It’s time to go through our list of goals for last year and take a final inventory of how well we did. I’m pretty pleased, overall, and excited to start on some new things in 2016!

1. Develop a weekly cleaning routine.

I have a scheduled set, but I usually miss at least one day each week (usually dusting). Unfortunately, I also got out of the habit of doing the bathrooms and floors over the last several weeks because of sickness and Christmas craziness, but I’m marking this as complete and promising myself to get back on schedule now that we’re settling into a calmer routine after the holidays.

I added in my attempted cloth diaper laundry schedule, too, but those days sometimes change depending on how fast we’re going through our small stash. It’s usually every two to three days though.

• Monday – big laundry day + diaper laundry + floors as needed
• Tuesday – dusting
• Wednesday – bills/filing/office work
• Thursday – bathrooms + diaper laundry
• Friday – Floors
• Saturday – catch-up day + diaper laundry
• Sunday – catch-up day

2. Clean out and organize the garage. 

The garage looks pretty good (we can get both cars in there!) but we still need to add some more storage shelves, and figure out a better recycling system. Right now, we pile things up until they are overflowing and then still procrastinate taking the recycling way too long after that point. I’m marking this as done, though, just because it’s cleaner out there than it ever has been before, which is a win for us.

3. Clean out and organize the shed. 

I’m making this as done, too, even though it needs more work. We cleaned it out and did some organizing as best we could with the existing shelves and such when we put the garden away for the year, but there’s more that could be done to improve the functionality of this tiny space if we’re willing to spend some money on new shelves and storage hooks, bins, and the like. I think we’ve decided to wait until we’re sure what the long term plan is, though because we don’t want to spend time and money to add shelves and storage to a shed we’re just going to end up removing if we do the deck project in a year or so.

We did get rid of the scooters, though, so I’m much happier just with that.

4. Buy a new car. (For Wyatt.)

I still sort of miss Rhonda, but Rhonda 2.0 is treating us very well and we’re very glad we upgraded.  You can read about that adventure, here.

5. Read 20 books.

Made it to 21!  A lot of these are audio books.

Read so far:

• Mary Poppins Comes Back – P.L. Travers
• Every Bitter Thing is Sweet – Sara Hagerty
• Longbourne – Jo Baker
• Young Men in Spats – P.G. Wodehouse
• Death Comes to Pemberley – P.D. James
• Secret Society – Smithton Class of 2015
• Mary Poppins Opens the Door – P.L. Travers
• Dad is Fat – Jim Gaffigan
• My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business – Dick Van Dyke
• Twelve Hours Sleep By 12 Weeks – Suzy Giordana
• The Help – Kathryn Stockett
• Babies Need Books –  Dorothy Butler
• The Cat Who Lived High – Lilian Jackson Braun
• Food: A Love Story – Jim Gaffigan
• The Cat Who  Blew the Whistle- Lilian Jackson Braun
• Sense & Sensibility – Joanna Trollope
• Daring Greatly – Brene Brown
• Mary Poppins and the House Next Door – P.L. Travers
• The Trouble Begins at 8 – Sid Fleischman
• Love Works – Joel Manby
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever – Barbara Robinson

In progress:

• 2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas – Marie-Helene Bertino (Don’t plan on finishing this one…I couldn’t get into it.)
• Lovable Livable Home – John and Sherry Petersik

6. Finish organizing and backing up all our photos. 

I am now using Dropbox for all our photos which is great because I can access all our photos on any device. And they are safe from being accidentally deleted. (Dropbox has the feature to undelete things…which is awesome.) I pay for my large Dropbox capacity, but it’s well worth it. I also use it for work files and I’m so thankful to have found a system that works for me.

We also moved all our old photos (before this year) to external hard drive storage. Once I get all the photos from this year organized, they’ll get backed up to external storage, too, just in case.

And, because we now use Chatbooks, we have some actual printed photos, too! I use Instagram hashtags to organize our daily snapshots into categories and then Chatbooks offers a subscription that automatically prints and mails us a book when each series gets 60 photos. It’s such a fun little service and it’s totally affordable. We got in when they were only $6 per book, but it’s now $8. Still really thrifty (and has free shipping).

Plus, you can get your first book free if you use our code to sign up. I’d seriously recommend it. And you don’t even have to use our code, I’d recommend it even without that perk. Honestly. (If you have questions about setting it up, feel free to ask me. I’d be my pleasure to chat about it. I’m that pleased with it!)

Still haven’t finished my Shutterfly books…but…I’ll keep working on them. 🙂

7. Finish the kitchen project. 

I still have some recap posts to write about this, but you have no idea how good it feels to cross this off the list. It’s D.O.N.E.

8. Finish the kitchen chairs.

Another sign of relief. I think this has been on our yearly goal list for the past 3 years…um, can you say slackers? But they are done!

9. Expand/reorganize the garden. 

The garden was reorganized, and expanded, and then neglected…so we got less produce than last year, sadly. It’s our own fault for not watering and weeding as much as we should have, but I’m still pleased with what we were able to get for the effort we put in. We harvested asparagus, strawberries, blueberries, cucumbers, three kinds of peppers, green beans, lettuce, spinach, okra, onions, three kinds of tomatoes, and eggplant, plus several varieties of herbs. Not bad at all.

Our last update for the year is posted, here.

10. Do 5 smaller projects. 

Wyatt made a couple knives with his dad and is working on some others. I worked on the plate wall in the kitchen, made a new wreath, added some clipboards for a new gallery wall, a crafty baby mobile. We also made some winter wall art. I’m sure there were a few other small things in there, too. I have to say that we had a lot of our list of things to accomplish that didn’t get done, but it still counts.

       

11. Take a trip. Or several. 

We snuck away for a mini “babymoon” this summer. We didn’t get to take our annual Christmas trip because we were all sick (and just tired from the holidays) but the goal was for at least one trip, so it still gets crossed off the list, even though I’m a little disappointed we didn’t travel more.

 

12. Finish organizing our bathroom cabinets. 

I worked on this a little early in the year, but by the time we got Will’s bath stuff all moved in, plus a bunch of new medicines and vitamins and other stuff, it still needs to be done again. I think this is the only thing I’m not counting as a success this year, so it’s not too bad, but it does still need to be done…whenever I can make time for it. Ah well.

13. Host things. 

We had a nice time hosting Easter dinner for our families. We also hosted several weeks of yard/fire pit game nights with church friends and our annual Christmas party. There were a few other low-key dinners with family and friends. Plus, Wyatt got to work in the garage on a couple projects with some friends, which he really enjoys.

I want to continue to focus on this in the years to come, but I’m pleased we were able to practice hospitality, even if it was just a few times.

14. Move the guest room downstairs. 

I’m really pleased with how this room turned out, even though it’s still pretty much entirely furnished with hand-me-down furniture. It’s much better than our old guest room (that is now the nursery). Reveal post, here. Cost breakdown, here.

15. Design and DIY a nursery!

My favorite goal of the year. This project was just so fun, and this is now one of my favorite rooms in the house!

For more on our plans, see this post. For the the reveal, see this post. Cost breakdown, here.

All but one thing crossed off the list for 2015—and we had a baby. I’m going to go ahead and just say it was an awesome year.

Of course, there were lots of hard things, too, including being sick (all day sickness) for the first few months, and sick on Thanksgiving and Christmas with Will, but I’m still so grateful for all we’ve done this year, and all we’ve been blessed with!

How did you do on your goals?