May Goals and Daily Questions

 

As I was puttering around Sunday night, I kept asking myself a question.  It was a simple question meant to be applied to my workday on Monday.  But as I was thinking I could feel inspiration coming on.  I stopped and pondered how asking that question about each day ahead, might well be a game changer for me.  And then I came along with two more questions that I think will help me gain a sense of accomplishment with each week's work.  

I came up with 4 daily questions to ask myself as a help to focus on my goals:

#1.  What's for lunch?  Supper?   I cannot name the number of times I've gotten stuck in a pile of work and looked at the clock only to realize that I had no plan and the time to get the show on the road was NOW.  I want to ask myself this question each day as I am having my first coffee.  To start the day with a plan for meals is top priority.  That way I can thaw, or prep as I do breakfast/breakfast clean up and move on with my day knowing that I have a plan and time to get it done.   This is a question I'll have to ask myself seven days a week.

I'm limiting myself to Monday-Thursday for the work related to the next three questions.

#2.  What can I produce today?  I've watched enough of ThreeRiversHomestead and RuthAnnZimmerman on Instagram and YouTube to know that these busy women produce something in their homes every single day.  This is not the meals.  That's just part of their routine work.  But they both take time daily to can, dehydrate, freeze dry, freeze.  They take time to make something for their family that others might buy such as snack foods, or mainstays like pasta, etc.   

I know full well that I can produce something extra nearly every day.  Perhaps I'm only going to take out the compost.  At least I've manufactured those vegetable/fruit scraps for compost!  Perhaps all I do is make up a second casserole to go into the freezer as I make one for our supper.  That's producing something!  I can DO something every day to produce something that is useful to my household.  

I can bake bread or mix up rolls and freeze some. I can make pies and freeze them for future desserts. I can make rolls of cookie dough.  I can make granola or vinegar.  I'm not including routine meals on this list because frankly I'm going to have to make those anyway.  But I am referring to the 'extra' thing.

If you sew or knit, embroider, make cards or do some other creative work, I think that counts too.  I'm most interested at present in producing something for the food needs in our home.  I will expand as I can.

#3.  What can I do in my Zone work area today?  I asked myself that on Sunday and that is really what started the whole series of questions you see here.  I realized I'd just found a way to make myself THINK of what I wanted from my week instead of hitting and missing as often as I've done of late.

I got a LOT accomplished this morning in my Zone area (Kitchen this week).  I worked a lot longer than I'd meant to at it, and so I've determined since this morning that I'll try to set a goal of at least 20-30 minutes in Zone work.  Sometimes, as I did today, I may push on and do more but that is my goal overall to get in 20-30 minutes in Zone cleaning tasks daily.

#4.  What can I accomplish of this week's goals?  This month's goals?  I often forget what my weekly or monthly goals are once I've gotten past Monday.  Then I just meander around and do whatever I see needs doing. And that works well enough I suppose but it's not TARGETTING what I really wanted to accomplish.  I do realize that not every day goes to plan and certainly every week never does and often enough a month might have a monkey wrench thrown in it.  But there are plenty of days where I can do something and then when I look back at the my goals I can see that I did try to do those tasks I'd felt were necessary ones. 

Here's where that small bites method is going to help me out the most.  I'm setting my limits here to at least 15 minutes and no more than 1 hour.  It might not sound like enough but often my goals are larger and need to be broken down into increments in order for me to accomplish them given the amount of time I must take to do so many other things.   Like care for a 3 year old!  Or keeping up with routine housework.

Goals For May

#1.  Learn to use the gas grill.  Carolyn sent me a nice comprehensive lesson in how to hook up and use my gas grill.  I so appreciate the time she took to do that. I'm going to see if I can find a couple of videos just as backup to her wonderful instructions.  I find the older I get the more I become both a visual and an auditory learner.

#2.  Learn to use my pressure cooker/canner.

#3.  Find five new recipes, one for each week of this month and try one recipe per week.  I do NOT mean to pull just dessert recipes, something I've been guilty of doing in the past.  But I would like to try one new dessert recipe.

#4.  Pull a few recipes for use in the hot water bath canner or the pressure canner.  I'm going to concentrate on seasonal produce and try to see what I can put up for the month ahead. Mavis Butterfield, (One Hundred Dollars a Month), posted a listing of recipes to can or put up each month by month.  You can read it here.  I admit it fell right into my 'What can I produce in my home?' thought process rather nicely and help to further round out my ideas for approaching that aspect.  

#5.  Plan to spend 2 hours a day outdoors with Caleb on sunny days.  I confess that the Sedge Wren is cramping my style.  And so is the chill wind blowing in from the northwest at present.  However, we spent an hour on the back porch this morning, albeit in jackets and slippers and hats because dang it was cool out there!  This afternoon we'll go to the front patio and play in the shade of the house and hopefully be slightly better shielded from the wind.

#6. Start potty training for Number 2.  Caleb is not fully trained with number 1 just yet but he is dry about half the time I take him to the potty and he always is successful each time we go.  I'm not ready to progress to underwear just yet.  I'd like to start training for number 2.  I've already had this discussion with him.  I won't expect miracles but I do expect we'll make some progress.

#7.  Plan ahead now for when I have all four children together. The boys get out of school on May 20.  I'll have those three and Caleb together at least once a week and possibly twice.  And it may end being more.  It's all up in the air.  

I am thinking some simple crafts, games, fun things we can do on our days together.  Samuel has offered for me to bring Caleb to his house and let them all play outdoors and that might be fun in the cool of the morning if we don't get too hot.   

Being me, I would like to do something that helps them all learn and there are many things I feel that are teachable for both Josh's great advanced age of very nearly 9 and Caleb and Millie's start on learning.  It will be a small intro into pre-K work I'd like to start with Caleb and Millie come fall. 

#8.  Check my gift inventory.  Make out birthday/Christmas lists and determine what I'm doing for each.  I'll jot down ideas for those for whom I have nothing.  I am about to get slammed with birthdays next month.  I have 2 within 2 days of each other at the end of May and then an almost weekly deluge of 1 or 2 birthdays for the next four weeks after that.  

#9.  Buy at least 1 Christmas gift this month.  Purchase three or four birthday gifts.  

#10.  Make plans for our anniversary.

#11.  Get a new flag for my flagpole.

#12.  Buy 2 items off our personal needs lists.  John needs shorts and I need capris.  He needs a second pair of shoes, new eyeglasses.  It's time for me to get an eye exam and I could really use a new pair of sandals. I don't want to do it all at once, but we can easily do two things.

This is a longer goal list than I've made in a long while.  Truth, I could continue to add to it, too, but I'm not going to. I don't want to overwhelm myself with too much.