Getting My Poop In A Group

 

Last year I spent a significant amount of time going through every space inside and outside of my home doing a major purge of the items I’d been hanging onto for several years.  My house and the property it sits on looks so much nicer, but more importantly it feels so much better.  My goal as I work my way through 2024 is to maintain my home so that it doesn’t fill back up with a bunch of useless stuff again.  I decided to go ahead and begin with a 30 day declutter challenge and work my way through the list this month.  I think that will be a great way to ensure that I’m starting off on the right foot.

 

In the spirit of Swedish Death Cleaning I had made it through my sentimental items last year, actually I went through it all three times, each time finding something to declutter.  This year I wanted to continue with my photo album project and continue to archive photos into albums and annotate them as I go.  Amazingly, I got on a roll over the Christmas and New Year holidays and on New Year’s Eve I was able to complete this project entirely.  In the process these albums have become my version of journaling my autobiography that will hopefully benefit my family long after I am gone and can no longer tell them the things that were important to me.  It is also allowing me to jot down the things I was told by my family members that are no longer with us.  I feel our family history is important and needs to be preserved.

 

The album on the left is all about our ancestors 
plus my own childhood
The rest are of my children plus my high school yearbooks

On New Year’s Day I went through my important papers binder as well as the tax returns and supporting documentation.  In the process I pulled out what was no longer relevant and did not need to be saved and filed away what did.  Then I shredded anything with personal information on it and recycled the rest.  The next day I went through my laptop and deleted anything I did not need and then got all of my important computer files backed up onto a thumb drive.

 

Although our government has stated that inflation is lower I personally have yet to see that.  Prices are still higher in the stores, especially with groceries, as are my utilities.  Fortunately, I am getting a break on my property taxes this year.  I’m still working on using up what I already have on hand before I buy anything new.  With some of the budget challenges I’ve set for myself this year it will be even more important for me to do this.

 

One thing I’ve tried to do for several years now is to complete some unfinished projects that I have tucked away in the upstairs guest room closet.  While I’ve managed to work my way through many of them I’d like to prioritize that goal this year and get them all finally completed so I can totally remove that box from the closet.  In fact, I pulled that box out of the closet and set it in the room as a constant reminder to work on this stuff.

 

Most importantly (and better late than never) I am focusing a lot more attention on taking better care of myself, both physically and emotionally.  I think we all need to be kinder to ourselves and to treat ourselves in the same way we treat those we love.  Often our needs and desires are shelved or put on the back burner as we take care of others, but we are just as important as anyone else and our needs matter.  Like a lot of you I’ve always been hyper critical and really hard on myself, but that isn’t helpful at all.  Last year I worked hard to stop that practice and this year I vow to continue – no negative self talk, criticism or shame.  And I won’t accept it from anyone else either.  No matter what, I’m good enough.  So there!

 

Every day I strive to be kind, patient, loving and to be the best version of myself I possibly can.  I’m also learning to accept what I am powerless to change.  I don’t have to tolerate other people’s bad behavior and I refuse to take blame for other people’s actions or decisions.  At the end of the day my actions and my decisions are mine and yours are yours.  I think as mom’s, and as women, we tend to take on a lot of responsibility for others that isn’t our burden to carry.  I don’t do that anymore.

 

We often think that getting our $h!t together is all about taking care of the physical aspects of our lives such as paperwork, our homes, paying bills, making repairs, that sort of thing, but the truth is it also means our emotional selves as well.  We need to have healthy relationships with others, but we also need to have them with ourselves.