To do or not to do – resolutions

It’s the start of a new year and many people use a time like this to make resolutions to change something in their lives. And I do use the time to consider things, but I don’t really make resolutions in the traditional way anymore.

A resolution is defined as “a firm decision to do or not to do something.” Typically, a new year’s resolution is something like ” I want to get in better shape” or “I want to do more quilting.” I have made resolutions like that in the past. The challenge I had was they were really too vague to figure out how to sustain them.

Instead, I started looking at little changes rather than big resolutions. If I want to eat better, for example, I look at one or two things I can easily change – almonds instead of a granola bar or a lower sugar yogurt. Once these have been incorporated into my diet, I can then change another small section.

The Pantry

I wanted to do a bunch of reorganization in my kitchen cabinets and the pantry at the foot of the basement stairs. I felt overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. Unfortunately, mice got into the pantry and forced my hand. I disposed of a bunch of old stuff, a bunch of stuff the mice had gotten into and got everything else organized into plastic tubs. We changed a few shelves, and suddenly it was so much easier. I could see just how much peanut butter there was and if I needed to buy tomato sauce.

The Kitchen

The kitchen still felt overwhelming, so I decided to think about how I used the space and what I needed to do to make it better. I love to bake, but my supplies were in a couple of different cupboards and not very organized. I had a huge variety of containers of various styles and sizes. So I went looking for a solution to storing all those types of flour and such. Once I found a solution I liked, I figured out how many I needed and I bought them.

Once I completed that, I looked at the next type of things I wanted to organize. That ended up being beverages, everything from coffee and tea to beer and wine to cocoa and electrolyte drinks. They were in the kitchen, in the pantry and a few in the buffet. Not very helpful when trying to see if we had a bottle of red wine to go with dinner.

So that was the next area I did. It’s now super easy to grab some coffee or tea. I moved the extra cups and the like to the cupboard next to these. The ones we use everyday are still with the dishes near the sink.

One area I don’t intend to change is the breakfast/lunch area. Here we keep the bread and chips for lunch and muffins and bagels for breakfast. All of our snacks for work are also kept in this area. Next up is spices and seasonings.

Living space storage

We did some furniture rearranging a few years ago and needed a better place for our media. We again looked at options, decided what would work for us and spent a weekend getting it all set up. Adding lighting to a switched outlet let us see what we have with no issues. It hangs directly above our stereo and TV, so we are more likely to use the media than we were when we had to go to another room.

The next project for our main living spaces is storage for our games and music related items.

In the Sewing Studio

I had some extra time off over the Christmas holidays, so I had been planning what I would do. I knew I wanted to put in some serious studio time, but wasn’t sure exactly what to work on. It was a mess and I decided that I needed to work on cleaning it up first. I took some time to do that right after Thanksgiving. I found some mending that was waiting around, a quilt that needed the binding sewn on, and a several projects that were partially complete.

I decided to do the mending first, then bind the small quilt. I chose two other projects to work on over my vacation. By limiting myself, I wasn’t overwhelmed with choices every time I walked in the room. I actually finished the mending and the binding before my time off. I did get distracted a bit and sewed a bunch of small scraps together to make another small quilt. Despite getting the flu over my vacation, the border is cut out for a large quilt so that I can move that project closer to completion.

So little bites rather than big, vague ideas. Hopefully, this will help some of you to get some things done, whatever changes you want to make.