For me, the New Year begins today, on the day that the children go back to school. I need to wait until we get back into a routine, all the Christmas food has been eaten, and I can give the house a bit of a reset.
I have a few projects that I want to work on this year, some of which are quite long term, so I need to make plans to tackle them a bit at a time. My first goals for January are fairly typical - mainly getting back into healthy eating and exercise routines!
January goals
Pick up my exercise routine again. I was doing really well before Christmas, but I've not exercised properly in weeks! I do different types of exercise throughout the week, and I plan my week to fit in around the other things that I'm doing. So I know exactly what I want to do and when to do it, it's just a case of getting on with it!
Improve my eating habits after the Christmas lapses. It's not just about losing some weight, although that would be nice, it's about cutting back on the chocolate and making an effort to increase fruit and vegetables.
Work on decluttering the house. I enjoy a decluttering challenge so I'm aiming to find five items a day to get rid of, and I've been stocking up on sturdy bags for charity shop donations. This will involve sorting through our filing cabinet which has become too full for new paperwork, and going through the food cupboards to look for expired food and things which need to be used up.
Finally, our home project for this year is refurbishing our bathrooms. Apart from some minor repairs we've not done anything to them, and as they are original to the house they are over 25 years old! Things are starting to fall apart, and they are all looking rather sad and limescale clogged. So we need to make a start on the planning, go through some brochures and work out what we want.
Longer term projects
Then there are the things that I want to work on over the rest of the year.
Over the next few months I'll be planning my garden. I'll be deciding what seeds to plant and what larger plants I'd like, to fill in the gaps in our borders. The front of our house is quite bare, and so I'd like to put some kind of trellis on it to soften it a bit. We are also planning some kind of living wall or vertical planter for the wall along one side of our patio. I'm not really sure where to start with this, so some research is required!
In the summer we have a big holiday to Japan coming up, and although we've booked the flights and worked out a rough itinerary there is plenty of planning and research to be done before we can book hotels, trains and attractions.
I have several large boxes of family history files which need to be sorted through with the rest of the family and then stored. This has prompted me to think about all my photographs, both printed and digital, and how best to enjoy them. I'm wondering about putting together some photo books, maybe one for each year containing my favourite photos. I have a couple of photograph albums which I enjoy looking through, and I think if I had some physical books I would appreciate the photos more.
Hobbies and interests
Then I have my personal projects for the year. I have a few cross stitch kits which I would like to complete, starting with this Be A Light cross stitch from Dimensions which I picked up on holiday a couple of years ago. It's quite simple, not too big and without much backstitching, so I'm hoping that it won't take too long. The only tricky thing is that the dark background is easier to work on during daylight.
