My Word of the Year for 2025 is Practice. Put the things I've learned and that I know into practice. Practice doing what I know I should do and want to do. Practice how I want to perform. Practice―and get better at―the things that are important to me. Make a practice of healthy and beneficial habits and routines. In 2024, my WOTY was Rhythm, WOTY in 2024, and one way I tried to establish a rhythm was by keeping a very brief daily diary, to watch for daily and weekly patterns to develop and to be intentional about keeping the good ones going. In 2025, I'll continue keeping the daily diary, but with a focus on how well I'm meeting my goals in the disciplines I'm practicing. See my WOTY post for 2025 for how I chose this word: Word of the Year 2025 - Practice.
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At the beginning of the month, I hadn't nailed down many specific goals, and was still figuring out how I'd track my progress, but one habit I knew I wanted to establish was a weekly schedule for the basic household chores. I found out early in 2024 that making meals and doing laundry and keeping the kitchen and bathrooms tidy would require more discipline and efficiency when I was working a full-time schedule! More often than not, by the time I got home I was tired and had little interest or energy for thorough dusting and vacuuming or scrubbing bathrooms, and I wanted a dinner on the table as quickly as possible so I could put my feet up for a bit or get moving to whatever was planned for the evening. So the most important goal in January was to establish how to break those weekly tasks into a couple of shorter blocks of time and spread them out over the week so that I didn't have to do it all at one time. I decided what would work for me would be to spend about a half hour every Tuesday tidying the kitchen, dining and living room areas; and every Thursday tidying the bedrooms and bathrooms. That would leave Friday as the "wild card" day. I figured I'd probably be able to spread out laundry to and do a load each on Tuesday and Thursday and one or two loads on the weekend.
January 1 - Happy New Year! Obviously not a regular workday, and not the usual Wednesday routine to follow. We slept late, and hubby did go to work for a little bit. We putzed around the house a little, I roasted a pork tenderloin for dinner, and we spent the evening watching It's A Wonderful Life.
January 2 - First Thursday of the year, and already I skipped my plan to do laundry and clean the bedroom and bathrooms. Reason was that we had tickets to the Blue Jackets game (it was an awful way to lose a game!), but also I had done some of the chores the day before.
January 3-5 - On Saturday I ran some errands and did some housework, but it was a mostly lazy day. The kids came over in the evening for dinner (crockpot roast) and games. On Sunday afternoon I picked up the groceries for the week ahead, and we had a day to relax at home.
January 6 - Epiphany is the day I usually take the Christmas tree and decorations down. I was planning to leave it until the 7th because Monday is chorus rehearsal night. However, because of the snow, chorus was cancelled, so I did get the tree down and most things put away.
January 7-9 - Actually stuck to my Tuesday plan and got the rest of Christmas packed up and taken upstairs. Snowy days and quiet evenings at home.
January 10 - after work, I quickly freshened up and constructed my grazing boards to take to church for a Cotton Bowl watch party.
January 11-12 - A fairly productive Saturday: got some cleaning done, moved my keyboard downstairs, did menu planning and got groceries. After worship team and church on Sunday, I made lunch, then did meal prep for dinner and for a freezer meal, and took a nice long nap.
January 13-15 - Back to work, back to chorus rehearsal, and another success in practicing my Tuesday plan. Did a load of laundry, tidied up the kitchen and dining room. For interest sake, I took note of the time when we got started on the dishes, and discovered that in about twenty minutes, hubby and I got practically all the dishes washed, dried, and put away, got the dishwasher unloaded and put away, and I got lunches and coffee prepped for the morning. And it was not rushed. By the way, it was super cold outside!
January 16 - I had a doctor's appointment in the morning so a late start on work meant I got home a little later too, and didn't do everything on my Thursday plan, but I did get the laundry caught up and tidied up some.
January 17-19 - Another low-key weekend, pretty much the same as the week before except I didn't prep an entire freezer meal. Oh, and the kids were over for dinner and games on Saturday. We went out for lunch with friends on Sunday.
January 20 - Another very cold day! I went to work, had the Inauguration coverage streaming sort of in the background all day so I could follow along. There was no chorus rehearsal, so hubby and I were able to relax at home and watch the Buckeyes game.
January 21-22 - Continued extremely cold weather, and our furnace wasn't working right, so that was a fun twist on Wednesday. I checked with management, and a maintenance guy came over when we got home from church and replaced the furnace part that was the problem, so all was well!
January 23-35 - Just the usual work and evenings at home. I kind of kept to the housekeeping plans, but was admittedly rather lazy about it. Did some housework on Saturday, but not a lot. We went to another hockey game in the evening and were happy with a win!
January 26 - Worship team and church in the morning. After lunch and a bit of a nap, hubby and went to hockey. I spent some time on chorus rehearsal (the music and choreo is one of the things I'm practicing regularly!) and then went to church for a 55+ group get-together. Hubby met me there and we had a late dinner afterwards.
January 27 - Back to work, back to chorus rehearsal. After chorus, hubby and I dropped off his car at the shop for the next day.
January 28 - Since we had to share my car, it was a very long morning commute for me! I was a little more tired than usual after work, so I did only the bare minimum for my weekly housework.
January 29 - Another doctor appointment to start the day, followed by work and then Dinner + Discipleship at church. When we got home, we binge-watched the rest of the Only Murders In The Building season.
January 30-31 - Ordinary work days and evenings at home, although I did stop to pick up groceries on Thursday. I'm trying to limit my weekday grocery store stops because they always take longer than I'd like and can really throw off the evening timeline.
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Looking back, I did a pretty good job of practicing the routines that I'd figured out would work. I didn't get everything done, and the spare room is still not organized at all, but in general I did what I had planned to do and, other than the spare room, I did meet those goals. I also met my chorus rehearsal goals, although I would have liked to be even more consistent with those and make sure my practice happens daily instead of feeling I need to "double up" some days to make up for missed run-throughs.
What do I need to improve? Consistency in getting the chores addressed early on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The key for me is to get the laundry in, and get my clean-up done BEFORE I sit down to relax.
I also needed a better discipline and set-up for keeping my desk organized so I could practice better bookkeeping for our budget and all that kind of stuff. And to practice better time management with blogging and my leisure time on the computer. I think that will be my February focus.
I've also worked on making a "Twenty-five in '25" list that features more fun and personal goals to go along with my strictly practical housework goals, and hopefully I'll figure out how to track that progress and share it starting in February as well.
I've met one of those big goals - I booked my tickets to go visit my family in Manitoba in the spring!
Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions;
I will put them into practice with all my heart.
~Psalm 119:34~
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