Resolutions 2014 #4

This week's resolution is a very basic one: to put my alarm clock on the other side of the room so I have to get up to turn it off. I am a chronic hitter of the snooze button, and hopefully this will get rid of that bad habit.

Also, my alarm clock is my phone, so that will also cut down on my tendency to start looking at the internet after getting up to pee in the middle of the night, instead of just going straight back to sleep.

Update on previous resolutions:
#1: Lose weight to fit into my nice clothes pining away in boxes. 
Ugh. Well, there's been no real movement on this one so far - and I have no excuse because I'm already three weeks into the year. But it's been so hot and I just couldn't be arsed going walking or even moving at all any more than absolutely necessary. I'm working on getting up earlier to get that out of the way first thing - maybe that will be next week's reso. Watch this space.

#2. Stop bitching about work. 
Ehhhhhh. Look, I won't lie and say I haven't bitched about work AT ALL, but I have cut it down dramatically. And I have to say, I feel better for it. Still working on cutting it out entirely, but these people - they just DO THESE THINGS and SAY THESE THINGS and WRITE BUSINESS EMAILS IN GIANT GREEN FONT. Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...

#3. No unnecessary spending for 30 days. 
Complete fail. I am going to try that one again on Feb 1. 

Resolutions 2014 - #2 and #3

I am trying something different this year – rather than make a whole bunch of resolutions on the 1^st of January and have them all fall in a heap in a few days (and let’s be real, sometimes a few hours) later, I am going to do a new resolution each week, and snowball them all on top of one another. Some will be ongoing, some will have finite periods of time, some will just be a thing to do, like cleaning out a particular cupboard that week or whatever. So last week was fitting back into the clothes I have within 6 months or then getting rid of anything that doesn’t fit, and then I’ve got two new ones going on at once, so let’s pretend there’s been two weeks passed since then.

Number 2 is a small one – well, smallish. Stop complaining – or even talking about – work. I used to like my job, now I hate it. And most of the reason I hate it is because I work with a lot of people who drive me up the wall for one reason or another. But I can’t change those people, and although I could probably change my job, the money and flexibility it offers me makes it a better option for me to just learn to tune out the annoyances. So my goal for this is to just go to work, do my job, smile and grit my teeth, and then forget about it the moment I walk out the door. These people are not important to me, I am not wasting any more time stressing  or getting annoyed about them.

Number 3 is about money. I recently read a book called 30 Day Spending Detox. It’s essentially a blog post dragged out to the size of a book, and didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, but I like the central premise, which is basically spending nothing whatsoever for a 30 day period with the exception of necessities (rent, groceries, bills, etc.). See – that doesn’t need a whole book, does it? It does go into a bunch of detail about reducing travel costs, grocery costs and so on, but as it’s American it’s all about couponing and whatever and not really relevant to me. I pay nowt for travel – I walk – so that’s not an issue for me. I do spend way too much on groceries. Lily and I like a bit of nice food, and although I've been out on my own for many many years, I still have never gotten over the novelty of being able to buy whatever I want at the supermarket, so I’m a shocking impulse buyer and highly suggestible. I can live without eating, say, Tim Tams for months but then someone will mention them or I’ll see an ad for them and suddenly I’ll be all, “Oooh, I really fancy some Tim Tams!”. So I guess my goals for this resolution are two fold:

• don’t buy anything that isn’t necessary, e.g. takeaway coffee, takeaway lunches, (sob) alcohol, lottery tickets, books, clothes, makeup, perfume, random eBay flotsam, songs on iTunes, and so on and so forth 
• look at ways to reduce the grocery bill – what is that big chunk of gruyere actually for?

I shall report back on my success – or failure.

It Begins! Resolutions 2014: The Year of Getting Shit Done

Every year I make resolutions. Every year I break them too, but that never puts me off making them. I'm one of those people who likes beginnings, but not so much seeing things through. You know - I was the one who would get excited over the new stationery at the start of the school year, and for the first week I would laboriously draw red margins on every page and use the best handwriting I could muster. It never lasted - by week 3 it was my usual scrawl and I'd have either sucked the ink out of my red pen while chewing on the end of it (embarrassingly, this was a pretty regular occurence for me), or lost it somewhere in the depths of my school bag. But those first few pages each year were spectacular.

Anyway, that's all a longwinded way of leading into my first resolution for this year, and I'm about to let you in on the dirty secret under my bed. Ready?

These are all clothes that don't fit me, and - as you can see by the styles - haven't for quite a long time. They're also clothes I really like and don't want to get rid of. I'm about 10-15kg off being able to get into most of these. Some a bit less, some quite a bit more. Some of them I've had for many years - since before Noodles was born.

So after lugging all of these around with me for years only to store them in plastic boxes under my bed, I've decided to do something one way or the other. Whatever I can't fit into by the end of June 2014 gets chucked. I'm hoping the attachment I have to them will be the spur I need to get back in them, because I would be a bit devo if I'm forced to get rid of any of them.

I've boxed them back up by size so at the end of February I'll pull out the box with the largest sizes and see how they fit. Wish me luck!