Improving Me

Recently I've discovered that if I want to make big changes, the place I need to start is with me.  My struggle with postpartum depression and PTSD has made this past year really tough and I am tired of feeling this way.  I don't like feeling badly about myself, so I decided to make a few changes:

• Eat meals at home
• I know how to cook in theory, but I almost never do.  Matt is an awesome cook so I usually left it up to him, but because he would have to work a full day and then cook, it was very easy to end up eating out.  In embracing my new role, however, I felt it important for me to do the cooking so that when he comes upstairs at the end of the day (he works from home) he can enjoy time with Lily and I can get dinner ready.  I'm also able to do much of the prep work while he's working.
  
  As another part of this, I started making a month-long meal plan.  I plan meals out for two weeks and then repeat.  It makes bulk shopping easier (I have a fangirl crush on Costco) and I can just look at the menu and know what we're doing for breakfast, lunch, or dinner any day of the week.  This has worked out exceptionally well for us.  We've been following the menu for a little longer than 2 weeks and we have only eaten out once, and that was a fluke.


• Stick to a consistent workout routine
• Matt and I decided that losing weight was going to be a priority for us in 2015 and beyond, so we each got a 2-year membership to 24 Hour Fitness.  It was important to me that whatever gym we went to have a pool because swimming is my favorite form of exercise.  We were pleased to find that the membership Costco offered was an amazing deal cost wise, so we bit the bullet in December.
  
  
  The holidays and being out of town made it tricky to stick to a gym routine, but for the last couple weeks, I've gone to the gym every other day.  I've been swimming laps and am up to 500 meters at a time. I have so much more respect for competitive swimmers because it is a lot harder than it looks!
  
  
• Track caloric intake and exercise
• This one has been huge for me.  When we went out to dinner the other night, I was mortified to find out how much I'd eaten.  I've been running a decent surplus the last week or two and it's been making me feel really good.  The meal I ate put me over so many calories I was sick thinking about it.  It didn't help that I hadn't even made it to 75% of my daily step goal either.  Yikes!
  
  
  Having a Fitbit and tracking my movement has been encouraging.  I've been going out of my way to be more active to achieve more daily goals and being able to add my swimming and other exercises to My Fitness Pal has been so encouraging.  I love seeing the boost in calories I get.  I often reward myself with a muffin or other semi-healthy treat just to keep my motivation up.

• Take time for self-care
• I asked for self-care type things for Christmas, and it's been the best thing ever.  Matt takes Lily on Sunday afternoons and periodically throughout the week so that I can have time to do things like take a bubble bath and read a book or just nap baby free.  I've made this a priority because when I don't, it makes life worse for me and for Matt.  I get so much energy from just being able to spend an hour or two by myself.
  
  
  This also includes getting out of bed before Lily wakes up.  Turns out that taking a shower without any strict time limits is invigorating, and eating breakfast without a baby demanding to have half of whatever I'm eating is even better!

• Wear makeup
• Anyone who knows me knows that I am super lazy in the appearance category.  I cling to my all-girls Catholic high school days when I could barely be bothered to change out of my uniform to go to bed, let alone care for my appearance.  I think there's so much to say for taking time to put on a little makeup and really make yourself look good.  I've always felt that I don't need makeup because I have a nice complexion, but man - it's amazing how much of a difference a little eye shadow and lip gloss can make! Not to mention what the moisturizer can do for my very, very dry skin.
  
  
  I ordered a few things online and I'm just waiting for them to come in the mail to start my makeup routine.  I can't wait to start building my beauty routine!

Everything has been going really well so far, so hopefully it continues to do so and I'm able to continue feeling better about myself in the year(s) to come.

Pre-Spring Deep Cleaning

Since we moved into this house when Lily was 2 months old (because we are insane), I've never really felt settled and the house has seemed to be in a state of perpetual chaos.  Now that I'm home full time, I've been working on making it a priority to really settle into our home and get everything cleaned/organized.  While I was working on coming up with a chore list, I remembered that an awesome mom I know had blogged about her family's chore schedule at one point.  She directed me to the link and some documents that she'd found.  (Her name is Catherine and you can find her at The Life I Need - definitely check it out!)

In her blog, she linked back to a website that has become a goldmine for me: Organized Home.  They have a great 14 week plan to deep clean the whole house.  I love it because you focus on one or two rooms per week.  They have a suggested outline with various checklists here.

Since I'm an excel junkie and their list didn't exactly meet my needs, I decided to make my own calendar with specific rooms and change up the order a bit.  I also took into consideration my other daily chores (dishes, vacuuming, etc.) to determine what I wanted to do each day.  My spreadsheet for January and February looks like this:

I'm a big fan of color coding.  I used white and grey alternating fill for the months, and then different color text for each day of the week to make it easier to follow.  It was presumed that I would be doing most of the chores, but anything that Matt and I would need to do together I filled with purple.  If you're interested in using my spreadsheet, you can access an editable version here.  You may need to adjust the dates, but that should be easy enough.  If you need help editing, I'm always happy to help however I can!

Week 1 has gone absolutely swimmingly (granted, it is the easiest part of the house to clean) but I am really looking forward to the rest of this challenge and can't wait to have a cleaner, more organized house just in time for spring!

A fresh start

I'm finally back in the blogosphere and it feels great!  I needed to make some changes in my life and I needed to get back to writing.  Now I've done both.

I became a full-time stay-at-home-mom (SAHM, for future reference) in November.  Since then, I've been working to get on top of the chores at home and de-clutter the house.  I've found that I've absolutely loved doing everything that's entailed - even the cleaning.  Now I'm on a mission to not only continue working on my stuff and my home, but to apply those same principles to my time and my people.  I want to organize, de-clutter, and deep clean ALL THE THINGS - and then keep it that way.

For now, I have a little bit more information on my About page (link at the top of the page).  There'll be more pages coming as I write more.

I'm looking forward to this new chapter in my life and I can't wait to share it with you!