Beautiful Southern Life

Create the Life You Dream About

Update on Goal Setting 2017

Goal Setting, Where I’m at With Accomplishing My Goals for This Year

I wrote a post earlier this year about goal setting and how to accomplish your goals. I wanted to share with you a few of my goals and where I’m at with each one of them.

I have had a very busy year and I’m running a little behind on accomplishing the goals I wanted to have accomplished by now. That is why I wanted to write this blog post, to hold myself accountable and make progress even if it is slow progress at least I’m moving towards mastering my goals.

I Broke My Goals Down Into Seven Categories. 

  • Health
  • Emotions
  • Finances
  • Spiritual
  • Family, Social, Friends, Fun
  • Career/ Business/ Blog
  • Marriage /Relationship

How I Plan Out My Day 

I try to work on all my goals every week even if just a little everyday. It may be something as simple as no sweets today. I try to take it one day at a time. If I do no sweets for five days I have worked on my goal of loosing weight for the year. I celebrate my successes that way I feel that I have done something towards my yearly goal. Having a journal helps me keep my goals at hand and I write out my action plan for the day.

I Try To Be Really Clear on What I Want My Outcome To Be 

Instead of it being a To Do List.

  • I try to be really clear on what I want my outcome to be for the day.
  • I  set three things to do to work on each goal. I  include the reason why I have the goal, that way I am reminding myself daily why I am working towards the goal.
  • I also Have a time during my morning routine that I read my goals and My vision and purpose. Even in scripture it says without a vision people perish. It’s important to have a vision for your life, what you are meant to do, why you are here.

Here is the break down of how I’m doing so far this year on the goals I set in January. These are a few of the goals I set for 2017.

Health

Purpose: To create more energy and vitality while making progress towards my goal of walking 2 miles everyday by July 30,2017. To have more energy to do the things I want to do, to look and feel great.

Actions

  •  Start walking three days a week for 30 minutes. I have accomplished this goal and have moved on to walking three days a week at a Local park and added walking 2 miles each walk.
  • Work on not eating sweets, breads, rice, potatoes. I am having trouble with this one. I do try to work on this one everyday.
  • Drink green/lemon water through out the day instead of sweet tea.
  • take my vitamins and supplements

Result: I will look and feel great. I will have a deeper sense of happiness and vitality.

Emotions

Purpose: Quality of life is emotions, I want to condition myself to feel the way I want. Emotions effect everything else in my life.

Actions

  •  I am working on taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens in my life.
  •  Create a morning ritual, of things I do every morning when I first get up.
  • Spend 10 minutes being grateful for the blessings God has given me in my life.
  • Journal my accomplishments and failures on Evernote daily

Result: To make progress on creating the life I dream about and share with you the things I have learned and done during the year that have progressed me towards the life I dream about for my family. I want to feel a deeper sense of gratitude, joy, happiness, and fulfilment.

Work/ Blog

Purpose: This is what my life is about. What I’m made to do. I want to contribute and help others create the life they dream about.

Actions

  • Develop Pinterest strategy to gain new followers
  • Post blog posts on Tuesday and Thursday each week
  • Start my email list for my blog
  • Create blog post that help my readers with something. Share content they will be excited to read
  • read 25 books this year and implement them into my life. I have read 6 already, and I am working on implementing them into my life.

Result: To make progress on beautiful Southern Life, reaching thousands of people around the world to positively help them create the life they dream about. Offer real life solutions for my readers to help them create the life they dream about.

There you have it. This was only a few of the goals I am working on everyday. I would like to start sharing my progress and the things I do to help me achieve the goals I set.  Life is hard and things can get crazy really quick. I have had lots of things get in the way of me working on my goals. My goal is that with sharing a few of my goals here it will help me in being accountable to keep moving forward.

I would love to hear from you and  hear the goals you have set for the year. We can help each other in creating the life we dream about.

Have a fantastic day!

Sherry

 

 

 

 

Why You Should Have an Email for Your House

.

Have you ever looked at your email and gasped at how many emails you have to read. I have! When you have more than one email it is so easy to skip an email, anciently delete an important email or forget to pay a bill if you have paperless billing set up. We all have done it. It’s just part of the digital life.

 

Several years ago I was sitting in the floor with several stacks of papers, it was my day to sort all the bills that had come in the mail that week. As you can tell I hated spending my time doing this. I decided it was time for my family to look at paperless billing. My husband was not on board with this at the time, he liked the idea that every month we would receive a bill it would come on a certain day, and we would schedule to pay the bill. He liked the system, but there was one catch, I was the one doing all the organization! I hated the system! It worked for years but then my kids became teens and had busy schedules and had added lots to my day. I would have stacks of papers sitting every where. I am one that hates clutter. And our bill system created a lot of clutter, and lots of Rubbermaid bins of organized papers over the years.

It Was Time For a Change!

I started looking for a way to keep organized and not forget to pay our bills on time. I read so many blogs of how families would organize their life. Most families just used the bill station, a place where you drop the mail to be sorted later in the week when you had time. No one had a better idea, we all used basically the same system dump in one spot and sort later.

The lady that was helping me with a phone problem ask me if I had considered going paperless?  This was years ago when paperless first started out. I opted in to go paperless on my cell phone bill. I would get my bill every month and I would print it out, so much for going paperless right?

Then later I created a label  in my google account to stick each cell phone bill after I paid the bill. I just left it in my email until I paid it then I filed it away. Going paperless was a new thing for my family. We weren’t even sure if it was safe from being hacked. This was way back in 2006! We heard of so many email platforms that were hacked and vital information was stolen!

In a later post this month I will share how to keep your email safe from being hacked without you knowing it.

I Had to Find Something That Would Work!

I get around 200 emails every day, and most have to be read daily because I work remotely and that is how my employers contact me. My paperless phone bill was being swallowed up by all my work emails. I try to do (inbox 0) as much as I can but if life is busy that is just not going to happen everyday. Well 200 emails became 800 emails after a couple of days and my phone bill was in the sea of emails! I had to find another system for my bills.

When I was on a system chat with several co workers and our team leader, some how the topic came up about forgetting bills due to high inbox emails. We all were dealing with the same problem and we came up with the answer, create a house email! It was funny at first, our houses had their own email.

I Set Up a House Email

I set up my house email several days later. We used a very simple email, here is an example to give you a few ideas 123anystreet@ or you could use letters, abchouse@   We decided the only things that go into the email were to be house related important things to be paid or bank summaries. No signing up for all those store shopper cards using this email! Then over time we added things from doctors and our son was in his last year of school and I used our house email for anything the school needed to send me. That was pretty much it. It was so easy to keep up with all our bills and no mess on the counter or my desk. I used labels within the google email to have each bill or correspondence a place to live in our house email.

Years later when Evernote came along I started using Evernote at first for work, then I saw how easy the platform was to use and then I started using Evernote for our Bill organization. I’ll talk about using Evernote in another blog post later on in the month. I’ll show you how to set it up for an easy way to keep track of everything.

If you have a similar way you keep up with all your bills please let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you and hear about your failures and successes with bill organization and going paperless.

Come back next Tuesday for the next post in the series where I show you what features to look for when searching for an email provider.

Have a great day!

Sherry

How to Declutter Your Bathroom

This Month’s Declutter Challenge

declutter, bathroom declutter, bathroom organization
Here is a way you can declutter your bathroom in a few easy steps.

Here is a list of tasks for you to work on this month to transform and clean your bathrooms in your home.

How to Declutter Your Bathroom

  1. Clean all light fixtures, bathroom fan vent covers.
  2. Take one cabinet or drawer at a time and throw away everything that you are not using or you don’t want anymore.
  3. Throw out or donate to a shelter or gift them to a friend that can use them, all shampoos and hand and body lotions your don’t want to use.
  4. Tackle your makeup drawer. Throw away everything you don’t use. If it’s older than a year it’s a good Idea to throw it out anyway due to germs can be hiding in there!
  5. Next, let’s tackle your medicine cabinet. Throw away all unused prescriptions that are out of date. Check all the dates on cough and cold medicines, ointments, headache relievers, antacids, etc.
  6. Throw out or send to the garage all towels and wash cloths that are torn and worn out. Be sure to have a bin in the garage for old linens to use when working on projects in the garage. They make great cleanup rags that you can toss afterwards.
  7. If you keep your bed linens in your bathrooms go through them too. Throw out or send to the garage rag bin linens that are showing lots of wear or have tears in them.

Re- Organizing Your Space

Now comes the fun part! We have gotten rid of all the extra stuff we have accumulated over the year now it’s time to put the area back together so everything is easy to find and has it’s place in the room.

  1. Decide how you want to organize each space you have cleaned out. Budget how much you can spend, then look on Pinterest for ideas, or look at the photos of what I’m doing and see if you can find a great way to organize your space.
  2. Think of ways you can create a place where you want to unwind, take a long bath or shower and regather yourself and relax from a hard day at work. Making your space peaceful and beautiful doesn’t have to cost you a fortune, find things you like and incorporate them into your space. It can be as simple as new bathroom cup and toothbrush holder. A small plant in a beautiful planter. Go for simple and elegant. We just decluttered the space, don’t clutter it up with lots of things.
  3. Start putting things together. Put things in a place where they are accessible when you need them. If you have certain things you use when taking a shower or bath. Find a way to store them so they are in a caddy together and not sitting all over the bath tub or shower. Dedicate a space in a cabinet where they can be tucked out of the way.
  4. Organize your medicine cabinet, makeup drawer, and your hair products and blow dryers and curling irons. Find ways to put them in a place so they are out of the way and each one has it’s own place to call home.
  5. Be sure to let the family know about your new organized system. Label where things go so everyone is aware of the proper places for everything.

Be sure to post your comments and what you are doing in your bathroom spaces I would love to hear from you and see the great ideas you have come up with. Be sure to like my Facebook page Beautiful Southern Life and share your great ideas on how you have decluttered your space.

Declutter Challenge

I don’t know about you, but I am ready to work on decluttering my home, life and my mind. I need to get things simplified so I can focus on all the new goals and dreams I have for 2017.

Before I can really get a handle on my new goals I need to remove as many distractions and clutter that has accumulated over the past year. When we let go of all the unimportant things, it gives you a fresh start and a clean slate to start off 2017.

I’m posting this a little late, well a lot latter than I wanted to post this. Due to illnesses that have taken center stage over the past few weeks. I plan on starting my Declutter Challenge in the smallest place in our homes for our First Declutter Challenge. I will share more about the First Challenge tomorrow, but first I would like to share with you how I plan on Doing the  Declutter Challenge with you.

I plan on having the Declutter Challenge posted on the First Wednesday of the month so you will have almost the entire month to work on the  Declutter Challenge for that month. I will be working right along with you and will share how I’m doing on Beautiful Southern Life Facebook page. Make sure you follow along with me on the Facebook page and see my before and after photos, how I organized the space, and the products I used to organize the space. I will also post a blog post every Wednesday of everything I’m doing that week, along with photos of products I tried and links to purchase the items I chose to use . 

declutter
Follow along in this series of blog post to help you declutter your home.

 

How To Do The Declutter Challenge

 

Ok, Here is how I will be doing the challenge. I will take one room at a time, go through every cabinet, every drawer, every closet and get rid of things we no longer use or want to have around taking up valuable space.

I will post before and after pictures of the room or project that I am working on for that week. I will share with you great organizational finds I come across and ideas I dream up to work in the space that i’m working on at the time.

 

I am setting this Challenge up so that you can jump in at any time and start on the Challenge with me. Hey, I didn’t even start on the Challenge until the end of March!

Before You Get Started

 

This is what I want you to do, close your eyes for a few minutes. Envision what your dream room looks like. Think about how you want the cabinets to look in your room, what type of organization is in your dream room? Now, think about how you can transform your rooms you have now into your dream rooms. If you are like me you love Pinterest and use it to find all those great projects you want to try.Be sure to follow me on Pinterest (follow me Here) and follow my organizational boards so you can get great ideas on what I will be using in my house.  In your Pinterest account set up boards for bathroom organization, kitchen organization, bedroom organization, and living room organization, then start pinning all those organizational pins you would like to try. Ok! Now let’s get started.

Be sure to subscribe to our email list so you can follow along with us on this challenge. I would love to see how you are doing, post your photos and comments in the comments section below. I look forward to hearing from you. Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for our first declutter challenge!

 

 

Family Morning Routine

Mornings are a busy time in any household. It is hard when you have to get children going in the morning and also get you and your spouse out the door so no one is late for work or school. Add in sitting in traffic and you have a stressful start to any day.  I have been working on a way to cut the morning stress down to as little as possible. I have come up with the idea it starts the night before. Instead of sitting and watching TV until 10 or 11. our family has started turning the TV off right around 8 pm. It gives us time to get ready to go to bed, slowing down the pace of the day. It is time for baths, and nightly reading we try to be into bed by 10PM that way we are rested and can wake at the desired time the next morning refreshed and ready for the day. Granted not every night will this happen but we try to at least have 4 nights a week where we can stay on the schedule. When we all have to get up very early we do go to bed earlier. When you have to be up and dressed and out the door at 5:30 or 6 you have to get up at least 30 minutes earlier than normal so you aren’t running late. Running late makes your whole day stressed.

How to Make  Morning Routines Less Stressful

How do you make a morning routine less stressful? That is a good question! I have tried many routines with my family. Some have worked some have failed miserably, but I keep trying and keep looking for the way we can blend our mornings where things get done and everyone gets to work and school on time. We have narrowed down what we do in the mornings and this has seemed to help a great deal. I want everyone’s bed made and there coffee cups, glasses, and morning dishes in the dishwasher, this is a must! When we leave the house a mess, we return to a mess, then we have to clean the mess before we can cook the evening meal. We take showers the night before cutting down on the mess in the bathrooms.

This routine has helped a great deal. Yes, we do have those days when things don’t get done, but those days are much fewer and farther between. It is when we don’t do our night routine that the morning gets out of control. I find children feel much better when they have an established routine they have to follow. They know what is expected and when it is expected.

stress free, stress, morning, morning routine, morning routines,
Looking for a way to have stress free mornings? Here is a great way to get everyone out the door and have much happier mornings.

My Families Morning Routine

We finally have a set routine that works for us! Yay! It isn’t very hard either. We make our beds and put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and make sure to pick up our clothes and towels when we change into our clothes for the day.  I try and have the dishwasher emptied the night before so it doesn’t have to be emptied in the morning, but if the kitchen gets cleaned later during the evening then who ever gets up first empties the dishwasher.

I have created a great printable for you today to help you keep your mornings happy and still get the house sort of clean before your family is off to seize there day.

You can download your free printable Here