Ah, January! The month when we all suddenly get the urge to organize and plan our lives.
Really though, every January I make a plan to get things organized. Sometimes my goals work out and I do make improvements, like the year I finally developed a morning routine. Other times my best laid plans for...well, planning better, fall through. Whatever happens, I will always love that fresh feeling that January brings. In fact, I am probably even more motivated to get organized after a roller coaster of a year in 2020.
These are three things I'm planning on organizing better in 2021:
Photos
For the past couple years I have been printing up the year's worth of photos in December, including the best ones of each of my kids to put into a little album for their stockings - and I take a lot of photos each year. It is a pretty huge project to sort through an entire year's worth of photos, get them printed, and get them into albums. In fact, I didn't even finish the kid's albums in time this year.
I'd like to handle photos differently in 2021 - my goal is to print up photos at the end of each month. This would help spread out the cost, and also keep me on track with only choosing the very best photos to print. (In December, I found myself getting a little lazy in the 2020 photo sorting and selecting too many to print - I was just tired of staring at a screen and wanted it to be over!)
Home Management
This year in my everlasting quest to find a planning system that actually works for me, I am attempting to organize my own home management binder. One thing I hate about planners, and that has hindered me from finding a planner that works for me, is that I hate wasted pages. I hate them so much that if I feel too many pages are being wasted in my planner, I end up throwing the whole system out. I am hoping in printing up only the types of planning pages I'll actually use, I can create my own planner/organization system that works for me. I am focusing on these areas:
-Cleaning Routines
-Meal Planning
-Budget Planning
-Address Organizing
-Blog Planning
I particularly wanted to focus on getting more organized with household chores and such, because I think I've been in a "survival mode" when it comes to homemaking for so many years (with all our babies and toddlers) that I have really become dysfunctionally disorganized in some areas.
My kids are older now, and I'm realizing I don't have to be in survival mode anymore - I actually have the time and energy now to do homemaking well. I want to do that for my family - I think it will make for a peaceful and more relaxing home environment for Derek and the kids, and it'll help me be a better servant to my family, which is something I feel the Lord is calling me to focus on in this stage of my life.
The Kids' Drawings
All these years I have been putting my kids best drawings in keepsake boxes that I have scattered around the house, but I have had no method of organizing their drawings at all. I write the name of the child, and the date, on the back, stuff it in a box, and forget about it.
I didn't even really think about there being another way until Christmas, when my grandmother gave me a keepsake binder with a lot of special papers she had collected over the years. It was a very special and sweet gift, and it also made me realize it doesn't matter if keepsake papers are put into a beautiful scrapbook, with decorations and photos. They are just as special and beautiful when using a simple organization system like a binder with page protectors.
So this year I am going to sort the kids' art into binders, and create a separate one where I can keep the notes and pictures they make for me. It's a more compact way to store things, and this way those papers can be protected better while also creating a better way to actually look at them occasionally!
I am excited to have a plan for becoming a little better organized in these areas in 2021! We shall see how it goes. Are you focusing on any areas for improvement this year?
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I also made a chatty video about everything I just wrote about, but I tacked on a little mini book haul at the end if you are interested in watching!
I feel like we are on the same page about planners. I was so organized in school. Totally on top of it. But since having kids, I am definitely flying by the seat of my pants (except for kiddos’ bedtime—very regimented). My kids are a couple steps behind yours (four boys 6.5-2months) so maybe once they get a bit older I will have more energy to devote to it. It kind of drives me crazy that I’m less disciplined than before I became a mom.
Have you put together posts of all the books you read about the Cold War and WWI? I’d be interested in seeing those. I put Last of the Doughboys on my TBR list after your review of it.
I print out out favorite pics at the end of each year too. I find it helpful to upload your favorites monthly to whatever site you plan on using and then at the end of the year its easy to just hit print. I picked way too many from 2020 too, so I am planning to go back to picking maybe 3-4 and calling it good.
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