7 Things Before 2017

It’s November now, clearly, and so December is not too far away (also clearly), ergo, the end of the year is also near.

I’ve been thinking about some things I’d really like to get done, or changes I would like to make, before the end of the year and beyond that, to make my life a bit better and make me a bit happier and less stressed! So I thought I would write them down, here, to hold myself to them.

Here are 7 things before 2017 that I would like to do…

1. Keep getting the house ready to sell after Christmas. We’ve wanted to move house for ages but there’s so much that needs doing to this house to make it look better before we try to sell it. Our house was full of a lot of crap we’d (I’d) accumulated over the years, and for the past few months I’ve been clearing everything out, and got rid of shitloads. I still have a load of paperwork and A LOT of clothes to sort out, and there’s lots of bits to fix around the house. But I’m determined to get it done properly now and have the house in some sort of order, so it’s nice at Christmas, and then we can put it up for sale hopefully in the new year and finally move somewhere nicer.
2. Keep going to exercise classes or exercising at home. I’m really pissed off with myself at how bad I’ve been at exercising over the summer and since then. Plus I’ve been drinking too much wine and eating far too many puddings, and so I’m feeling pretty rubbish about myself after putting a few pounds on. I was feeling so much more confident after getting fitter, but now my clothes are all tighter and I feel crappy when I look in the mirror again. It’s mostly about getting back into the habit of making exercise a part of my day again, but I’m finding it hard. I started doing it properly again using Fitness Blender videos like before, but then I’ve got poorly and I can’t do it. I’m determined to though; I’m lucky in that I can lose weight quite quickly when I exercise (which also means I can put it on quickly too!), so I know I’ll see a difference quickly, and that will spur me on to keep going, but I just need to get on with it! I’m determined to feel better by Christmas.
3. Work somewhere else once a week. I love working from home – wearing what the hell I want and eating when I want to, and I love that I have my blogging friends on Whatsapp whenever I want to talk. But apart from the school run twice a day I can sometimes be in all week. I think it would be good for me to go to a coffee shop once a week even for a couple of hours, to be around people and spend too much money on coffee and cake. I do get distracted easily so I don’t think I’d get as much done as at home, but I still think it would be good for me.
4. Have some time offline. I’ll admit it, I’m a bit obsessed with my phone and the internet and I freak out a bit if I don’t know where my phone is. I think that’s probably (sadly) quite normal for a lot of us nowadays, but I feel like I’d quite like to get out of the habit of constantly checking it and spend more time present in the real world. I don’t need to check my emails every five minutes, and Facebook will still be boring as hell if I don’t go on it every day. I just think I need a bit of time offline.
5. Get into a routine with housework and blogging. Now that Ava is at school full time I would really like to have a set routine for when I do the bulk of the housework, probably on a Friday so that we don’t have to spend all weekend doing it. I feel like there is always so much to do and to try and fit in, and I think a routine would help with the constant overwhelm.
6. Start working at my desk again. I have a desk, it has now been unearthed from the piles of crap that I had dumped there to sort out, and I need to start using it again. I do like working at the dining table – it is close to the fridge and the kettle, and I can look out of the window at the rain and be glad I’m inside and warm… But, it means that I have to clear the table in a mad rush every night before dinner, the dining room is mostly a bit of a blogging mess, and I’m too close to the fridge and the food within that calls my name. I need to force myself back upstairs and utilise my office space again.
7. Get back into a bit of an evening routine with Ava and have her in bed for 7pm every night. I’ve never really been one for routines with my daughter – I like having the flexibility of being out somewhere later with her if we want to be and if she is happy. But since starting school she has been very tired every afternoon and evening, and with the rush of doing homework, reading, having dinner and playing a bit, we have slipped a bit and her bedtime often ends up being closer to 8pm than 7pm. I’d like to get more organised with our evenings and have her in bed for 7 each night – for her benefit and mine! I find that she tends to sleep longer in the mornings the earlier she goes to bed, and she needs as much sleep as she can get right now. And my evenings always feel so much longer when I’m child-free from 7 rather than 8. It hopefully also means that I will start to go to bed earlier too, which I really need to work on!

So there you have it – apparently I want to get into boring routines with everything and generally be more organised. Let’s see how that goes shall we!