Yesterday was the first day of 2011. I was finally feeling better, and filled with all the hope and promises that a new year brings. I don’t want to make resolutions, per se, but I’ve been contemplating some goals for myself this year. I had a lot on my mind as I went to bed, and I stayed up until 6am thinking about it. (Sigh.) I wasn’t completely wide awake, but I definitely wasn’t asleep either.

I am not wanting to make resolutions that I won’t even remember in a month, but I do like the idea of a fresh start. I like the idea of looking at your life and where it’s headed, and making positive changes. Sometimes I get stuck in a rut and I don’t even remember what I wanted to begin with. I’ve seen some people having a “word of the year” for 2011 which I think is a pretty cool idea. I am not really doing a word, but I decided instead of specific resolutions (like, “lose 25 lbs”) I’d like to have more general goals – something that Paul and I can be working towards all year, and hopefully all the little stuff (like losing weight!) will follow alongside.

For example, I talked about it on my house blog, but one goal for this year is to save up to fix the foundation of our house. I doubt we’ll finish this in 2011, but the goal is to save for it. Hopefully we’ll be able to analyze our spending and cut back where we need to cut back in order to make it happen. I’m very motivated right now because when the foundation is fixed, we are going to redo the kitchen, and that is the project I am really excited about! I’m hoping this motivation will encourage healthy spending and saving habits along the way.

Another goal is to have a family life that starts in the home and radiates out from that. A huge step for this is to have regular meals, cooked and eaten at home. I want to be comfortable in my own kitchen. And stemming from that, I’ve noticed the more time I spend in my kitchen, the cleaner I tend to keep it, which affects the cleanliness of the rest of the house. I dislike being in our house when it is messy, the laundry is piled high, and the pantry is bare. I tend to leave just to escape my responsibilities. Right now, it seems that the best way to recentering our life here is to work on home management skills. We’ll see how that evolves over the year, as I meditate on how to recenter our lives.

After pondering all these things and finally falling asleep in the wee hours of the morning, I got three and a half hours of sleep before Savannah woke us up. I told Paul that I hadn’t slept well, and would he mind letting me sleep. It was almost too late for church anyway (he’d forgotten to set his alarm), so he got Savannah up and entertained her downstairs while I slept another 2 hours. I can’t say it was a great sleep, but it was better than none! After I got up, we went to Ikea which was our original plan. It was *so* crowded. We ate lunch, then grabbed a few things, and left.

A few years ago, I picked up some laundry hampers at Ikea. They have served us really well, but over the years they have gotten pretty beat up. (What can I say? They were only $4 each.) My cats loved them, and they were showing the love. Also, the hampers were starting to smell from the cat-pee laundry that I stuck inside. I’m attempting to get rid of anything with cat pee in my house (that can’t be cleaned), so I decided the laundry hampers had to go. Today I bought two more and will be tossing the other ones in the trash come Friday. Already, our bedrooms are starting to look more organized as I picked up dirty clothes from the floor and put them in the new hampers. Our washing machine hummed most of the afternoon and evening, as I tackled the mountain of laundry I’ve been putting off for forever. I finally washed our quilt, and while I was at it, I put new sheets on the bed.

While Savannah took her afternoon nap, Paul and I undecorated and took down the tree. Our living room now seems much bigger and brighter! (Tree in the bay window – pretty, but also made it dark inside. Not sure we’ll put it there again.) Paul technically went back to work yesterday, but he had today off, so it seemed like today was our last vacation day. We had a nice evening in, with a brief run to Walmart because we needed diapers.

Brief sidenote about diapers. I found out that Savannah must be sensitive/allergic to the detergent I’d been using, so I have been using disposables since Thanksgiving. Finally yesterday I got a chance to wash all the diapers. I first boiled the inserts and then stripped all the diapers. After doing that all day, they were smelling brand new, and I put them in the dryer. They came out of the dryer with a very odd smell! I was confused and somewhat down because of all the work I had put into washing them all day. This afternoon, I washed them once and they smelled fine, so I hung them on the drying rack to dry. However, I don’t relish the thought of not being able to dry my diapers in the dryer, so we’ll see what happens here! I need to figure out how I can rectify this. Anyways, I was hoping to go back to cloth today as the last disposable diaper was used, but I decided not to push it so I went ahead and bought more sposies. I’ll switch tomorrow, and we’ll take it slowly in case I didn’t get all the detergent out of them.

So now we begin January, and my goals are put to the test. I really want to have a healthier lifestyle this year. I have things in place, I just need to make myself do them. As Savannah gets older, I realize how much my poor habits can reflect negatively on her. (Case in point? Today we got her a plate of steamed veggies at Ikea. She refused to eat the veggies and instead wanted the french fries.)

Okay when I was writing this post in my head, it sounded much better than it actually is sounding written out. Oh well. Happy New Year to everyone!