Hello!

Another month has flown past and it’s time for some new goals for me to work towards.

Last month’s goals actually went really well and for the first time ever, I have amended my yearly goals to suit what I actually want going forward. I’d always given myself very strict guidelines and led myself to believe that changing or amending a goal was a failure and not ‘true to my intentions’. When actually, things change – now isn’t the right time to work on what I want to achieve, what I want might need more steps to be reached and what I want might change completely and that’s okay. I’m learning to be more flexible with myself and invest my time into the things that are truly most important to me.

And we’re only in March! Imagine where I’ll be at the end of the year!

So these are my mini goals for the month:

Seasonal Wardrobe Update – I started doing a seasonal wardrobe after (unsuccessfully) trying the project 333 challenge last year, but even though the challenge didn’t work for me, I found swapping out my clothes seasonally worked really well for me from a storage perspective (because ya gal doesn’t have a lot of space) but also it’s a great way for me to bring the seasonally appropriate clothes to the forefront and the out-of-season clothes can be tucked away. Part of the Project 333 challenge that I am trying to implement is parting ways with the clothes that I haven’t reached for in a whole season, because that’s a pretty good indicator that I’m never going to. This practice (and it does take practice, believe me) has really helped me refine my shopping habits over the past year as well, because I feel so much more in tune with what I actually wear and what I feel good in, I’m much less likely to impulse buy (please note: less; if it is soft, oversized and snuggly I cannot be held accountable for my actions).

Properly plan finances – this one is kind of already done as my payday is the 1st of the month, but rather than rushing to move money into different savings accounts, I took the time to look at how much our bills are in both the joint account and my personal account, allocate savings appropriately and then send my spending money to my Monzo account (a new thing for me, but I wanted to try having my personal spending and my personal bills in different accounts and so far, very good!). It’s not perfect, but I am working on being much more mindful with my spending with all these adult things on the horizon like a wedding and wanting to save for a house deposit etc. At least I started the month on the right foot!

House tidying and sorting – I feel like having your own space is a case of constantly rearranging, sorting, tidying and rearranging again! We’ve been in this house for nearly a year and there’s still piles of things here and there and stuff I want to sort through. But what I have learnt about goal setting is that generic statements like ‘sort and tidy the house’ are really difficult to achieve – my focus is to clear what has accidentally become a craft dumping zone in the living room and a pillow dumping zone in the spare room. One day maybe I’ll even get to the garage!

Wedding to dos – I’ve been banging on about monthly wedding tasks for the best part of a year and the wedding is still 8 months away! My intentions for this month are to make the final decisions that will allow us to select our invitation stationary (and maybe even send them?) and order my wedding dress, but the evil beast that is covid has already reared it’s ugly head and put a spanner in the works of going dress shopping this weekend. But I’m trying to remember what I’ve already said about being flexible and adapting and making arrangements for another time – it’s all going to be okay and it’s not the end of the world if I haven’t picked my dress by the end of the month!

And my monthly goals that I have every month are to read 3 books, do my weekly savings challenge, have a date night with my fiancé and work on a craft project.

I’m still working on January and February’s craft projects in the background, but I feel like I’ve ‘discovered’ crafting and watching TV in the last week or so and I definitely intend to be doing a lot more of it in the precious time I get to just sit and watch TV when I’m home alone!

The end of February and the beginning of March has already been a bit rocky between having covid and not taking enough time off work, getting back to work and my colleague who I sit next to every day then testing positive, a trip to go wedding dress shopping cancelled on the morning I was going and generally being very stressed and having bad mental health. It’s been a lot, but the only thing I can do it take one day at a time, one moment at a time. Everything else is a bridge to cross if and when I get to it.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx