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January did not turn out the way I had hoped. I set four goals for myself to accomplish this month and I didn’t even get remotely close to meeting any of them.

I started the month off strong trying to tackle my goals and I just really hit a slump about mid-month. My mind wasn’t focused and I found myself feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Once I start feeling that way, I tend to lose all motivation and just shut down. It’s definitely something I need to work on but I’m also learning to be okay with my failures.

I failed at reaching my goals this month but that doesn’t mean my shot is over. Hopefully, February will be a bit smoother for me. I’m ready to find a place where I’m okay with my failures and try again.

January had some good things though!

While I didn’t reach my goals, January was a pretty decent month for us. We ran in the new year with a day trip to NWA for some fun with our kids. We had lunch at P.F. Changs where we got our older kids to try some new foods.

We visited a local shop, The Slime Studio, to let the kids make slime. They had so much fun! We had slime all over us by the time we left but the kids really enjoyed it.

After making slime, we had some time to kill so we did some shopping at Hobby Lobby. Once it started getting dark, we headed across town to Crystal Bridges, a local art museum to see their outside light installation, the North Forest Lights. It was so much fun to see and so beautiful! It was cold and crisp and the kids were getting cranky but I think we still enjoyed it for the most part.

I also got some time in the kitchen with my middle kids. Jackson and Lauren have taken up a huge interest in baking and cookies. This month we baked scones, cinnamon rolls, cupcakes, and cookies. Lauren made dinner a few times as well.

Emily surprised herself and won first place in the science fair competition. She’s never done a science fair project before so I don’t think that she was expecting to win, but she did and we are so proud! She’ll compete at a regional contest later this year. She also attended her first school dance but we aren’t supposed to talk about that and I’ve been instructed that I cannot share the one picture she let me take.

We rarely get snow where we live and when we do it doesn’t last long. I don’t think we have had a day out of school for a snow day in years but we finally got one! The kids were so excited. All five of them were outside and ready to play at 7:30 a.m. This is the first real snow that Harrison and Katherine have ever really experienced and they had a blast. They made snow angels, threw snow balls at each other, and Harrison spent a lot of time pretending to be a snow plow. We finished our snow adventures with snow ice cream for breakfast!

Organizing Fool

Probably the only goal I reached for myself in January was to become more organized. I’m super focused right now on getting rid of clutter and simplifying our lives. In December, I spent part of my Christmas break cleaning out all of our closets. This is no easy task when you are a family of seven and you haven’t done a thorough closet clean-out in years. Oops. We ended up with sixteen trash bags full of clothing to take to a resell shop or donate!

Several places in the house were driving my crazy so I set out to organize them. I’m almost embarrassed to share these “before” pictures but it is necessary so you can see the huge change we’ve made and so you can see how organizing has made such a huge difference in my life.

The first thing I set out to organize was our master closet. The closet clutter was overwhelming, even after cleaning out a ton of clothing. Every time I walked in there I felt overwhelmed. Our shoes were everywhere and I couldn’t stand it. I spent a lot time on Amazon reading reviews and looking for organization ideas and finally settled on these shelves for our shoes. I chose these for a couple of reasons. First, the shelves are adjustable. The shelves can be slanted to hold shoes or they can be installed flat to hold bags or other things. We ordered two sets of them and they fit perfectly in our closet. It made a huge difference in our closet situation.

The next thing that was driving me crazy was storage for spices and similar items in our pantry. We had most of spices in the two small cabinets on either side of our stove. While these cabinets held everything we had a hard time finding the correct spices that we needed. This led to me being multiple bottles of the same spice because I couldn’t always tell if we were out of something or not. I again spent tons of time on Amazon reading reviews and ended up with two of these to go on the inside of our pantry doors. This has been a game changer when I’m cooking. Daniel spent a couple of hours cleaning out our pantry and installing these for me!

The last thing I desperately needed to change was my “office” area. We have built in desk under our staircase that I have adopted as my little office. I teach online classes and write in here often. It also became a catch-all for everything else in the house. All those papers from school and statements that need filed just kept getting stacked up on my desk. It is impossible to be productive in a cluttered space. I spent several hours filing and shredding papers. I trashed a ton of things and convinced Daniel to hang all the things I’ve been collecting for my office to make it “my space.” I love how it turned out and we’ve done a pretty good job at making sure that paperwork, kids school papers, and junk mail aren’t piling up any more.

So, what’s the plan for February?

Most of you know by now that I like to set goals for myself. Since I failed so miserably at meeting my goals in January, I’ll be reattempting them all in February.

We really don’t have any exciting plans for February. Jackson and Lauren are playing basketball for the first time every so I imagine we will be spending a lot of time at basketball games.

The littles will have their first dentist appointment this month. We’re all going as a family on our day off from school this month. Ya’ll say a prayer for the whole staff at our dental clinic.

Hoping for a smooth, productive February for everyone!