I am so glad to be getting back to being able to do monthly goals around here. I find I do a lot more when I have things written down and can check the things off as I do them. I've just been so scattered and busy since forever, that it has been terrible getting back into doing this discipline.
You'll notice a lack of painting goals in the list for this month. I SHOULD try and paint my hallway by the end of the summer, but something about the super high ceiling in the stairwell and the multitudes of things I have stacked up on the stair landing is dissuading me. A lot. I may end up painting the hallway in the winter the way things are going, but it'll get done. Eventually.
This month is all over the place for goals. Once the kids were in homeschool and therapy got cancelled and we were spending a lot more time around the house, things started bothering me that I've been wanting to organize, clean and get to work better. So, you'll see those goals in this post. Hopefully I can get it all done by the end of the month.
Right, so without further ado, here are the goals for this month.
Monthly Goals:
1. Deep clean fridge.
I've got some of this one done. I got the shelves in the main part of the fridge pulled, got the drawers pulled out and deep cleaned and redid everything so it would work better and take some weight off of the top shelf of the fridge (it was starting to protest every time you pulled out a gallon of milk and would put it back in the fridge....since you can't really buy replacement shelves for the fridge, I'm just trying to nurse it a bit and put milk elsewhere to help alleviate the problem). I only, so far, have cleaned one shelf on the fridge door, however, so I'm hoping to get the rest of the shelves deep cleaned and organized soon.
2. Redo spice cabinet area to work better.
Clean and organize the bottom corner cabinet to hold bulk spice/herb jars so that I don't have those taking up tons of space in my upper cabinets (my bottom corner shelf in my kitchen is a really awkward space and tends to turn into the Bermuda Triangle area of my kitchen). I found some cloth drawers that were folded up in my master bedroom closet as I was organizing it, so I'm hoping I can use those in the kitchen.
3. Clean up den.
We got this completely done. Well, nearly. We had company over on the 4th of July, so we did a massive deep clean of the area, got the cardboard to the recycling center, etc. We still have some donations to take to the used store and a few things to go through, but overall, I'm happy with it so far.
4. Can sauerkraut.
It is definitely done with the big ferment, so it needs to get done.
5. Organize Pantry. Fill in any holes that are found.
This is definitely a work in progress. I have made some progress in the reorganizing and taking inventory, for sure, and have been picking things up as I can. I definitely found a few things that I needed to get that I missed as I assumed I would still have some left in my long term food storage (spoilers: I didn't). I ended up buying a few boxes of elbow macaroni because for the first time in years I was finally out. I also ended up ordering dry milk powder today as I found I'm using up my last container of that as well. I've started using dry milk powder in my bread baking to give the bread a lighter and moister crumb, so I'm actually going through it. So, it was definitely time to restock. I also need to pick up a few cans of crushed pineapple to have in the pantry. Things like that. I am going to just pick up a few of this or that with my normal grocery shopping when I can, but some things I'm definitely going to end up buying online as my store doesn't have some things in a format I like (for instance, dry milk powder in a can that is sealed versus paper pouches in a box that you can buy at the store. I like rodent proofing on my long term food storage).
6. Clean out homeschool shelves in preparation for coming school year.
Yes, I still have last year's school books sitting on the homeschool shelves (I have two bookcase shelves we use for homeschool. The bottom shelf is for future curriculum cooks...ie books you aren't using at that exact time. The top shelf is for the books and work we are doing currently. It is a pretty good system and works really well for us).
7. Order curriculum for kids for coming school year.
My daughter's core curriculum is already on order and we actually got three out of the four classes we need in the mail yesterday. Our homeschool has a curriculum fair every year where you can purchase things for the next school year during it and they will pull the money out of your next year's allotment. so I ordered her core classes during the curriculum fair last school year, a bunch of them at a discount, which is always nice. I ordered her last two classes yesterday. One of them I'll get reimbursed for and the other is ordered through the homeschool vendor's list, so hopefully everything will be in by August. We started school August 1st last year, which worked out really well as it allowed us to bank extra time for Christmas break, so I'm hoping to do that again this year.
The son's curriculum, I have to create myself as a "curriculum in a box" style curriculum just doesn't work with him. I went through the TONS of books we have around the house and pulled some books that I could use from those and ended up ordering a bunch of books on Amazon (I'll get reimbursed for those). Once the books come in (tomorrow) I'll sit down and start to plan out the year's curriculum, break it down by quarter, then by month, then by week and finally by day. It's a TON of work, but it is well worth it when it is all said and done as it allows me to have a solid plan for his learning for the year. I've got a ton more hats to wear now as my son's therapy place didn't survive Covid to offer him speech therapy services and things, so it's all up to me to teach him. I've been reading a bunch of speech therapy textbooks, a bunch of articles and papers speech therapists have put up online and have been putting together a speech therapy plan as well as I can. I need to work it into his daily learning curriculum as well, so that'll be a challenge. Fun times.
8. Redo school supply shelves down in the den. Figure out if there are any regular school supplies we might need.
I did this yesterday, which I'm glad to have this item checked off of my list. So far, I THINK we got pretty much everything we need to get through the school year, although I might have to buy another low temperature glue gun (daughter needs it for her science class) as I'm not sure where I put mine as of yet, but we'll see if I can find it. Luckily, for me, is that school supply lists for public school were getting so insane that I got fed up and bought EVERYTHING in bulk a few years back (like a box of 100 glue sticks) and so far we've barely dented the things I bought for that purpose, so yay for having a school supply reserve :).
9. Get the septic pumped.
This is just regular maintenance that is supposed to be done every two years. This will be the first year that we were able to get it done on time. I even got a coupon in the mail for 10.00 off from the septic pumping company, so I'm happy about that!
10. Start picking up CSA box every week.
This actually started last week and so far I haven't put up much for winter, but I HAVE used the CSA box contents for meals around the house, so I can't complain about that. I did cut up and freeze some rhubarb, which I'm going to turn into rhubarb crumble as soon as I have freezer space to freeze the extra. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to do that. I'm really looking forward to experimenting with some recipes.
11. Start harvesting from the garden.
I already got five, count them, FIVE cherry tomatoes from the garden!!! Squeee!!! I love tomatoes, so it is so nice only getting a few at a time as I'll cut them up and eat them with my salad and my family doesn't have to worry about eating around them *laugh*. I'm going to start harvesting lettuce and chard from the garden here very soon, so double yippee for that. Between the garden and the CSA box I think we'll have a nice variety of things to eat.
And there you go folks. Some of my goals for this month. I know it is only a 10 item list, but man it will be a ton of work either way (I should know as I'm working my way through the list *laugh*). So here's hoping I can get it all done. How about you? Working on certain things this month?
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