Summer often means a string of lazy, long hot days filled with relaxing and loose schedules, but ever since I’ve been actually feeling like myself again (thanks to the fact that I’m now solidly in the second trimester), I’ve been raring to go on All The Things.
Even though I set quite a lot of goals for July, I actually got a decent amount finished, which of course only makes me want to set MORE goals for August. Because such is the way I roll, folks 🙂
Don’t worry, though–I’m still planning plenty of fun things to enjoy this last month of summer before it’s over!
As always, anything that’s crossed out means I’m counting the goal as completed and anything in red means that I made measurable progress on it, but that I didn’t totally finish for whatever reason.
Note: There are affiliate links in this post, which means I get a small commission on any purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you.
July Goals
Start making weekly to-do lists again- I started right away on this, and it felt wonderful to be back in the habit! I still need to be better at actually checking the list every day (since I got SO out of the habit, I’ve only been checking it a couple times a week), but progress is progress.
Donate the encyclopedias in our front room- I enlisted the help of Matt for this one (since those things were HEAVY), and it made an immediate visual difference in the room to have that big box gone.
Completely clean/declutter front room- I’m counting this one as complete, even though I technically still have a few things on the dresser I need to go through. At any rate, I’m not embarrassed to have people see it anymore (which was the main purpose of this goal), so I’m counting it as a win! You can see what it currently looks like here, in my latest house projects post.
Do the first maternity wardrobe capsule- I knew this one would almost surely get done out of necessity, and sure enough, by the end of the month, I was really wanting some maternity pieces to accommodate the ever-growing belly. Of course, in unpacking my maternity wardrobe, I realized I’d forgotten that my favorite (and only) pair of maternity capris had been thrown away due to a major hole in the backside, so my August budget includes some money to go towards a replacement.
- Go through the 12-month clothes for Mathias +
donate any 9-month clothes we didn’t use- I completely went through all the 9-month clothes (which significantly freed up some of our very limited drawer space!), but I only got partway through the 12-month clothes. Believe it or not, even though Mathias is over 13 months old, he still wears a 6-9 month size and probably will for a couple more weeks. This will be a rollover goal to finish in August.
Get radon test kit- Bought and sent off! Our report actually came back MUCH better than we thought (seeing as how multiple neighbors have reported sky-high numbers), but it’s still just enough over the recommended amount that we figure we’d better re-test again just to be sure, and then decide what to do from there.
- Mail tripod to be repaired
- Still no. Part of the problem is finding a big enough box for it that’s not absolutely ginormous. Rollover goal.
- Finish building chicken coop
- We are now fully realizing the huge scope of this (huge) chicken coop—it’s been basically like Matt is building a small house. It’s gotten to the point that even I’M starting to work on it at nights with him, lol. For real though, this NEEDS to be done this month. Our poor chickens are just soooo done being in the garage. (For the record, we did make progress on this during July, but we still have to finish covering the sides with shiplap, adding the roof, and getting the doors and window squared away. If you want to see a pretty recent pic of it, you can check it out in this post.)
- Install hardware on mudroom bench
- All extra time and money went to the coop in July and will probably continue to go to the coop for the rest of this month, so I’m actually tabling this goal until September.
Start going to the temple weekly again- Counting this as done! True, I was only able to go once (since the temple has been closed the last two weeks for cleaning and repairs), but I’m planning on picking it back up again on Wednesday nights, like I did before.
- Clean A/C filter
- I didn’t even look into this, but I really need to since our A/C has not been working as efficiently as it has in the past. Rollover goal.
Go on day adventure- We did a LOT of fun stuff in July, including the planned adventures of going to Cherry Hill (a water/amusement park) with my family, Lamb Days (a local festival held in the town where my stepdad grew up), and the unplanned adventure of going out to eat and to a local concert with my mom and stepdad. Gotta love summer!
- Completely clear off kitchen counters
- I made progress on this for sure, but our kitchen has still never gotten to the cleared-off state that it used to be. I’ll keep working on it!
- Redo one old recipe post
- Nope. I kept looking for strawberries to redo this old post for strawberry popovers, but I just was never impressed with the quality/prices I saw for it. August is already looking quite busy, so I think I’ll shelve this one until later.
- Start exercising again
- Sigh. I wish I could say that I was able to pick this up again, but my back (which was doing *okay* for awhile) is now back to being just as bad as it was when I first injured it in November. Our original plan was for me to get an MRI as soon as I’d had the baby to check out what the problem might be, but at this rate, that might have to happen BEFORE the baby comes.
- Make 5 new Food Nanny recipes
- I made one, though I made it three separate times, which should give me bonus points or something :). In case you’re new around here, I’m trying to cook my way through a whole cookbook as part of my 101 in 1001 list, a process I wrote about at length in this post.
- Reread one book
- I’ve been too immersed in all the books on my summer reading list to do much rereading at this point, but this one should get done by default over the next couple weeks since I need to reread Educated before I host this month’s book club discussion on it.
Add Matt to kids’ savings accounts + add me to all banking accounts- One of those random little household nagging tasks that we’ve put off for months, but that’s now done.
Start working on EBA again- Admittedly, I haven’t done *much* to get further ahead in my Elite Blog Academy course, but I *have* at least started again, which is half the battle for me. I’ve accepted that I’ll have to go pretty slow on this from hereon out most likely, but if I steadily keep working on it, I’ll eventually finish it all.
Other notable things we did during July that weren’t on the original goals list:
- We stuck to a strict budget so that we can stop doing the “credit card float” and start saving in earnest for our big financial goals.
- The credit card float is a made-up term for when you use your credit card to buy things you want now, but pay for them a month later. With the credit card float, you always pay your bill in full every month, but you still have that bill to pay every month, so it effectively eats up that portion of your income that could be going towards other savings/financial goals.
- I listed several things on Ebay and KSL and sold one immediately.
- If you checked out the 2019 House Projects Update post, you might have noticed the absence of the two crystal and brass lamps from our front room. Yep—they’ve been sold!
- We had a Family Night lesson one night about the importance of being generous and not getting too attached to our stuff, and Raven voluntarily gave away a TON of toys, books, and even some stuffed animals after, which significantly helped the overload of toys we were experiencing in our front room.
- See this related post: Why I Don’t (Usually) Hide From My Daughter That I’m Getting Rid of Her Stuff
- I cleared out the kids’ room (mostly to prep it so I could take a picture for my 2019 House Projects Update post, ha ha). But it’s stayed clean so far!
August Goals
- Retest radon levels
- As mentioned above, our house’s radon levels were just a bit higher than the recommended safe level (they’re at 6 when the recommended level is 4 or lower), and the company recommended we retest just to double check the figure before we move on with the filtering process (which can cost into the thousands).
- Send in insurance application
- Since my husband’s job doesn’t offer insurance, we have to go through the Marketplace and through our state agencies for our health insurance, and we’re due for this year’s application to be sent in again for the kids.
- Hang up shelf in kids’ room or playroom
- Since my husband recently built us a beautiful mudroom bench, we took down the shelf with hooks that had been hanging there previously and haven’t done anything else with it. I’ll look into which room it makes the most sense to put it in, then we’ll hang it up there so it can stop being in the way elsewhere.
- Finish going through 12-month size clothes
- Rollover goal.
- Buy stuffed animal hammock + hang up
- As I mentioned in my recent post on how our house projects have been going this year, we desperately need to do something to remedy the stuffed animal situation in the kids’ room. I’m planning on purchasing this inexpensive hammock this month, which should help significantly.
- (For the record, I earn $5 Amazon gift cards for free through my Microsoft account and then searching through Bing rather than Google or another search engine. This earns me “points” throughout the month, which I can then trade in for the reward of my choice. I anticipate that this hammock will cost next to nothing because of it! You can click here is you’re interested in joining. It’s free!)
- Finish the coop
- The eternal goal that will hopefully for real this time get done this month.
- Buy two things for food storage
- We’ve been trying to be better about our emergency preparedness (especially since it’s been one of my more-neglected 101 in 1001 goals), and one way we’re doing that is to start building up our food storage. We used to have quite a decent-size amount of food in our pantry/storage, but lots of tight budget months over the past couple years have really taken it down. We’re slowly building it back up now (and I mean slowly) by just allocating an extra $10 or so a month toward getting food for it. It’s a little thing, but it’s already made me feel better about being more consciously prepared!
- Install new (to us) fridge + list the old one
- Our fridge has been leaking for many, many months now, and we’re starting to really worry that it might be rotting the floors underneath. We got an unexpected deal on a used fridge from a former neighbor, which we should be picking up this weekend (as long as everything looks okay with it). It doesn’t match our kitchen, but I’ll take a non-leaking fridge over a leaking matching one any day!
- Get oil changed in Mazda
- It’s that time again!
- Start morning routine again
- I’ve sorely missed my morning routine since I gave it up upon having my second child last June. Now that we’re more established in our routine (and the baby is sleeping through the night), I think I’m ready to pick this up again!
- Finish Unit 5 of Elite Blog Academy
- I talked about this one above, so I won’t say too much more about it here. Starting my morning routine should really help give me the time and structure I need to actually accomplish this goal.
- Mail tripod to be repaired
- Another eternal rollover goal.
- List 10 things on Ebay/KSL
- Last month I got the somewhat brilliant idea of just listing one thing every night before the kids went to bed. My problem often is that I usually plan to list a TON of stuff at the same time, which more often than not prevents me from getting started at all. But doing just one? It usually takes me just 20 minutes, and I can carve out 20 minutes almost every night.
- (As mentioned in my Big Financial Goals post, we plan to use all the money from these sales to put in our new car fund.)
- Make 5 new Food Nanny recipes
- I haven’t made a ton of progress on this 101 in 1001 goal in awhile, but I’m definitely cooking a lot more now that I’m out of the first trimester funk, so hopefully this will actually get completed this month.
- Go on day adventure
- We try to go on a little “day adventure” every month as a family, which has been one of my favorite traditions we’ve started! We’re hoping to make it up to Bear Lake for this month’s.
- Research swimming lessons for Raven
- We don’t have a ton of room in the budget for this, but the older shes gets, the more I REALLY want to get her started learning, especially as she’s done more and more water activities every summer. Any locals know of any well-priced programs?
- Mail someone a letter or card
- This is part of another 101 in 1001 goal, and I’m only one away from completing it. Now’s as good a time as any!
- Host book club
- This is basically a shoe-in goal, but I’m counting it anyway since it’s a big thing to plan for!
- Go to splash pad with my sister and her family
- I’ve been talking with my sister for months now about us going down one day to check out the new splash pad by their house and letting the kids enjoy a day with their cousins. We only have a few weeks until her kids are in school, so we’re going to make this happen soon!
Always so many goals and so little month to complete them, but we’ll see how things go! What are you working on now at the end of summer?
