I love new year goals! I’m hopeful for 2018, for a number of reasons. In short, I’d like to share with you some of my goals for 2018, in part in an effort to keep myself accountable.
Sleep and wake early
I’ve always wanted to be an early riser, but by nature, I am not. Even though my night owl ways didn’t hinder me when I was younger, I now have more kids and after the kids go to bed, my mind is mush.
Throughout 2017 I tried to find times during the day to work on my own personal goals like completing homework, working out, and the like, but that just has not been working well.
Now that my oldest has moved out, there’s no longer a drive for me to stay up late and visit with her. I’ve already started on this goal by taking melatonin to help me adjust my bed time to be between 9 and 10pm. Then waking up at 6am for the day is definitely doable!
Make time for yoga every day
Now being in the later half of my 30’s, my late night snacking habits are not doing me well. Going to bed earlier will help with that, in sha Allah, but I also realized that hoping I’d magically have 20 minutes of free time in most days, and that I’d choose to do yoga, meant that I just never exercised.
Instead, I need to carve out that time in my day. Again, waking up early is key to this happening. What has worked so far is doing exercising while the kids are eating breakfast, assuming I have woken up early and eaten a light breakfast before them.
Teach kids more chores
The fact of the matter is that I do not wish to be the maid for 4 other humans in the house. Sure, I signed up for the stay-at-home mom gig, but my personal ambitions take me away from laundry and cleaning. Never mind the work of homeschooling, and the added mess just from all the young kids being home all the time. But, just because I do not have a big drive to clean the house myself does not mean I do not wish it to be clean. In 2018 Salihah will officially be out of the toddler stage, and my expectations for how the house looks will be raised.
Right now the kids clean up the dining room on their own, and they are pretty good about cleaning their play room as well. This upcoming year I want them to work on folding their own laundry, preparing their own breakfast, and cleaning the bathrooms. All are simple tasks, and are super helpful to keep our home in good working order.
Less phone, more books
2017 brought more reading than I had done in years. Maybe since college. Some books were assigned work, but most were not. It definitely helped me feel that I was getting back into the world again, and that I actually had interesting things to talk about! Checking Facebook rarely provides you with interesting things to talk about, unless you actually do click through to most articles and read them in full (and how many of us do that?).
Last year I made a goal of 24 books, and in part thanks to some chapter books I read aloud to the kids, I beat that goal. For 2018, I’m making a simple goal of reading 36 books, this time with the idea that I’ll also be including read aloud chapter books. It’s nothing too extraordinary, but I’m excited about the prospect nonetheless. If you haven’t seen the reading challenge from Modern Mrs. Darcy, it could be a great start in making your own reading goals.
If you want to follow along with what I’m reading, find me on Goodreads!
Less processed foods
I was doing great with this for a while, then homeschooling 1st grade, plus adding in some new food sensitivities for myself, and we have fallen back on any food that isn’t in the “can’t eat” list. Fortunately or unfortunately, hot dogs, chips, and fries fall in the “can eat” list, and I’ve relied on them a bit too heavily for quick lunches.
I have some ideas for making easy smoothies and relying more on my Instant Pot for easy, low-prep recipes. In addition to using processed foods less, it may mean that I do a little less DIY for things like yogurt and laundry detergent. There are only so many hours in a day, and spending that time making my own laundry detergent and then eating hot dogs isn’t actually making my family any healthier.
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