Hasta La Ideas

My resolution for June was to get our garage in gear. This ended up being an extremely relevant task seeing as our old car died and we got a new one. We had two hail storms in June, and it was wonderful to be able to pull the new car into the garage to keep it safe.

I started by clearing the clutter out of the garage the first weekend of the month. Rather, I started by clearing our clutter out of the garage. I had forgotten that our landlord had some of his stuff in the garage when we moved in (a couple dining chairs, etc.), so I wasn’t able to clear out his things. Mostly, though, only our garage-appropriate stuff remains in the garage (lawn mower, rake, trash cans, tools, bikes).

The second task was to organize what remained in the space and I sort of did this. See what I mean by “sort of”:

We have shelves now in place and space to organize, but I haven’t yet completed the project. Most of our tools and garage items still remain in their moving boxes. Since my mantra was garages are for cars, not clutter, I didn’t push myself too hard to get all of the organizing work finished. I can get the car in the garage and find things, so I’ll just keep unpacking boxes and putting items away over the next few weekends. I met my parking goal, so the rest is simply icing on the proverbial cake. As far as I’m concerned, the resolution was met, even if not perfectly.

My goal for July is to review and reset a number of our family’s routines and to do the same with some personal and professional goals. Now that my son is in preschool, we have a different structure to our day and different demands on our time. Not only does our family need to figure out how we want to structure our schedule, but I need to figure out which of my goals are best for me to achieve right now.

This may seem like a light resolution, and it is in terms of physical labor. However, it’s something that has to get done to retain our family’s sanity and for me to feel like I have better direction personally and professionally.

I haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to tackle this goal, but as I do I will give a few updates over the course of the month to help anyone who may be doing something similar. Creating new routines can be challenging if the first attempt isn’t one that can last over many months. And, identifying what I want to accomplish personally and professionally is going to take some introspection, and I need to set aside the time to do this properly.

What are your resolutions and/or goals for July? How did you do with any resolutions or goals you made for June? If you have annual resolutions instead of monthly resolutions, how are these advancing? The first of July was the half-way point in the year — are you on track to accomplish what you are hoping to by the year’s end? Share your experiences in the comments.

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Erin’s 2011 monthly resolutions: January, February, March, April, May, and June.

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