2018 Family Goals: Check In #1

How is it already March?! 2018 is seriously flying by, which is interesting to me because the days and weeks feel long. 

I thought that the beginning of a new month would be a great time to do a little check in on how the Floris Fam is doing with their 2018 goals. Back in January I shared about our Word of the Year for 2018.  At that time we also set some family goals for the year. To keep our goals in line with our Word of the Year, SIMPLIFY, we kept many of these goals relatively loose and open ended. Below I’ve shared each of these goals, along with a little “check-in” on how we are doing 1/6th of the way into 2018.  

We want to finish 2018…

• … feeling like our year was guided by our Word of the Year – “simplify”

So far we are doing a good job of this. We’ve started to go through certain items in our house, like clothes and shoes, and get rid of some of the excess that we have. Our first project is to tackle our wardrobes – we both have a lot of old clothes that we never wear and just hold onto because of habit. I’ve also gone through Liv’s baby clothes up until this point and cleared out the ones that have food/dirt stains and the ones that she never wore because we didn’t like them. We’re also working on simplifying our schedules and not feeling like we should always be doing something productive (<– in all honesty, I’m the only one in the family that has to work on that last point).

• … with a completed house. 

The renovations are coming along nicely and we’ve been good about working on at least a little house project each week. I’m still hopeful that we’ll be done with all of the renovations by the end of this year. Our project for this weekend is to replace all the doorknobs in the house – and go from gold to brushed nickel. Small steps you guys, small steps.

I should also note that this goal is only referencing the construction aspect of the renovations – we have no intention of having filled the house with furniture or having it expertly decorated. 🙂

• … having taken a family vacation, specifically not a race-cation. (haha)

No plans have been made for this yet but we are having a lot of fun thinking and dreaming of where we may go. It could very well end up being a road trip up the California coast but whatever we do is going to be a blast. 

• … having gone on couples’ vacation – just me and Henri.

We do have solidified plans for this vacation! After Grandma’s Marathon in June Henri and I are going on a week long vacation to The Netherlands and Norway! We couldn’t be more excited! This is a trip we’ve both been wanting to do for years and this will be the first time that we are getting away together since Liv was born. 

• … owning both of our cars. 

WE FINALLY PAID OFF HENRI’S CAR LAST MONTH. Hurray for no car payments – at least for the time being! 🙂

• … having more money in our savings + less debt (student debt).

After being on and off of budgeting for the past 4.5 years of our marriage we are back on the Dave Ramsey budget plan and have tracked every single income and purchase over the past 2 months. AND even more important we stayed on or under budget in January and February. This is really exciting and the most exciting thing to come out of this process so far is that this month we were able to make the switch from paying for daycare weekly to paying monthly which is going to save us 10% a month! Major win! 

For those interested, we are using this app/website. 

• … feeling like we’ve established a good routine with the house + yard.

This is forever a work-in-progress, we’re both really busy with work and it’s a lot of house and yard to tend to. There are certain things we have gotten better at in the past 2 months since we set this goal and it’s refreshing to see progress. Isn’t that the point of setting goals – to motivate you to make small incremental changes that eventually add up to major change? 

Have the first 2 months of the year seemed fast or slow to you?

How are your goals/resolutions/words of the year coming along so far?