I’ve set some pretty big resolutions for 2012, but they all basically boil down to this mantra: GET RID OF CHAOS.

I’m tired of always feeling like my house is a mess and that I’m generally flying by the seat of my pants. I want to be deliberate in how I manage my time, money, and resources.

Here are some of the ways I made progress in January.

Fitness & Health

Since the birth of my daughter in 2008, I’ve been flip flopping around with my weight and fitness. For January, I joined an accountability group. I’ve WAY cut back on my sugar intake and have consistently made better eating choices. I worked out most days in January and I’m back up to running 2 miles without stopping. This is a hard pill to swallow since I used to run marathons back in the day, but it’s a start. I went from 157 lbs to 151lbs. With a good 15 left to go, I’m 32% of the way to my goal!

I’m feeling stronger and more energetic than I have in several months. I’m making more time for me, which is so important.

Financial & Couponing-Related

I was sooo excited to tell you all that I met our family’s budget of $350 this month, but guess what? I completely spaced on a Whole Foods receipt I had from last week. That brought us over budget by $14 for this month. It could’ve been worse, and I’m not fretting over it too much.

In case you’re supposing we only ate processed food over here, think again. This month, I splurged on a flank steak dinner, made many salads (thanks to the $1 sale at Fred Meyer earlier this month!), plus made some yummy meals in my crockpot. We actually cut back on eating out this month and did more from-scratch meals.

You might guffaw that I only saved 43% this month. But please remember – it’s infinitely MORE important to me that we worked to stay on budget. I also inventoried our food and medicines supply and found that our stock was good on many accounts. As a result, several trips didn’t involve a single coupon. And I didn’t cry over it, either. Coupons saved us $81 in January and store sales saved nearly $200 more.

In other news, hubby and I started the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University at our church this month. That’s going alright, except we missed last week’s class due to childcare and work conflicts. I plan on listening to the CD and catching back up this week. I’m excited to learn more about how to gain financial peace in our household.

I also started our taxes in January! I run two small businesses (this blog and also my copywriting business) and I LOVE Turbotax for its ease of use. I’ve been using it for about 8 years now and let me say, even if you have a business, it’s pretty fool-proof. Just answer the questions. I also love that you can work on it over a period of time (I usually do this). Plus, it remembers my data from last year which makes it easy for me to see what needs to get done.

It’s free to prepare, print, and e-file if you’re going to use the simplest version. Recommend, recommend, recommend! You can head to Turbotax to learn more of how this works and get started today.

Getting my House in Order

Inspired by the Organized Simplicity FREE ebook I shared with you recently (no longer available), I’ve begun a massive purge of our entire house. So far, I’ve tackled the toys (with my kids’ involvement, you betcha!), family room, living room, and kitchen. We also started our office, but it’s only 50% done. After all that I sort of hit a wall, so I’m taking a break until I can get all the stuff cleared out of my entryway. Some of it was donated to my friend’s garage sale so she can raise money for her adoption (read her awesome story HERE), others were donated to friends and family, and the rest will go out this week to the breast cancer research folks. Phew!

A view of my newly declutterd kitchen & family area

My goal this week will be to resume the declutter by tackling the bathrooms and my bedroom closet. Later this month, after a deep breath, I hope to finish the mess we started in the office. After that I’ll have the entryway and laundry to consider.

Another positive of the decluttering, we sold a bunch of books for $60. Score!

Speaking of the laundry – it’s occurred to me as of late I need a serious SYSTEM for laundry. The clothes end up everywhere, in all stages of done-ness. If anyone can offer words of wisdom as to how to best manage the laundry, I’m all ears. Particularly for a busy family of 4 with a two story house.

Social & Spiritual

I actually did manage to read a couple books for the month of January!

My pal Cassandra had recommended the book Sister Aimee, which is a biography of our church’s founder (Foursquare denomination). Let me tell you – this woman was JUST AMAZING. Her faith, passion, and the miracles that followed her are stunning. I enjoyed reading this biography of her life, triumphs, and struggles.

My book club (run by the amazing Keri of Pop Parables) has been on a theme for awhile of “books that have been turned into movies.” I was a total slacker in 2011 and only made it to 2 or 3 of the meetings. This year, I hope to do much better! I attended last week’s riveting discussion of The Hunger Games. Thought I must admit only about 20% of the meeting was spent discussing the book. The rest of the time was spent eating tasty snacks, discussing which celebrities we’d cast for the characters of the book, discussing which celebrities we had crushes on in high school, trying to recall the names of all the members of the New Kids on the Block, and other important intellectual stuffs.

In all seriousness, I’ve been thinking about another book I want to work my way through in 2012 (or most of the way): The Bible! Yes, I’ve read the Bible before (cover to cover twice plus many of the books many times individually), but you just cannot unearth everything EVER that’s in there. It occurred to me recently I would like to read it chronologically this time (as opposed to cover to cover). I had no idea how long this would take or how I would tackle it, but in case anyone would like to join me I thought I’d mention that.

Looking ahead for February…

Here are the items that are going in my planner for monthly “to-do’s”:

• Find the chronological order of the Bible and set out a plan.
• Order seeds for the garden and do some general clean up.
• Read Books 2 & 3 of the Hunger Game series.
• Successfully complete my vegan challenge for February.
• Lose another 5 pounds (for an end goal weight of 146 for end of Feb)
• Continue our Dave Ramsey series.
• Finish the house declutter.
• Finish our taxes.

This all sounds totally ambitious except for the fact I’ve laid good ground work for January!

I should also mention that I’m usually NOT this ambitious and I’m sitting here kinda shocked at everything we did in January! I hope by sharing some of this with you I’ll be held accountable and maybe even inspire some of you to be productive for the month ahead.

So I’ve love for you to chime in. What did you accomplish in January? Are you on track for keeping your resolutions? What are your goals for the month ahead?

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