I am honored to have had an edited version my natural egg dyeing project featured as the April monthly project for Rhythm of the Home! If you are visiting Which Name? from Rhythm of Home, welcome, and thank you for stopping by!
Each month, at the end of the month, I take a pause to reflect on how I have done with my monthly goals during the month and to share my goals for the month ahead.
a step toward balance:
January: I created a schedule. I think this will always be a work in progress, as things change in our daily lives. Just this week, I re-wrote it again. Some things worked when I created it in January (my weekly homemade pizza/movie/ironing night) and some things didn't (getting to bed earlier). This time, I am scheduling in specific activities for myself for each weeknight (after the kids are in bed) and plan to finish up chores immediately after the kids go to bed, before I begin my "me" time.
February: I stepped back from the computer during the daytime with my kids. This has been really successful. I have found, though, especially in recent weeks, that I need to step back more in the evenings as well.
March: I focused on our family's diet and nutrition. This has been such a good learning experience and really rewarding. Our picky eater is far less picky now, I have learned more about getting more balanced nutrition on a plant based diet, we ate down a lot of food we had in our pantry, and I tried a lot of new recipes. We are far from done (again, always a work in progress, I suspect), but I feel as though we are off to a very good start.
For April: My goals for this month are several intertwined. I desperately want to get back to exercising. The best time of day for me is first thing in the morning, which means I really need to get up early enough to do this. Finnian is an early riser, so I need to get up before him, therefore, I need to be getting to bed earlier. I used to exercise 6 days a week. Now, I will be happy with a consistent 3 mornings a week, although I really want to do this 5 mornings a week. This month, I also need to increase my water intake, something I should have begun during the March food month.
A wonderful group of bloggers have joined me in taking their own steps towards balance. I urge you to click through and see how they are all doing and if you care to join, just let me know so I can link to you, then grab a button so you can link back.
one small change:
January: Our goal was to stop using new produce bags. I made a bunch of cloth ones and have been incredibly successful with this. I used unbleached muslin, so they work well for produce and for grains. The first time I used them, I was mildly embarrassed, but now have been asked about them and haven't been looked at twice by produce sellers.
February: My goal was to resume a whole host of earth friendly and frugal activities I had let slide. This was a great goal, simply because it was a sad reminder of how much I had let slip.
March: Our goal was to reduce our food waste. We've been really successful with this, but I learned that it wasn't only our kids producing food waste.
For April: Mike and I have agreed that our goal is to make and set up at least one rain barrel collection unit. I am a bit ashamed we haven't already done this, in part because it has been on our "list" for (pathetically) years now, but also because we just had a very, very wet winter, and could have already collected a lot.
One small change was challenging each of us to make a monthly change up until Earth Day, which is celebrated on April 22 (and 2010 marks the 40th anniversary), but Mike and I have already agreed we plan to continue making a monthly change at least through the rest of this calendar year.
And then....the other monthlies.I was recently asked how we made the transition back to allowing new purchases. For the calendar year 2009, our family tried only to buy used items. We had some failures each month, but primarily due to our belief that what we were buying new was necessary and environmentally friendly. When January 2010 rolled around, we were ready to allow new purchases again. The experience had had the domino effect of creating questions to which we sought answers all along the way, each piece of information adding to the change of mindset about possessions, materials, the environment, our children, our health, and so on. So we knew, we would never go back to how we were prior to our challenge. This is all to say that we now allow new purchases, but we try to only bring items into our home that meet some need or purpose or bring us pleasure. We trust ourselves to know what these are and we still seek used items wherever we can.
Bought new:
- 2 sand buckets (with attached shovels), stickers, sunglasses - all for Easter
- a nylon shower curtain liner (to replace the mildewy one I simply cannot get clean, but will repurpose in some way)
- a soft ball for Finnian to throw inside
- a night light for Lala to use in the night for the bathroom
- Clothes for Finnian, gifted from a friend.
