New Discoveries

Daddy-o and I headed out for a hike at Sycamore Grove, where I've been a couple dozen times for various hikes and events, and finally headed off on a new trail where we discovered a turtle pond up in the hills. (It's hard to see the turtles--I didn't have my good camera and my phone doesn't zoom well at all, but there were about 10 of them out there.) We also saw a couple of egrets, ground squirrels, and woodpeckers while hiking. Not bad for a 4 mile loop less than 15 minutes from our house. And the hills are green, the rain had cleared up for a couple days, and we had a couple hours kid free. 

Even better than just being kid free, Bean, who was at home babysitting Peanut, has been bitten by the Marie Kondo bug and they spent the entire time we were gone organizing and throwing away anything that didn't spark joy. We came home to a Peanut-made documentary showing the transformation and a pretty clean house! I love that Marie has been able to get my kids to throw things away that I have had no luck. They still claim a lot of joy from random items, but we're doing a lot better than when I'm the only one on the fling boogie bandwagon. 

Minimalizing

At the beginning of the summer, I was introduced to Project 333 by a friend (who has been blogging about her closet clean-out and new wardrobe freedoms in much more detail than I will because I don't have the patience to spend that much time on my clothes). Pare down my closet to 33 items for three months (so you can get new items out each season--and there are things that aren't supposed to count, like underwear and workout clothes and jewelry that you wear every day--there's a set of rules on the website if anyone is interested). I'm always trying to purge and clean out my closet, so that idea was filed away as something to try soon.

Then, I read Everything That Remains: A Memoir by the Minimalists last month which has put me in a major purging mode, so I came back to the closet reduction idea and finally decided to bite the bullet. Peanut helped me pull all my clothes out of the closet and then left me to sort through it all while he found something much more entertaining to do (turned out that much more entertaining thing was to pour a bottle of glue all over his sister's bedroom carpet, which we didn't find until bedtime--apparently I've forgotten that you never want to hear silence from a 3 year old.)

What I learned from this sorting session (besides the above about 3 year olds):

I already wear the same clothes all the time, so when I made my pile of must-haves, it was well under the 33 item limit.

I live in t-shirts. I knew that, but seeing the list made it really stand out.

I don't wear jewelry or accessories hardly ever, so that barely made a dent in the list.

I apparently don't have a decent pair of  jeans right now. Better get shopping before it cools off.

Really, this isn't as hard as I thought it might be, and pulling out all of the other clothing makes it so much easier to see what I have to wear. I'm picking the same things anyway, but normally have to dig through all the other clothes to find the right black t-shirt and pair of shorts. I still own a lot of those other things, although I did come up with a pile of items to donate, but now the extras are all boxed up for the next season, or when I want to trade something out.

A Year Towards Good Health

I recently read a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  Basically, she spent a year trying out different habits and challenges that research shows to lead towards greater happiness.  She broke it down by month and focused on different smaller goals in each monthly category (i.e., for Neighborhood, she challenged herself to be a tourist without leaving home, perform random acts of kindness, create a secret place, and find her own "Calcutta".)

As interesting as the happiness stuff was, what she kept commenting on is that just the act of filling out her resolution chart each day actually made her happier, as much as the acts she performed that month. I'm a list and chart person, and I agree that setting goals or making resolutions and then following through and tracking my progress makes me happy.

I also like the idea of spending a year working toward some ultimate goal with smaller, specific steps along the way. I'm sure I could benefit from my own happiness project, but because I think any progress in life tends to bring happiness, I decided I want to make this my Year of Health. It tends to be a subject that is on my mind all the time anyway, but I don't always take the actions to support my thoughts. And I don't always treat myself as well as I do my family and have been sadly neglecting some aspects of my health for awhile now.

So, since I just had a birthday, and I'm getting closer and closer to the big 4-0, I figure there is no time like the present to try to make myself a little healthier. I broke down the year into 12 different areas (Eating, Scheduling, Sleep, Germ Control, Slowing Down, Challenge Myself, Nature,  Mental, Relationships, Exercise,  Spiritual, and next July is still open for whatever I decide I still need). I've come up with some specific goals for each, but plan to adapt and change the later ones as I get going.

First up is Eating because even though I generally make and serve good food for my family, I've gotten in some pretty bad habits this summer and have had some not so great long term habits, that all contribute towards me not eating as well as I could. So, starting yesterday, I am spending a month not eating in the car, sitting down for every meal and snack, drinking water first, making sure I get 5 servings of vegetables each day, trying a new vegetable or way of cooking one each week, not eating anything with artificial stuff in it, and stopping eating by 8 p.m. All pretty minor goals, but if I can do all 7 of those for one month, I feel like my eating habits will be back on track.

 Of course, the idea is that they will then be ingrained as habits and I will keep eating that way in the months to come. Then, each month, I will add new good habits or take care of long overdue steps towards taking care of myself (September is when I finally set up a skin check as well as a couple other overdue doctor appointments and get on a regular workout schedule that involves more than my 2 days of running each week). My hope is that I will be at my healthiest and strongest as I head into the last year of my 30's!

On Being Responsible

This is our 7th week of our Summer Responsibility charts and I'd have to say that they have largely been a success.  We are far from perfect at getting everything done (especially me) and I've still done more nagging than I'd hoped (but once again, that's me--I have a hard time just letting go and having the consequences come), but our house has never stayed cleaner during the summer, and we've accomplished a lot of productive things, as well as made time for the fun rewards.  And even though I haven't managed to completely stop nagging, there has been a lot more personal initiative taken this summer.  A certain first born son, who I have always had to prod to get much done, has actually done his chores before I've asked many days this summer, usually before the other kids are even awake.

Part of the success is that it's been evolving as we go.  I started interviewing the kids each Sunday to discuss what they liked about the last week and what they didn't.  This is actually kind of a huge thing that I'm so excited about and plan to keep going with during the school year--a scheduled talk to evaluate how life is going with each of them turns out to be a good thing.  We talk about chores they'd rather not do, things they'd like to do, and fun stuff they hope we get around to this summer.  So far, we've traded out some chores, added a wildcard chore option, and added a "Happiness" category to the chart, while combining some of the educational ones into one.

Happiness has been my favorite.  I've been reading a couple books about happiness lately and got inspired.  We work on a different skill or habit each week that research shows will make us happier.  So far, the kids have practiced meditating (I think they love that they can mark a square off after lying on the ground for a couple minutes thinking about their breathing), written thankful lists, and done a daily act of service for someone else.  I'm not sure if it's really helping or not--kind of hard to tell with the amount of family togetherness we have during the summer, but overall, I think it's been a good experience and I figure good habits can't hurt.

And the rewards have made the summer for me.  We always do lots of fun stuff, like $1 movies, concerts in the park, and pool time, but the rewards have forced us to do a little more one-on-one fun.  Both kids have requested ice cream dates, which Daddy-o and I split so we could both enjoy an evening out that week.  We've gone to the used bookstore to pick out a new book and had lots of extra bedtime snuggles.  The snuggles especially have been so good for ME because I'm usually in such a hurry to get everyone to bed so I can finish up the evening chores and then have me time, that I tend to rush this.  It's been really nice to slow down and spend 15 minutes whispering and snuggling with one of my kids.

However, when Daddy-o and I were talking about how all my charts for the summer have been going, my first thought was how much work this has been.  It takes a lot of time to keep updating the charts, and to make sure I remind the kids how many hours they have left before bedtime to finish things up (they do NOT like being told that bedtime is in 30 minutes and realizing they still have 1/2 hour of reading as well as nighttime pick-up and piano practice to finish.)  I end up having a hard time getting to my weekly to-do lists and goals because I'm helping the kids with theirs during so much of our free time.  \

So while I'd say this is totally worth it, next week, we will be having what I've named The Week of Irresponsibility.  I won't give anything away yet, but I have to say I am REALLY looking forward to it.