AUGUST GOALS

Whew!  It's been a big month.

There's still a week left in July, but now that we are home from vacation, I feel like it's time for a fresh start.  It seems to be a recurring theme that I come home from vacation with renewed energy and a strong desire to get back to the good and wholesome routines of life.

So, I'm pretending this is August first and I'm ready to get back in the swing of "regular life."  

These are the things I hope to accomplish in the next five-ish weeks:

1 / Give Maggie's room a refresh.  Her room was first Eli's nursery and then was a shared room for her and Eli.  The boys now share a room and Maggie sleeps alone.  Everything is relatively functional, but it could just use a bit of a face lift.  I want to put on a fresh coat of paint, set up her bed (she currently sleeps on a twin mattress on the floor), rearrange, clean out her closet (which is currently full of a lot of random things) and figure out a better storage systems for her clothing. 

2 / Track grocery spending for the month of August.  I track our budget pretty closely.  I could tell you exactly how much we spent on gasoline or fast food or entertainment in any given month.  But the grocery spending is a bit trickier to track.  While we sometimes shop at dedicated grocery stores (Aldi) we also spend a good chunk of our grocery budget at big box stores like Target and Walmart.  The big box stores - and the variety of things we buy in a single shopping trip - make it hard to fully track our grocery spending.  It is much easier to deduct the lump sum (including the random tshirt I buy for the boys, dog food and camping equipment) than to divide things out and keep track of spending by category.

My goal for August is to do more careful accounting in the grocery category.  I would just like this number for a baseline and because it seems weird to me to have no idea how much we are spending on groceries.

3 / Finalize a "40 before 40" list.  I am so excited about this one - and I'm also open to any ideas you have to share.  With nothing yet set in stone, I currently have 26 things on my list.  It's been really fun to think on and I'm looking forward to getting started in September.

4 / Documenting catch up (Project Life family pages and also kid book pages).  I got overwhelmed with my Week In The Life project in May and let everything fall behind.  Then, I got sucked into my 100 Day Project and lacked motivation to scrapbook.  I started playing the catch up game yesterday and I am optimistic about my ability to get these projects done this month.

5 / Digital clean up.  My phone is overloaded with photos and videos.  On a daily basis, my email inbox is inundated with store sales and newsletters that I don't need or want.  I have some random apps on my phone that I never use.  I follow some people on Instagram that I don't really need to follow.  It's time to push the unfollow and unsubscribe buttons.  It's time to delete, delete, delete.

Okay. Ready, set, here I go.