Hiiiii! It’s been a minute. I really really really needed to take a real break to enjoy the holidays & my family and I feel so good and refreshed. I am so excited for all the blog content I have coming this year. You can expect a lot of home content, as I dive head first into decorating and a few renovation projects! I’ve always intended this blog to be a true reflection of our lives and what is going on, and right now my mind is 100% house and home. Of course, I will keep up on the usual fashion + lifestyle content too!
If all goes according to plan, we should be in the new house by the end of the week! Ekk, I am so freaking excited. This feels like it has been such a long time coming, and I cannot wait to just be settled and back to normal life. I miss our routines and I am excited to get back to good habits.
We are treating this move as a fresh slate. A time to drop our not so great habits, get back to our good habits and pick up some new ones. Yesterday we flew home from florida and bb was such an angel on the flight. I mentioned this in my stories last week, but she has taken such a huge independence leap lately and it makes flying soooo much easier. We have been really blessed that she has always been a fairly good traveler. But let’s be honest, even a good toddler traveler is still not easy. I feel like I need to be 100% on with her the entire time we are traveling, and by the end I am emotionally drained. But our last two trips have been so different. She entertained herself and I actually had some down time on the flight. She is so curious and excited about traveling, that she is just happy and content to be on the plane in her own “big girl seat.”
Anyways, I digress. All of this is to say that Blake and I actually had an hour last night on our flight to talk about the new house, habits we want to keep, habits we need to ditch & new ones we want to start. So here they are!
the one minute rule
I’m sure you’ve heard of this in some way or form. This rule is really easy and my family is adopting it 100%. It’s simple. If you can accomplish a task in 1 minute or less, do it now. Examples: hanging up your jacket & purse, putting your shoes away, putting your dish in the dishwasher, throwing in a load of laundry, etc. I am all about enjoying your down time. I would never let household stuff get in the way of me time or time with my family. When Blake goes down for the night, me time starts. I am not one of those moms that puts my child down then immediately gets to the laundry, dishes, and cleaning. I would lose my mind. But if I can keep up on small tasks throughout the day, they won’t pile up as much.
no more phones in the bedroom
I am a bad sleeper. Have been for as long as I can remember. It takes me a long time to fall asleep and I wake often during the night. There are a lot of changes we are making in regards to this, I might even write a whole post about it, but ditching the phones is priority #1. We all know the deal about phones at night and what they do to our brains, so I will spare you the lecture. But that’s why we are ditching the phones. Sadly, this one honestly stresses me out. I do a lot on my phone in bed, which is all the more reason I need to commit to this rule and never turn back. When I am trying to fall asleep, I suddenly remember 9000 things I need to do, so it helps me fall asleep to type them into a note on my phone. It never occurred to me that I could just as easily have a bedside notebook that will serve the same purpose. So…that’s what we are going to do! I hope this encourages both me and Blake to read more, disconnect more, and just be overall more rested people.
no hoarding
This move has made me realize that I am a hoarder. I keep everything. I place a sentimental attachment on the most mundane items. T shirts that I know I am never ever ever ever going to wear again are saved because of that one time in Barcelona when I wore the shirt and have good memories. Or my dance team uniforms that I cannot part with (WHY?!). I am also fairly certain that I do not need 12 different sets of plates. Why do I keep a serving platter I know I am never going to use? Well, because I feel guilty that someone was thoughtful enough to give it to me as a gift. New rule in the new house: if there is not a place for it, it GOES! In the condo, there were always things out on the counters and dressers. Mainly because there was not enough room for everything to have it’s own place. Not because there wasn’t enough space, but because I have too much stuff. So I was constantly shuffling stuff from one place to another because there was not a proper place for everything. I am cutting down in the new house.
family dinners
All in all, we are pretty good about this. But sometimes we are guilty of feeding bb an early dinner then enjoy a more leisurely adults only dinner after she goes down for the night. bb’s preschool brings in a child psychologist once a month for the parents to meet with, talk to and ask questions. She also shares some unsolicited advice as well. Something I found SO interesting is how much value she puts on family dinners. In her professional opinion, there should be 6 family dinners a week. According to her, whether a child grows up in a house where family dinners are the norm is the single greatest predictor of future happiness (which is measured in terms of substance abuse problems and incarceration rates). I grew up in a house where family dinners were just the norm. Until I was old enough to go to friends houses on the weekends, we had 7 family dinners a week. I want that to be the norm for bb too. Almost all of the families in bb’s preschool have at least one parent who has to miss dinner frequently, either for travel or late work hours. Blake misses dinner a lot when he is traveling. So I felt extremely relieved to know that the benefits from family dinner come from having at least one parent who truly connects (no cell phones, real conversation) with their child during meal times.
good, old-fashioned chores
While we were on our flight, we wrote down chores for the whole family. Yep, bb too. I want her to feel like the house is hers too, and feel some (good) responsibility for it. Her chores are: make her bed every morning (literally throwing two pillows in her crib, but it’s the habit that counts), water her plant (we are getting her a small plant for her bedroom that she can take care of, maybe she will be better at keeping plants alive than her mama), feed George and walk George daily…with my assistance of course. For Blake and me, we broke ours down into daily, weekly and monthly chores. Sounds intense but it is mainly things we do already, just going to be more diligent about doing them regularly. And we added in some new ones that go along with owning a house, like who is in charge of each general upkeep category associated with the house. We have a strict “I cook, he cleans” philosophy in our house. I meal plan, grocery shop, and cook. Blake does all the dishes and loads and unloads the dishwasher every day. We addressed some common grievances we each had in our old condo, so we can start fresh and get rid of them. Blake likes to have snacks available at the house, but I do not like having junk in the house. So he is making me a list of healthy and husband approved snacks, and I will make sure we have them every week. I hate when I get into the car with the baby and it is out of gas, so part of his weekly duties is making sure both cars have a full tank of gas. I hate the word “chores” by the way, so if someone could come up with a better word for this, that would be much appreciated. Wish us luck…
less food waste
I know I have talked about this before, but we are terrible about food waste. Every Friday, I am cleaning out the fridge FULLY. If I know what I have and what is about to go bad, I can meal plan accordingly and waste less. I also hope that having less access to amazing restaurants (insert major tear face) will cut down on our spontaneous meals out. That is what really kills us when it comes to food waste. We have something I could easily make in the fridge, but Sushi Dokku sounds way better, so we go out instead. Hopefully, there will be less of that in the burbs!
morning workouts
OH EM GEEE am I excited for this one. I am a better person all around then I am working out consistently. I have less stress and anxiety, better patience and just feel 1000% better. Getting back into a workout routine cannot happen soon enough. The only thing we have in our empty house right now is a Peloton bike + some workout equipment. The Peloton bike was literally the very first thing we bought for the house. Top of my list of things I miss in the city is soulcycle, :(. I am still going to try to make it downtown to a weekly soulcycle class, but I needed to find a realistic replacement and I am hoping and praying that the Peloton bike can be that. Do any of you have it!? If so, what are your thoughts? Please send instructor recs!! I am really not a morning workout person, but I am hoping I can become one. Day time workouts are just too hard and unreliable with kids.
no junk food in the house
Both of my blakes are addicted to sugar. They could eat chocolate and candy and sweets all day long. So, I end up eating it too because I have no self control. I don’t officially make new years resolutions, but I do reevaluate things and think about what I can do better and what we can do better as a family. Sugar needs to go. So I am ditching the added sugar this January to try to kick the habit. I just want to feel better/get back to my normal self and sugar makes me feel awful. Did you know your brain has a similar chemical reaction to sugar as it does to drugs? Moving forward, there will be NOOOOOO candy, sweets or processed junk in our house. If we need something sweet, which we all do on occasion, we can go out for the occasional ice cream cone.
no shoes in the house
Ew, I do not know how this wasn’t a rule in our old condo, but we never took our shoes off at the front door. I know how disgusting that is, and I know the kinds of germs and bacteria we were tracking into our house. New house, new rule. NO SHOES IN THE HOUSE.
morning routines
This goes for all members of my family. We all have different things we need to do in the morning to make us feel in control of the day. For Blake, that is time alone so he can prioritize what he needs to do that day. For me, that’s time to drink my coffee and have some quiet time before miss b wakes up. In an ideal world, I somehow become a morning person who wakes bright and early, enjoys my coffee and quiet time then works out all before bb wakes up. Maybe I will even put on real clothes before she is awake…but that might be overly ambitious. When bb wakes up, we have quiet reading time and it is my favorite part of the day with her. She snuggles with me and it just starts the day off on the right foot. Since we have been at my parents, we have had no morning routine. She is too excited when she wakes up and it’s off to the races the moment her feet touch the ground. She has to wake up everyone in the house because she is so excited to start playing with her gram and papa. While I love how much fun she is having here, I am excited to have quiet and calm mornings again.
