3 in 30 - February Check-in - Week 2

This year, I'm participating in the 3 in 30 Challenge. During January I had three goals and worked towards them each week. During February, I'm continuing to work on my January goals:

- Finish taking photos out of the scrapbooks that aren't photo-safe, and put them in boxes that are archival-safe. I took all the albums out of the closet and put them in two stacks. There are 19 albums that I want to go through by the end of the month. Hopefully by having them in an accessible and visible place, it will be a good motivator to get through them and create more space.

- Finish the master bedroom by washing all the walls and windows; and then painting the accent areas dark green (behind the bed and over the window on the west side of the room) and the walls white.  I also want to go through the books on each side of the bed, and determine if they can be donated or I want to keep them. I did not work on this goal during the past week.

- Continue going outside each day for 15 minutes. With the exception of two days that I wasn't feeling and was recovering from being sick, I have been outside each day.

In addition, my three goals for February are:

1. Do a one-week fiscal fast. I did this during the first week, and have received a lot of positive feedback from others who are thinking of trying it in the future. A mother who I met when adopting Sophia did a one-week fiscal fast after reading about my experience last week and had an equally fun and challenging week doing her own fiscal fast. So, I was happy to hear that it inspired at least one other family to try to not spend anything for one week. 

Some people asked last week how a fiscal fast works. Basically, the goal is to not spend any money for seven days.  The next fiscal fast that we'll be doing will be from February 15th-21st. I picked those dates because all monthly bills will be paid by that time; and the girls don't have any activities that cost money during that time period.

In preparation for the fiscal fast, I fill up the car with gasoline so hopefully all errands and activities can be done on one tank of gas. This is a slight challenge in that the closest "big" town is 14 miles away (a 28 mile round trip). Going to the city is about 35 miles away (a 70 mile round trip). So, if we go somewhere we need to try to group things together so we don't have to refill the gas tank during the week.

I also ensure that I have some essentials from the grocery store so I can make homemade food during the week (e.g., dairy-free milk, dairy-free butter, regular milk, bread). Other than that, the food that we will eat comes from what we have on hand in the cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer. Fruit comes from produce I either froze or canned during the summer.

2. Reduce diet-pop consumption and increase water consumption. I have been able to keep my diet-pop consumption to only two cans maximum per day. In the place of extra cans of diet-pop, I am drinking two big glasses of water each day. I found that on some days, I drank three glasses of water. So, I feel like I am headed in the right direction with this goal.

The only day that I drank more than the two cans of diet pop was on Saturday when I spent the day with my mom helping to go through paperwork and personal items that belonged to my dad (he died last month); and determine what to do with everything (e.g., give to a family member or friend; donate and to what organization; toss). It was a long day and I was very tired, so I had a third pop while I was driving home (about 50 miles away).

3. File everything so I can begin working on taxes. I went through my home office and gathered all the papers that needed to be filed and put them in bags. Now that everything is together, the next step is to put the items in file folders, and then in the files.