the part of my coursework where I get plenty of assigned reading anyway. And second off, I'm the chick who voluntarily, of my own free choice and will, decided to read Don Quixote last year, so I just don't feel like I need any extra outside expectations to up my reading quality. When I'm in the mood for chunky 500 year old books, I'll read them and pat myself on the back. And when I'm in the mood for escapist fast-paced fantasy fiction, I'll read that too and not feel a twinge of guilt.

What about you? Are you a reading addict? Do you think there can be too many books? What's your reading goal for 2019?

Mid-Year Goal Check-In

So you know how I set goals at the beginning of every year (like pretty much every other person on the planet?). Well, in the name of accountability I also generally like to do a mid-year check in, just to refresh and see how I'm doing.

So, here are my goals, and here is my progress:

1. Read 75 Books

This one was a stretch goal for me, as I've never read that many books in a single calendar year (usually I go for 52, a book a week), but as of the end of June (so, the mid-way point in the year), I've read 47 books!!! Which is crazy good! And also means that for the rest of the year, I only need to read 28 books, which I think is going to be a walk in the park. (Maybe, my commute audio book time might suffer a little bit due to the fact I'll be travelling with kids this semester, more on that later). Anyway, I'm doing awesome on this goal, and it makes me super happy.

2. Establish Early Morning Routine

Okay, so far, this goal is coming along great! I've had much more consistent success this year with waking up between 5:30 and 6 AM every week day (I let myself sleep in on the weekends), and usually get in some scripture study/meditation, a little exercise (usually yoga, but this summer I've started going out for a run a couple times a week, which if you know me, is one of the most shocking developments and my husband is even like, who are you anymore?!?!), and getting showered and dressed before the kids wake up. I've had a few setbacks (like every time I get sick, or that time in June when jet lag and a series of colds knocked me out for a few weeks), but the fact that I've been able to eventually get back to early mornings, even here in the summer, has been awesome! It makes me feel so great about life, like I am in control and killing it! This is a good thing, because the way my schedule is working out for this next semester, early mornings will no longer be a choice, but a necessity. Now, if only I could get that 10 PM bedtime down pat too, so I wasn't so tired all the time...

3. Attend a Conference/Submit a Paper for Publication

Checked this one off in March when I presented a paper at conference in Ann Arbor! And then, I had another paper accepted for a conference in November, so I'm double killing this goal! Woo-hoo!

4. More One-on-One Time With My Kids

This one is proving more difficult to work out than I planned. I was aiming for solo activities with each kid while the others entertained themselves, but my kids are at an age where if I sit down to do anything with one child, the others are drawn like moths to a flame, so it inevitably turns into a group activity. And the one-on-one date things aren't happening so much because, as I discovered early on, my kids are weird and home-bodies and never really want to leave the house unless I force them to (we have to get groceries if you want to eat food for lunch!). So when I suggested things like, "Hey, do you want to come with Mommy on a special trip to get a treat?" I actually got a flat refusal. My kids are quirky. Whatever. It's cool. I know exactly where they get their home-body tendencies from (hint: not my husband). Also, it's probably just a phase (right?).

Anyway, what I've decided to do is switch the focus of this goal. The original motivation was all about making sure my kids get the quality time and attention they need from me while my life is so hectic and busy with school. So instead of focusing on one-on-one activities with each of them, I'm just going to focus on making sure whatever time I do spend with them is high quality. I'm working on being calm (never yelling, etc.). I'm working on being a listener. I'm working on empathy. I'm working on being a safe place. I'm working on paying attention more to what they are trying to tell me. I'm working on making sure the time I do spend with them is not too rushed. For me, this looks like stopping in the middle of the dishes to sit down on the floor to read with my baby (she is always begging for me to read to her, and how can I refuse?). Or by stopping in the middle of trying to make my bed to cuddle with my middle child because he's clearly in need of cuddles. Or by stopping while in the middle of reading my book to listen to my oldest talk to me about his never-ending litany of Star Wars trivia that he feels so compelled to share at every hour of the day. I am calm. I am listening. I am present. So far, I think this summer has been going pretty well. We'll see how I do once the semester starts again and life feels rushed again.

5. Go to the Temple Every Other Month

I'm embarrassed to admit so far this has been a big fat fail. Ugh. Every other month should mean I've gone at least three times at this point, and I've been once this whole year. Childcare is still the biggest issue, although the one time I did go it was alone, leaving my husband home with the kids. But even that is difficult, as he's not always able to get home early enough for me to leave in time to make the last session on week days, and Saturdays always get so busy with other life things. But I know these are just excuses. I really need to just make it a priority.

Okay. So there's my update. Some of these goals I'm killing, others I'm managing at least the intention, only one I'm completely failing at (but will do better!).

I also listed some honorable mention goals in that post, which I wasn't going to make official, but I did just want to mention here that we managed to plant a garden! And we had some amazing zucchini plants with tons of flowers and even harvested two beautiful zucchini! ... but then the rabbits came and ate the roots, and now all my zucchini plants are dead (I guess this explains why all our neighbors have nice big fences around their garden boxes...). And we planted some tomato plants but so far, only three are still alive and I'm not sure they're ever going to grow enough to produce fruit. But I did get a nice sunflower to bloom (I'll snap a picture some time!). So, that's how that's going. Clearly I need to do some work to develop my green thumb.

How are you doing on your goals so far?

New Year's Resolutions: 2018

You guys, 2017 was a whopper of a year for us. In case you need a refresher here are the major points of our year:

-We started the year off with a 3-day old Baby #3 (and, P.S., the transition from 2 to 3 kids rocked my world harder than the transition from 1 to 2; as darling as she is and as much as I love her, this sweet little girl was not the easiest baby I've had).
-I got accepted to grad school in February and we made the momentous decision to move forward with it, meaning that...
-My husband began a frantic job search, and after a few tense months finally got one, so we were able to move forward with...
-Buying a house! That I didn't actually get to see in person until the final walk-through. And then we...
-Moved states. Moving is the worst. And then we...
-Spent a few tense months trying to figure out a childcare situation, which is also the worst. Thankfully, it worked out just in time for me to...
-Start a freaking PhD program! Still kind of surreal, and I have a lot of moments where I'm like, "How did this happen? How did I get here? What am I doing with my life?" But yes, the answer is that I'm a mother of three very young children, and I'm getting a PhD. At the same time. It's crazy.
-My oldest started kindergarten! (And loves it so much, he tells me he wants to live at school, and sleep at school, and not come home even on the weekends. I've decided not to tell him that boarding school is a thing.)

So yes, these were all very wonderful and happy and good things. But also, I've never experienced a year with such a high level of anxiety (like, completely unable to sleep kind of anxiety). I'm very much looking forward to a year that, while still busy, will contain far fewer major life-altering events.

Anyway, that background leads me to the topic of New Year's Resolutions. I made some goals last January, well-knowing that my life was potentially going to be crazy. Unsurprisingly, I didn't meet half those goals. Let's review 2017's goals for just a moment.

2017 Review:

1. Read 52 Books Check and double check! I managed to surpass this, finishing strong with 67 books!

2. Finish Draft of Book Ha! Hahaha! I barely managed to keep this little blog afloat. Needless to say, I did not find the writing time to draft that book I've been thinking about for a while. Nope. Did not happen.

3. Re-establish Self-Care Routines Basically, this goal was about reclaiming my early-morning routine. I feel so good about myself when I wake up early and have a little solo time for scripture study, meditation, yoga, and maybe a little writing or work. Pre-kids, I used to be so good at this. But it only works for me when I can control my sleep, which means my morning and self-care routines take a hit every time I'm pregnant or have a baby who is not sleeping through the night. When I made this goal back in January, I had high hopes that my extra-sleepy newborn was going to be like her older brothers and start sleeping through the night between 4 and 6 months. Nope! No matter what method I used (and I tried everything), my opinionated little sweetheart point-blank refused to sleep through the night until well over 9 months old (and only then on the condition that she not be sick or teething, which meant more often then not she still wanted my company in the night). You guys, that first month of my PhD program, when she was still regularly waking up once or twice a night, I thought I was going to die. Or go insane. Or something. I was in a pretty desperate place sleep-wise, and a good morning routine seemed way out of reach. I was squeezing in my self-care at other points in the day, but nothing about my life was "routine."

But things did get better. I actually had some good stretches through October and November where I was getting up at 5 AM fairly regularly (but then I kept getting sick myself, leading to setbacks), so there's hope that in 2018, my regular early-morning routine might become habit again, and I will feel in control of my life!

4. Blogging Routine Look, this little blog of mine is my favorite hobby. It's so fun to write here. I have every intention of keeping it up as much as possible. But see above where I talk about nothing in my life being "routine". Honestly, the fact that I was able to post here as often as I did during the semester was amazing. The fact that this blog is still alive makes is a win in my book.

5. Memory Keeper Routine This one is half a check! In that, during the first half of the year, I was really on top of the journals and such. But then school started and... I'm behind again. Always behind.

6. Instagram Once A Week You guys, I love so much that I had a goal to post to social media MORE, and I love even more that I completely FAILED at this goal. I'm awful at social media. Which is actually fine with me, because social media is mostly just a time-suck anyway. And the point of this goal was not about participating in social media more, it was actually about forcing myself to take more pictures and improve my photography skills and document our family life more. In which case, I still failed at this goal. I did manage to have a monthly photo shoot to document Baby Girl's milestones, but some months that was all I managed to post. I would still love to work on my photography, it just wasn't a high enough priority this year.

So, super interesting to me that the one goal I managed to succeed at (and actually crush) was my reading goal. Everything else was more or less a fail. I think that says something, but I'm not exactly sure what that says yet. I'm probably going to write up a whole post about this soon, because writing is how I figure things out, and I want to figure out why that goal stuck while my other ones fizzled.

Anyway, let's move on to my goals for 2018, shall we? Because I know you're all dying to know!

2018 Goals:

1. Read 75 Books This one is kind of a huge stretch for me. I've never read that many books in a year. But I'm feeling the itch to push myself, and I'm fairly confident in the glorious power of my commute + audio books equation, so we shall see!

2. Establish Early Morning Routine! Carry-over from last year, but I'm feeling real hopeful that, barring any major sleep regression on the side of my baby, this will actually be feasible this year. My goal is a strict 10 PM bedtime with a 5:30 AM wake-up time, and I want my morning routine to include: scripture study, yoga/meditation, shower/dressed, and whatever school work I can manage before the kids get up. We shall see.

3. Attend a Conference/Submit a Paper for Publication Well, well, well, look at that. I have professional goals! I just want to do one thing this year to add to my C.V. Sounds reasonable to me.

4. More One-on-one Time With My Kids The one thing I worry about a lot with being a Student/Working Mom is that my kids don't get enough of my attention. I want to focus more on giving daily pockets (10-15 minutes) of attention/activity/fun to each kid, but also do bigger one-on-one things, like dates and such. I'm aiming for an individual date at least once a month.

5. Go to the Temple at Least Every Other Month I'm so grateful we live in a city that has a temple, but it's still about an hour away from us (which has been the case with every city we've lived in since leaving Utah). Factoring in the time, and the fact that I try to avoid finding/paying babysitters at all costs, getting to the temple is one of those "should-dos" that feels rather momentous to pull off. But I've been missing it lately, and really feel like I need to get there more often, with or without my husband (maybe separate temple trips is the solution to the babysitter problem).

Okay, there are a lot of other things I could set resolutions about, but right now, these are the ones that feel the biggest/most important to me. There are plenty more goals I would like to add to this list, and if I had an honorable mention list it would probably include things like plant a garden, finish off my children's baby books, set up a summer reading challenge for myself (and my kids...), get finances in a place to invest/give more to charity, and plenty more areas I want to improve in, but let's just start here. No need to overwhelm myself or shoot for the unrealistic stars (like I apparently did last year). This list feels very doable, and I can always add some of these other goals as I feel able to accomplish them (I've added goals mid-year before, no rules against that!). I'll check in in June and let you know how I'm coming!

What are your goals for the New Year?

2017 Goals: Mid-Year Review

I made six public resolutions here on the blog back in January, and seeing as we've passed the mid-point of the year I figured it was time to check in on them and see how I'm doing. Let's get started.

1. Read 52 Books. According to Goodreads, by the end of June I'd read 33 books which puts me slightly ahead of schedule. I'm hoping that even with school starting up, I'll be able to keep up with audio books during my commute, so I think there's a strong chance I'll be able to accomplish this one by the end of the year. Yay!

2. Finish Draft of Book. Yeah, this one is not looking good. I can barely find time to write here on the blog, let alone on that book project I started last year. And I don't think starting a PhD is going to help anything on this front. So, we'll see what happens by the end of the year.

2017 Goals

It's still January, so I can still talk goals and resolutions, right?

Usually I like to do two posts, one as a review and wrap-up of my previous year, and one about my new goals for the year, but we're running into the end of January here, so let's just combine things.

10 Favorite Reads from 2016

Well, here we are half-way through January. It's past time for me wrap up 2016 and give my final reading report. 2016 was actually, surprisingly, my best reading year since I started tracking. My reading goal for the year was to read 50 books, and in the end I actually hit 56 books (maybe 57, but I didn't record any of my December books until January, and I feel like I'm forgetting one. I know I did a lot of reading, but everything from the month of December is kind of lost in a hazy fog of general miserableness.)

I never quite know how to go about assessing my favorite reads from a whole year. I thought it would be easier this year, with so many books to choose from, but it was harder. So, like with all of my book rating decisions, this is just a gut check list of what struck me as my top 10 today. (If I wrote this list two weeks ago, or next week, or next year, it would probably come out different.) Anyway, in the order I read them, here were ten of my favorite reads in 2016.

Writing Projects and Reading Lists

Three years ago (I can't believe it's been that long, it feels like last year) I participated in NaNoWriMo, or, for the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month. I really didn't have an idea for a plot when I started. There was no plan, no big idea, I just had the time and the goal and so I plunged in. Needless to say, the resulting product was terrible. But I still did it, still got 50,000 words down in somewhat of a story form, and I really enjoyed the process of just having a creative writing project.

This year, I made another goal for myself to tackle a big creative writing project. The difference this time around is that I actually have an idea for something I want to write (less a novel, more a fictionalized memoir type thing). I have no expectations for this being any good, but I'm excited by the idea and excited just to have another project in the works.

How To Throw A Literary Themed 30th Birthday Party

Step 1: Make it a mid-year resolution, commit the goal to paper, or it will never be anything more than a pipe dream.

Step 2: Enlist the help of a friend with a vision. Steal her vision, because yours is hazy and probably unrealistic. Besides, hers involves a literary theme that's awesome for a party and perfect for your bookish tastes. It doesn't matter if you don't actually like the book in question, there is nothing better than a Great Gatsby party. Also, party planning is way more fun with a friend you can spend hours drooling over Pinterest with, instead of making all these decisions by yourself.

Mid-Year Goal Update

I just want to thank everyone for the kind comments on my last post. Thanks for letting me get a little bit personal and spiritual here, and thanks for all the well-wishes on my family's behalf. I am so grateful for your positive support.

I know, I know, none of you could possibly care about how I'm doing on my New Year's Resolutions. You probably don't even remember what they are (oh look, here's a friendly link to remind you). Obviously this is all just for my personal benefit, because I always find it useful to give myself some mid-year accountability and motivation to keep up on my goals.

However, I was pretty low-key on the goal setting this year. I anticipated a rough year, so I was trying to be generous with myself and not set the bar too high. At this mid-year reflection point, I actually think I may have set the bar too low. I've already finished nearly every goal I set, so I think I'm going to have set some new goals, because I need something to do for the rest of the year (besides gestate a baby), right?

So here's the update:

The Book Blab: Reading Goals (Ep. 3 Show Notes)

Hi all! If you missed our episode of The Book Blab last Friday, have no fear, the archive and show notes are below. Amy and I had a fabulous time talking about reading goals (it may be February, but it's not too late to set some reading goals for the year).

Goals for 2016

While I was perusing my book stats on Goodreads in preparation for my last post, my husband looked over my shoulder and commented, "48 books this year? That's great! But woah, what happened in 2014?"

If you remember (you probably don't), in 2014 I read a measly 26 books, half my rate in 2015. So I told my husband what happened in 2014. I was pregnant.

2015 In Review

You guys, 2015 was a fabulous year for me. It was a routine kind of year, and I mean that in the best possible way. There were no major life changes. No births or pregnancies, no moves or job changes, nothing life-altering. Thank heavens! We definitely still had some mini adventures and fabulous trips (see above), but by and large, it was a year of figuring out and living my routines. As a creature of habit, I loved that.

Rather than do a blow-by-blow account of how I did on my resolutions for 2015 (as a side note, I'm about 50/50, in that 5 of my goals were obvious successes, and the other 5 were less clearly so), I figured I would just highlight some of my personal successes and lessons learned in 2015.

So Long, Summer!

Today (Tuesday, the 25th, for those of you who won't read this until later) was my first day back to school. (Technically, yesterday was the first day of school, but I don't have Monday classes, so today it was). This is also the first time in six years that I'm actually going back to school at the start of the August/September school year calendar (because of my admissions schedule, and then taking a leave last fall to have a baby, my first two semesters of grad school both started in January). It feels rather exciting, and so right, like this is the rhythm life is supposed to have, and I've been missing it these past few years. It feels nice to have this formal end to summer.

I'm learning this about myself as I grow older. I LOVE routine, but I also NEED change. I need routine change, like the seasons, coming and going every year, constant but ever changing. I love summer, but I love this formal end to summer, this mark that one season has ended and a new one is beginning. It's a time for me to look back and look forward.

On that note, I just want to take a minute to reflect on my pretty spectacular summer. It was the best summer I've had in a long time, because I wasn't pregnant and we didn't move across the country (it's been one or the other for the past five years), and I had time to work on projects, cross off goals, read a lot of books, do a little travel, and basically enjoy a nice, slow pace of life.

Favorite Summer Reading

This was a banner summer reading-wise for me. I read 18 books for pleasure since school ended in May, and most of them were SO GOOD! It's hard to narrow down, but here were my top five summer reads:

1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John - I read this one too quickly, I really want to go back someday and read it again slowly and really savor it. Also, I want to do some more thinking about the use of the two Shakespeare plays in this book, and how they work in the setting. Good story-telling, good writing, good book.

2. The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber - I really want to read this one with a book club so I can discuss it with other people. I still think about it all the time.

3. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger - Just really beautiful.

4. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee - My library came through for me! This book came in just over a month after it's release date! I was pretty shocked and pleased. I think I'll write more about this later, because, complex feelings. But it still made the favorites list.

5. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell - There were lots of contenders for this fifth spot, because on a purely entertainment/enjoyment level there was some good competition from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Ready Player One. But, if you can't tell, this summer was kind of all about the contemporary literary fiction for me. And I've got to be true to my main man, David Mitchell.

Summer Projects

I wrote out a huge to-do list at the beginning of the summer, most of them having to do with home decor and organization (remember this wreath? That was project Number 1). I'm happy to say that with the exception of one item, which due to stupid shipping problems won't be happening until this weekend, I was able to cross every project off my list. I've definitely got a post coming up about all these little projects because I know you're dying to see the Big Reveal. Except, it's more like the Little Reveal, because they really were just little things. But little things that, now they are done, make me so happy.

A Little Travel

The best beach trip ever!

A trip to Utah!

And that was it, because traveling with a baby is EXHAUSTING, and his sleep schedule still hasn't recovered from that last trip (5:45 AM every morning! For over three weeks now! Shoot me.)

Some Quality Down Time

There was lots of swimming, weekly trips to the library, summer pre-school, a few play dates here and there, but mostly there was just a lot of good ole quality hanging around the house (because it really is too hot and humid to leave the air conditioning). I can tell that at some point in the future (like, next summer) we are probably going to need more structured activities in our week to keep the cabin fever at bay (we got close a few days here at the end of driving each other to the point of insanity), but with a baby who still takes three (!) naps a day (they are short, frustrating, 45 minute things, but he's not a car sleeper so they must happen in a crib or they won't happen at all), it was lovely to just be home. (Can you tell I'm an introvert, in that I loved my summer because I got to stay home all day most days?)

Also, my experiment with Awesome Mom Time has turned out to be hugely successful. It really made my long summer days home with the kids flow better in every way. I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to incorporate it into our school year schedule, but I'll probably do a follow up post with thoughts about it at some point.

Guys, it was a great summer.

How was your summer, reading-wise or other-wise? Do you enjoy the change of seasons, especially with formal markers like back to school, or do you wish summer would never end?

Life Goal: Take Great Pictures

 I am a mediocre photographer at best. Amateur would be the word. Up until this summer, my photography training consisted of, like most people, taking tons of poor quality, boring pictures with your average cheap point and shoots.

But I've always felt an interest in photography and had the desire to be a little better than average, so last summer when we found a Nikon DSLR 3200 for a decent deal, I convinced my husband to get it for my birthday.

Hoo boy, was a DSLR out of my depth. So many buttons! So many settings! I dutifully tried reading the manual, but I can't imagine many worse ways for someone to pick up an artform, even one as technical as photography.

So, after nearly eight months of using our super fancy DSLR as basically a glorified point and shoot, I decided enough is enough. I was going to learn how to use that dang camera well or die trying. I bit the bullet, and bought an online photography course.

That was pretty much the best decision of my life.

I've spent this whole summer slowly (very slowly) working my way through the course, and practicing whenever I can.

My husband took this last set (we're learning together). Super fun to play around with light and shutter speed.

My goal is not to become a professional photographer or launch a photography business or anything like that. I just really want to be able to take nice pictures of my kids. I want my pictures of them to be as beautiful as the moments are in real life.

Playing with water buckets on the back deck.

Drool face.

Ragamuffin just-ate-a-cookie face. (Also, I love how both boys are making nearly the exact same face in these last two pictures. They are so brothers).

I'm not even close to where I want to be yet on this skill, but the fact that I can now look back on these pictures and say, "That's over exposed there" or "Should've framed this one better" shows just how far I've come this summer.

For me, photography was always one of those things I would have liked to do "if I just had the time." But the big thing I've learned this year is that, even with kids and grad school, I still have time. I have time for all the things I want to do and learn. It's been slow, and I think it will be a long time yet before I'm where I want to be here, but I've still been able to find the time because I finally decided I couldn't wait any longer. I just needed to do what it takes, buy the online course, watch the videos, and make time to practice.

It's a goal from my life bucket list that I'm actually working on, and it feels so satisfying. Next goal: learn how to use Photoshop (cue horror music, this goal actually scares me).

Have you found time for any similar life goals or projects? What gave you the motivation to finally tackle it? 

2015 Goals - 6 Month Review

Me and my boy playing in the waves.

It's the end of June already. Can you believe we are already half-way through 2015?

I thought it would be a good time to review the goals I posted here back on January 1st, and check on my progress. Not that I think any of you really care whether I'm meeting these personal goals or not, this is more of a selfish exercise on my part to keep myself accountable and refresh my memory on what I want to be doing and working on. So anyway, here's my little progress report on my 2015 resolutions.

1. Eat Healthier and Cut Sugar - So, I actually managed to cut my sugar intake way down during the month of January... and then I started to lose weight, which as I mentioned was NOT my goal. Because I'm already well underweight, and because I am nursing, I just couldn't make up the calories in my diet that sugar provided, so I stopped trying to cut sugar. I'm still trying to figure out what "eat healthier" means for me. Right now it doesn't mean cutting things out, but I am trying to add more of the fruits and veggies. I should probably do some sort of food journal or monitoring to make sure I'm eating enough fruits and veggies everyday.

2. Get Enough Sleep - Ugh, never make this goal when you have a baby. And you're a grad student. My baby actually is a very good sleeper and consistently sleeps through the night. However, he has not been very consistent about when he wakes up. I'm never sure if he's going to be up at 5, or up at 7:30. I'll admit that I haven't been the most dedicated to my 10:30 bedtime (especially not when I was in school), but it feels like any time I go to bed early, that will be the night he wakes up at some insanely early hour. Anyway, this one is still a work in progress. I'm doing some time monitoring right now to get data on just how much sleep I'm actually averaging, because it does not feel like enough. I really want to work on getting that 10:30 bedtime to be a more consistent habit.

3. Research and Invest in Essential Oils - This was honestly the most likely goal for me to completely ignore, but then a random new friend started a random new job for some health company that was giving away free samples of their essential oil starter kits, so it kind of fell into my lap. I'm having fun playing around with the different oils in the kit (I really, really love me some lavender), but I'm not sure these are actually benefiting my health in any measurable kind of way. They certainly smell nice, but I'm not really a convert (yet). We shall see.

4. Read 25 Books for Pleasure - Goodreads tells me I've already read 20 books this year, so I'm well on my way to hitting this one out of the park. However, I know some of those books were school assigned novels, and I'm not sure I should count those as books for pleasure...

5. Schedule a Regular Time to Write for Pleasure - This one is still a work in progress. I've been playing around with what time of day and day of the week works best, and I'm not sure I've found the perfect time that I want to commit to this goal (especially since it doesn't feel feasible when I'm in school), but this is another area I'm trouble shooting with my time monitoring.

6. Redecorate My House - Also a work in progress, but one that I'm actually working on (see here). I've got big plans for this summer (actually they are kind of small plans, but it will be a big deal if I can accomplish them), and hopefully more things come together. I will post more on this later.

7. Early Morning Scripture Study - See #2 for a guess on how this one is going. I love the days when I make this happen, but with my baby's inconsistent sleep pattern and my own inconsistent bed-time, this has not become the habit I want it to be again. Still committed to it, still working on it.

8. Declutter - Ha! Resounding success, thanks to the serendipitous entrance of Marie Kondo into my life. Not finished with the process yet, but I'm definitely in a MUCH better place clutter-wise than I was six months ago.

9. Develop and Stick to a Budget - This one's been interesting. The biggest change I've made is developing the habit of monitoring our expenses, which, just like monitoring my time, is proving to be a most effective route for managing our finances. Every month I sit down and track every single expense in a nice little spreadsheet, highlight where we overspent and where we under-spent and whether we're coming out even while still saving enough. I go over all the numbers with my husband so we are both on the same page, and this simple act of monitoring has done more to help curb my financial anxiety than anything else. There have been a few months where we overspent and a few months where we under-spent, but here at the six month mark we are looking pretty okay for the year. I still think there are areas where we could improve and save or spend more wisely, but I'm feeling in control, which is the point of this goal.

10. Solidify Family Routine - At six months I'm feeling very good about our family routine right now. We've got all of my most important daily and weekly routines firmly in place (family dinners, family scripture study, family home evening, etc.). Our couple routines (date night, scripture study, etc.) are also becoming a lot more consistent, so we are making good progress. Of course, I recognize that a lot of this is because the baby is getting older, and everything will be disrupted again whenever the next baby comes, but for now I'm liking our groove.

This review was actually more positive than I thought is was going to be. I kind of thought I was failing miserably at all my goals because I keep kicking myself for failing at my sleep goal (which affects my early morning scripture study goal). But really, I'm making more progress on most of these goals than I thought. That's a nice discovery.

Did you make New Year's Resolutions? How are your goals coming at this half-way mark?

5 Life Lessons From My De-Cluttering Binge

It was about the end of January that I cane to confront the hard truth.

Over the past year or so, I had many excuses to explain away the clutter: I was pregnant, I had a new baby, I was sick, our tiny apartment was too small for a four-person growing family, if we lived in a house it would all be better. . .

But I finally confronted the truth. All excuses aside, we were just lazy, disorganized, messy people.

The beds were never made, there were always dirty dishes spread over all the counters, books and clothes and toys and mail and whatever random crap just piled up everywhere. I about died of shame any time anyone popped over for a surprise visit.

It was depressing.

So when I came across Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-Up, at my local library, I grabbed it up eagerly. I knew we needed help, and something had to change.

Okay, let's start with the caveats. Marie Kondo is Japanese. All of her clients are Japanese, and it is obvious that all of her experience with organizing and decluttering is heavily influenced by her culture (sometimes I had images of neon flashing Hello Kittys or big-bellied Buddhas speaking to their underwear coming through her advice). Not everything she says or does translates perfectly to an American home. She never addresses how to handle holiday decorations, her aesthetic is clearly much more spare and modern than most Americans are comfortable with (unless you really dig that minimalist, modern look, which is cool if you do, but I find it depressing), and she does NOT have kids. Or a husband, as far as I can tell.

And yeah, if I didn't have a husband and kids, I'd like to think my little apartment would be sparkling clean all the time.

BUT, caveats aside, I literally found this book to be LIFE CHANGING! I know, it sounds extreme. Let me see if I can explain.

Kondo has developed and perfected a method (the "KonMarie" method) for organizing and tidying that she guarantees, if followed, will lead to life-long organization. She claims that she has a 100% success rate, and that none of her clients have ever relapsed. You can't argue with numbers like that, so I was more than game to try out her method.

She has five categories of things to declutter and organize:

1.) Clothes

2.) Books

3.) Papers (Files, etc.)

4.) All Other Objects

5.) Sentimental Things

To follow her method completely, you must tackle each of these categories in order (the order is very important to her), and proceed to throw out or keep items based on the criteria of whether or not it brings you joy. Then you organize only the possessions that bring you joy in a logical way where everything has a place. She goes into much more detail in the book with suggestions and tips I don't have space to discuss here, some of which I found super helpful, and some of which I'm going to ignore completely (she had some super extreme and ridiculous suggestions, I just looked past those).

As soon as I finished the book, I jumped into my own decluttering project, sticking as close to her method as I found practical. So far I've worked my way through my clothes and books (the story of my books deserves it's own post), and I'm working through my papers, but this is a HUGE project. It is going to take months to finish, but this process has already been so transformative for me. I've had so many epiphanies, finally internalized lessons I've heard all my life but never taken to heart, and learned things about myself as well. Really, I am not over exaggerating when I say the process of organizing my home has been life-changing.

Here are a few of the epiphanies I've had through this experience:

A House of Order

When I think about my home, this home that I am creating, and the ideal home I want to have, certain words come to mind. PEACE is a big one. JOY is another one. I want a home that is peaceful, calm, filled with joy and light and happy memories. And when I imagine what this home looks like, clutter is not a part of it. This home isn't obsessively clean, or stark and bare (no home with children should be), but it is a home where things have a place, and they are generally kept in place. I want a house of order, and this process has helped me focus that vision and bring it closer to reality.

"Joy" as a Material Philosophy

I've been searching for a philosophy about how to relate to material possessions. Our consumer culture focuses very much on "More! More! More!" and sometimes it's hard not to feel that pull. However I think we all recognize that's not a healthy way to think about things. The philosophy in my home growing up was "Necessity vs. Want," and while I think this is a much healthier view of things, I've talked before about how sometimes there is a fuzzy line between needs and wants, and this wasn't providing clear guidance for me. I've dabbled in the Zero Waste Home philosophy (way too stressful for me) and other minimalist philosophies, but ultimately, none of these philosophies really spoke to me.

But when Kondo started talking about only keeping things that bring you joy, that totally clicked with me. Suddenly, it doesn't have to be about whether I need it or only want it, it doesn't have to be about function, or hoarding, or not being wasteful, or other things that tended to add stress to my life. Instead, it gets to be about joy! This idea has been super profound for me. Not only is it allowing me to let go of A LOT of things we already have (we've hung on to so many ugly, low quality, broken, or underused things because it felt wasteful to throw them out), it's changing the way I bring things in. Now when I shop, instead of asking questions about value and discount and coupons and sales that leave my head spinning, I think about whether it brings me joy. When it has to actually bring you joy, you buy a lot less stuff.

Revolutionary.

Outer Order Brings Inner Calm

Possessions carry a lot of weight. Not just physically, but mentally. I really felt this the last time we packed up our lives and moved across the country (the event that started me thinking about a minimalist philosophy), but I can't believe all the stuff I still felt was necessary to hang on to (like that box of all my lesson plans from when I taught school years ago. I have them all on my computer, why have I been lugging around the physical paper? Why?) It wasn't until I started throwing things away that I realized how great it felt mentally to let that weight go. Life feels lighter, physically and mentally. I feel more in control. I feel calmer and more at peace.

Order Creates Energy

One of the things that worries me the most is the effort it takes to keep things tidy and organized. Laziness has always been the cause I've attributed to all the clutter. I'm just too lazy to clean up and put things away. It takes effort.

But what I've noticed from this experience is that when I REALLY focus on the joy of my possessions and finding the perfect way to organize them, it creates the energy and motivation in me to keep it up. Kondo talks about how no one who follows her method ever relapses, and I think it's because of this energy that is created by the order. You feel so good when everything is in the right place, when you only have things you love, that you don't want to lose that good feeling by not taking the extra five seconds to fold your pants and put them away. At least that's the way it's been working for me.

Everyone Needs a Sapce

At the end of her book, Kondo talks about how everyone needs a space, a place for their things that are their own. Considering that in my entire life I've NEVER had my own room, this idea really struck a chord with me. It also helped me gain perspective on how to deal with the tidyness habits of those I live with. As much as I like to think that this little home is my domain and I have control over everything in it and can force tidyness on everyone, that is simply not true. Kondo says (after making this mistake herself) that you should never throw out or reorganize the possessions of any other person. I'm trying to respect this line with my husband, and leave his possessions and his space to himself. However, I'm finding that my new tidyness obsession is contagious; my husband has asked for my help cleaning out his clothes too and got really excited over the idea of getting bookshelves for his game collection. I'm even trying to respect this line with my three-year-old, while at the same time teaching him how to care for his possessions and keep them tidy. It's an experiment right now, this realm of kids and clutter, one I'm still working through, but I'll write it about it in more depth some day.

This process of decluttering and reorganizing my life has been a profound experience for me. Even though I understand how this book might not be for everyone (you really have to read past the cultural quirks) I highly recommend a good decluttering binge. Look for more posts as I continue to work on this process over the next few months. I'm hoping there are even more lessons to be learned.