It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day

I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't post about the calendar switch from 2010 to 2011. I have no idea how it will turn out - probably with a set of ups and downs similar to the year we just put to rest. We at the Chipley-Foster house had a pretty awesome summer - our favorite yet. You know, that whole marriage thing feels like it will be hard to beat :-) Even still, we anticipate only great things from the twelve months before us now.

In true New Year tradition, we made some resolutions, well one big resolution. The way I see it, we have a pretty great thing going these days and a lot to be thankful for. So instead of taking an about face or shooting off in some new direction, we're fine-tuning. We're improving. We are growing.

There are all kinds of ways we feel like we could be better people, friends, employees, etc. Knowing that we can't tackle everything we'd like to change all at once, we discussed it and it seems like most of the areas we'd like to improve would be categorized under a the big umbrella of organization. We aren't terribly organized people - not scatterbrained or total train wrecks, but we certainly aren't as streamlined as we could be.

We threw out all kinds of resolutions and we decided that some seemed to work under our big umbrella term. Fitness goals? Diets? Goals for work? Keeping up with laundry (which is totally mine - Matt has this one down already)? Money management? All organization.

I can come up with any any excuse to skip the gym, but if I'm organized enough to have my gym bag packed, I go. In order for my gym bag to be packed and to have enough time in the morning to work out before school, laundry has to be organized and so does my food situation. I've got to have breakfast packed if I'm going to work from the gym and lunch packed no matter what. Well I can't do those things if I haven't been organized enough to go to the grocery store.

And how does any of that fit with money management? Well pretty much all of it is related in some way, since everything we do is now included in our newly revamped 2011 budget. That wasn't what I'd call a fun day, but we took a few hours to hash it out and we feel good. Well, we at least feel like we know where our paychecks are going. So, food. We have always had a food budget. Easy enough, but with a diet plan that cuts out all processed carbs, the old food budget doesn't seem to stretch as far. All that processed food is CHEAP. We knew this already, but we were really surprised to see the impact of buying so many more sources of protein and vegetables. Man, we wish we could add that weekly pasta dinner back into the repertoire... So, in order to make the monthly food budget work (we are stubborn and refuse to change the dollar amount just yet), we have to carefully plan meals. Food organization! And off course, all that organization applies to all categories in our fancified budget.

The gym, the diet, the laundry, the budget....all organization. We resolve to increase that part of our lives and hope that all the other dominos fall into place. So far, so good.

• January 1st marked my first trip back to the gym after a hiatus that is too long to admit...
• We've been relatively processed food free today after our Christmas/New Year's eating vacation
• I currently only have one load of laundry in rotation - ready to be put away!
• We started January with the budget in place - excel spreadsheets and envelope for our date night fund ready to go
• And today, we sat down and planned four meals for the upcoming week, wrote a list and then shopped - for just the list items and staples. We've done this before, but our goal is to be a little more consistent this year.

We feel more organized already :-) Happy New Year!