Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Gone are the days of looking at expiration dates on food and thinking, wow, 2020 – this stuff is good FOREVER.

It actually came!

I’ve written in the past about how much I love New Year’s Resolutions, but my resolution isn’t big this year. It’s little. This year I want to tackle all the little things that bug me instead of letting them fester.

This goal is about more than being able to open the junk drawer or look outside the window without seeing yard work I’ve been meaning to take care of.

It’s about the feeling I have when I take care of something that’s been bugging me every time I see it.

It’s about the satisfaction of not being surrounded by little annoyances that I could eliminate if I just buckled down and did a little work or problem solving; but because they’re little and non-urgent, I just sigh in irritation and move on with my day.

My 2020 resolution is to pay attention to things that bother me or annoy me and try to fix them within a reasonable time frame. I’ll use the chalkboard in the kitchen and reminders on my phone so I don’t forget.

Some things will be big, but others will be sub ten-minute fixes, like finally donating the shoes my kids have outgrown so there’s room in the closet, or cross-checking my grocery list with the pantry so I don’t over-buy and crowd the shelves.

This was inspired by a big fix. My amazing 7 year old and husband cleaned out the garage this week. Now I don’t open my car door into my kids’ snow tubes or bike handles. It was a little annoyance that added up to many small moments of frustration in my life. Having room to easily navigate through our small garage and get into my car is so nice.

The garage was admittedly a big project, but in the future, putting things back up on the wall racks they hung will be a small time investment in preventing annoyance.

Every time I tackle something that bugs me, I wish I’d just taken the time to do it sooner. Hindsight is 2020, right? So in 2020 my resolution is to take the time now to fix things that bother me whenever I can, and not to put things off and live with the irritation when I could take the initiative to fix it instead.

If you also love the blank slate feeling of January, here are some of my (unsponsored) favorite resources.

Better than Before – a book on habit formation by Gretchen Rubin. Tons of tips and tricks for forming a new habit and making it stick.

30 Day Vegan Challenge – an amazing resource for the veg-curious who might be considering Veganuary.

This Naked Mind – for anyone considering Dry January, the book by Annie Grace will have you realizing that you can enjoy and love life without a daily dose of “liquid courage” as well as deconstructing all the societal influences surrounding public opinion of alcohol. Great for anyone looking to cut back without feeling like they’re sacrificing.