March 2021 Goals

As usual I try and review what my goals were in the previous month.  

I'm pretty happy with what I planned, low goals as they were.  I made it to the donation center which was a January goal that got pushed to February.  It was done before the first week was over.    We ate out for our birthday dinner on the same day.  It was just lovely.

All birthday gifts were taken care of in a timely manner (if you count 7pm on the day of the last one as a timely thing...but at least they were all done).

I continued work on the recipe book and it's gotten quite fat with pages of tried and true recipes.  I've decreased my cookbook load by half, setting aside to sell or donate those which I have seldom touched and keeping only the ones I have used often.  I've tagged lots of new to me recipes in those four  books to try.   I am really enjoying using the big notebook when I need a previously used recipe.  So much easier!

Barely did a thing in the yard and only managed to start last week for a couple of hours.  In my defense it was a very rainy month and I was under the weather last week when I might have gotten outdoors more.

Pantry Freezer Challenge didn't help the budget a bit BUT I managed to use up all but a handful of expired ingredients.  In fact, I have a fully empty bin in my pantry closet which now may be restocked with some dry good or other.

I did go to Frugal Bootcamp but I wasn't nearly as intensely driven this year as in years past.  Nothing earth shattering or revelatory in my musings or readings.  I have noted that some of my former frugal habits are no longer in vogue among the youthful homemakers though.  I think mine suit me and my more old fashioned life just fine but I do see where today's homemaker has a whole new set of problems to conquer in some ways....I thought that was interesting.

Well that is February done and behind us.  And now we go into a whole new month.  These are my plans this month:

Set up a wardrobe of outfits for March.  Anne teased me about setting up so many outfits but you know what?  I wore every single one of them and used some pieces in a secondary outfit, too!  I do tend to dress better when I leave home even if it's just into town, so there is that.  But between church functions, small group, shopping, haircut, etc., I needed every one of those planned outfits this month.  I've narrowed down what I'll likely use this month via Pinterest but will add that I've joined Stitch Fix for a quarterly box.  I get my first one on March 1.  I'm excited to see what I get and how affordable I think it is (or isn't).   Because of that coming in, I've planned about 8 outfits for this month with the remainder to be decided after I open the box.  

Buy Easter candy.   No birthdays this month.  No holidays save St. Patrick's.   The Jewish Passover is March 27th but Easter isn't until April 4th.  I have decided to do Passover on the Friday night before Easter, even though it's not traditional Jewish custom.   I just want to tie this to my celebration of my Savior's arising from the grave.     Also, I need to get a big bag of candy to donate to the church Easter egg filler gathering.   Our church hosts a big Egg hunt every year.  Last year they had nearly 2000 eggs filled and they are shooting to fill even more this year.

Yard and Porch Work:  It's going to be too cool yet to plant for another month or more.  BUT...my established flower beds are a mess.  My pots are rotting or rusted through.  I need to weed.  I have plants that are desperate to be repotted and plants that need to be removed and soil refreshed.  I have border rocks missing and I've been given a load of border material I might have just for the taking to establish a new flower bed.  Even though pollen season officially warranted a warning level on my weather app  on February 27 (which means it's started), I will work outdoors as much as weather allows.   It's bound to start getting far too warm for me to comfortably work after this month anyway.  And I'd like to be prepared to plant come the moment it is warm enough to drop seeds or pick up six packs of annuals.

As for the porches: new cushions are needed.  New planting pots for those spaces.  Cleaning in general and prettying up overall,  are all in order.  I have a café set that simply must be sanded and repainted.  It looks perfectly awful after all these years of peeling paint.

I'll need to buy potting soil, paint and mulch.  Most all of what wants to be done though just requires hard work and stamina.  

Spring Freshening Indoors:  Not spring cleaning per se but a return to deeper cleaning a little each month and some freshening up.  I'm tired of looking at certain arrangements.  I want fresh pillows in the living room, something lighter.  I'm thinking it's time to switch up the pillow shams on my bed.  I need a new spring/summer coverlet for our bed.   Windows need to be cleaned inside and out.  I've material to recover the dining area chairs but need to sand and repaint them.  I'd like some fresh table linens (napkins and placemats).  I'd like to set up the Easter Bunny garden for the children.  It would be rather neat to make a sort of fairy garden with the resin figurines in it so there's a project that might well move to outdoors.  However, Easter decor would be appreciated by the grandchildren.  Taylor was disappointed at no Valentine's Day decorations here so that's something else to work out.

Visit Jd and children.  Missed out on that trip in February when I felt unwell so I hope to make up for it this month.  Not sure when just yet but we'll see what we can work out.

Clear out the freezer...Not entirely. But there are things in there that we haven't used in as timely a way as I'd like or which I can't easily get to even with the basket system I use.  So I want to dig my way through to the bottom and retrieve fruits, vegetables and seasoning items that tend to sift down or stay in the bottom permanently.  I can better use that space to store  more often used items, like whole chickens or extra gallon or two of milk.

Create a bit of savings.  I have a hefty lab bill to pay, there's a hoped for visit to Jd,  and another goal I want to save up for and I need to find extra money in our budget.  So I thought if I could trim the grocery budget a wee bit and I tightened here and snugged the belt there...You know how it is.  There's almost always room to be found somewhere.

Spend fewer hours on the computer.  I tend to gravitate to the computer first for relaxation.  I mean, aside from writing and genealogy research or email, I tend to watch too many videos or spend far too much time on an online game forum.   There are things I'd like to incorporate into my leisure time that I don't because it's so easy to just move from the blogging or email screen straight to Pinterest or some other form of entertainment that is unsatisfactory at best.  My target is to cut my time down by two hours daily.  I'm setting a beginning and  an ending screen time for me each day.