New Years, New Challenges

I have kept all of *one* New Years resolutions that I have ever made. It was to floss my teeth daily and I'm still going strong. I love to make resolutions all the time, but rarely do they stick. This year A and I are making some resolutions together to get our lives more organized and in line with where we want them to be.
Number one is to get our house more organized and less cluttered. We've moved so frequently in the past 6 years that we've had lots of opportunities (taken) to clean out. We've now been in our place for a year and are feeling itchy from clutter. I happened upon a a great book at the library- One Year To An Organized Life that we have already started on. It's a month by month, room by room clean out guide. There are a lot of journal exercises that I'm not prone to doing and the author references an organizing store that we don't have here, but it's great motivation for us and keeps us moving in tiny steps. There are also companion books for finances, work life and babies.
Our second goal is to get our finances into shape. With a huge student loan to pay off and a goal to buy a house in the near future, we are trying to reach our goals. A discovered Dave Ramsey, whom I have known of for a few years. A read his book The Total Money Makeover and is trying hard to get us working on his plan. And even though we more than doubled our income when I started working, it's STILL hard to manage without using credit cards. But we are trying it, making sacrifices and making it work.
Our third goal is tune up our relationship. With A gone, me home trying to balance everything and two kids each wanting attention taking time for each other has fallen by the wayside. We celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary lately and didn't even exchange cards. Now that I am back at work and evenings are filled with errands and prep for the next day, I finally feel that we are in need of a regular date night (although we have yet to work the expense into our aforementioned budget). When I wasn't working and we spend days together running errands alone together it wasn't as pressing as it is now. So we decided to take on this book- The Love Dare- to see how it goes. We may have to adapt some of the days due to scheduling conflicts. Although the book definitely has a biblical bent for us its about taking the time daily to think about how we interact with each other and remembering to appreciate them.
Of course I also have the standard resolutions of drink more water and exercise more along with spending more time with my kids, taking more time for myself, building a better network of friends and keeping up with friends and family too. And blogging more too, since I've only made a dismal 21 posts this year.