Tag: Year of Healthy

Categories
Faith Family Planning Productivity

Getting My Life Together

There was a meme recently that said, do you ever feel like you want to get your whole life together at 2 am? That’s me.  I consistently think of all the things I forgot to do and all the things I need to do in the middle of the night.  I can’t do this for another month.  I have got to get my life together!

Back in the day, I had it all together.  Or at least I thought I did when I was a planner.  I loved all things planning.  I liked knowing what to expect.  It became like a brain dump for me and allowed me to take stuff out of my mind and put them somewhere before I forgot them.

I remember using the agenda’s they gave you in school from a very early age and usually had a cheap one anytime I was taking college classes.

I graduated to the big leagues of planners when I got my first Erin Condren back in 2013/2014, and I haven’t looked back since when it comes to paper planners.

I also, over the last year or two, have found a love and appreciation for using technology to plan.  My google calendar tends to keep me on schedule with its alerts and reminders.

But as a housewife and a budding entrepreneur, I don’t have a strict schedule that I am forced to adhere to anymore.  That has shaken up my planning routine a bit.  I’m mostly relying on to-do lists (or completed lists) and just don’t feel as productive as I could be.  With me wanting to be intentional with keeping my home and faith a priority while working on my entrepreneurship adventures, I know planning for me is what will help me find the harmony in doing all of those things.

I decided to sit down and plan the month of May.  But I wanted to go a little beyond what I have been doing as of late, which is just writing down appointments, meetings, and webinars.  I looked at what I wanted to accomplish this month:

  • I want to keep home a priority
  • I want to keep my relationship with God a priority
  • I want to make sure our finances are stable
  • I want to cook from what I have in the house already before my next grocery order
  • I want to be more consistent on the blog and social media

 

I knew these would be things that I need to “schedule” in if I wanted to accomplish them.  So I grabbed May’s calendar from my Erin Condren binder system and stared at it.

How do I get this blank calendar to bring me comfort with the five things that I had listed?  Let me break down my thought process for each one and show you what I did.

Keeping Home a Priority

How do I do this? For me, it is making sure our house is clean, and our home has a calming atmosphere and is a sanctuary for us to relax in.

I’ve decided to follow the FlyLady program again when it comes to cleaning and decluttering our home.  So I will use her routines and calendar to help me focus on what needs to be done cleaning wise.

Keeping God #1

The way that I build my relationship with God is by spending time in His Word, praying, and worshiping.  I also attend church each week.

Bible reading and studying is a passion of mine.  I love learning more about God and what His plan is for His children.  For me, this is a daily practice.  At the end of April, I finished my Day by Day Chronological Bible, which is what I was using for my daily reading.  But now that I have read the full Bible (and the NT twice), in less than 12 months, I decided it’s time to really add studying to my routine.

In May, I want to focus on one to two chapters a day for my studying.  I want to allow room for God to truly teach me His Word and see what fruit comes from that knowledge.  I will most likely be using the Dayspring Illustrating Bible.  And because I know I prefer to also get in additional reading, I am following along with Annie F. Downs and reading the four gospels each month, in a different translation.  In May, I am starting with the NASB translation and am just using the YouVersion Bible app.

I want to do better with praying for groups of people.  I currently have a list in my reminders app and want to be more consistent with praying over it.  My list includes The Church (body of Christ, church leaders, and missionaries), Chris and our future children/legacy, family, friends, unbelievers, our nation, and the world.

I also want to go back to the practice of reviewing the sermon and my notes from Sunday.  I use to try and rewatch the message during the week, make sure I didn’t overlook any relevant notes, and then transfer what I learned to my ESV Journaling Bible.  I haven’t done that in a while, and I miss the reinforcement of the message from my pastors.

Keeping Our Money Healthy

If you have seen our budgeting spreadsheet, you probably think it is a beast to maintain.  And while that can be the case, thanks to me doing budget reviews every week, it isn’t that difficult.  In less than 30 minutes, I update it with the previous week’s transactions, have a conversation with Chris, and set our goals and intentions for the next week.

 

We Have Food At Home

I hate meal planning mostly because I cook based on our cravings.  I try to keep a variety of items stocked at the house to make that possible.  But I haven’t been doing a great job lately of making us balanced meals.  And I’ve been stuck on more than one occasion on what I should cook.  So I decided to venture back into meal planning.

Consistency is Key

I have no idea why I struggle so much with this.  Well, I kind of do.

Honestly, I am 75% over social media.  I have worked hard to curate what I have coming into my feeds, but there can still be a lot of junk.  And because I don’t want to see that, I stay away from the apps.  Which is a problem when I love sharing and connecting with others.

And as for my blog?  Perfectionism, my friend.  This is draft post number 46.  Now to be fair, some of those are future projects.  But a lot of them are ideas that I have for a blog post, and during the process of fleshing them out, perfectionism has paralyzed me.

So I need to overcome this by planning out my content for the month and sticking to it.

See What I Did There?

My blog and social media are how I share and connect with people.  I share what I am currently going through and what I am currently working on.  So when it comes to planning out the content for May, I kind of just did that with this post.  My blog and social media posts, in a way, help keep me accountable.  If I know that I want to post what I learned from the sermon on Sunday, I have to be sure I did the review of my notes.  Now, to be clear, I am not doing these things for the blog or social media.  I am doing these things for me and am choosing to share them after the fact in hopes that they help others that may be struggling with finding harmony with all the things they are trying to manage in life.

Finally, since I used my Erin Condren monthly pages as my draft, I went ahead and added these to my Tanisha Rhenáe google calendar.  Now I know what my end goal is and can set up alerts to help me remember.  If you read this post here, you know that I am using time blocking to help make my day more productive.  That means instead of just randomly jumping from task to task, I put like items together and focus on only those items until the next block.  So while the doing of my five goals will be done in either my Homemaking or Admin block, I will use my Content Creation block to build these out for my blog and social media.

Let me know in the comments below what your biggest struggle is with planning?

*I included my Erin Condren referral link in this post.  In addition to you getting $10 off your first purchase, I earn rewards as well!

*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases using the links included in this post.

Categories
Home

Finally Loving Your Home: Cleaning With FlyLady

I talked a bit about creating a homemaking block in my most recent post here on the blog.  While I enjoy cleaning and, even more, a clean home, I can sometimes get in a rut where I’m just tired of cleaning.  But as I mentioned here, I need to get out of it if I want to have my home being a sanctuary for my husband and me.  So I thought back to when I truly enjoyed cleaning last.  And it was a year or two ago when I was following the Fly Lady routine. There are still pieces that I follow to this day, but because I am not doing the whole process, it doesn’t feel the same.

But my problem with the system itself was, it is tough to follow because the details are not in one place.  I mean, her website reminds me of the late 90’s/the early 2000s and is full of items to buy from her. Her technique is to get you to sign up for her email, and she sends you what needs to be done throughout the day. For example, I signed up again for her emails to get started and have already received at least eight emails a day.  And her site says that she averages ten emails a day.  It’s a bit overwhelming.  Especially for a planner like me, that would like to plan in advance.  I’ve scanned her site, and it’s a bit all over the place to find what you need.  So let me try and break down how it works.

Update: This post got long! I was thinking about breaking it up until multiple posts and decided that defeats the purpose of having everything in one place.  So while this lengthy post will be published as one, let’s focus on one topic at a time.  Join me on my Instagram, where I will post our focus for the day, and let’s talk about it!

FLYing Lessons

The site tells you to start here. FLYing is all about “Finally Loving Yourself,” which she describes as having “peace of mind, pride in your home, and a passion for living.”  In the emails I mentioned above, you get what is called Missions for your daily Zone.  But wait, before you do that, you focus on what she calls Baby Steps.  And the first one is this: Shine Your Sink.  Now, this is a practice that I have followed forever.  Before I go to bed, I do what I call “Shutting Down the Kitchen,” and that includes making sure the kitchen sink is not only empty, but I scrub it out with a powdered cleaner and dish liquid. This is the same process that Fly Lady calls Shine Your Sink, and she outlines a 12 step process to do it.

Next, she tells you to Get Dressed to Shoes.  That means to get dressed for the day, including wearing shoes.  And laced up shoes at that.  She insists that doing this prevents you from slipping them off and lounging around.  I disagree with this.  I mean, I understand it’s much harder to take a nap with the sneakers on, but if I am tired, those shoes won’t stop me.  I’ll take them off or leave my feet dangling off the couch or bed.  And I hate wearing shoes in my house.  I have thought about buying a pair just for inside (slippers or slides).  I do believe that getting up and getting dressed helps motivate you, though.  When I transitioned from working in Corporate to working from home, I went from wearing skirts that I loved most days to wearing 50’s style dresses.  I won’t call them house dresses because that reminds me of nightgowns.  But something about wearing the dresses gave me pride in what I was doing from home, and that included my cleaning.  Now thanks to one too many Krispy Kreme donuts, I can’t fit most of my dresses anymore, but with the seasons changing, I plan on getting back to wearing dresses again.  Maybe just a little bit more flowing.  But I will miss my basketball shorts and leggings.

Baby Steps

Now we are finally getting to the rest of those Baby Steps she talked about.  Fair warning, clicking on that link doesn’t get you to the baby steps without having to click on another link.  Which appears to contain the same info from the first link AND the info about Baby Step #1, which was Shining Your Sink all to just, redirect you back to the link I provided you up there.  See what I mean about the struggle with finding out the information? And we haven’t even started cleaning anything but the sink.  Oh, and you have to click a new link to get to each new Baby Step, but you then have to go back to the first page to get to the next link.  But I’m going to help you out by listing the rest below.  Now each Baby Step corresponds with a day.  So it will take you 31 days to get through all of them.  She says this is to help you establish small routines, build consistency, and to take your time enjoying the process.

  1. Shine Your Sink
  2. Get Dressed to Lace-Up Shoes
  3. Put Out A New Dish Towel Each Night – This is something I try to do each night using these towels.  I think the actual step for this day is to review the website, but I’m saving you 10 hours.
  4. Post Sticky Notes on Bathroom Mirror and Kitchen Sink – This is to remind you to do #1 and #2.  And is the beginning of what she calls your control journal.  More on that later.
  5. Turn Negative Thoughts into Positive Phrases – If you find yourself saying you don’t deserve a clean home, seeing this list should help.
  6. Take 2 Minutes to Clear a Hot Spot – Find that one spot in your house that stays cluttered, set a timer, and clear it.
  7. Pick Out Your Clothes At Night – I think everyone recognizes that this helps mornings go smoother.
  8. Create Your Control Journal – She recommends a binder and some paper and to now break Steps 1-7 into a morning and evening routine, with #6 happening in both.
  9. Five Minute Room Rescue – Spend 5 minutes clearing a path in your worst room.
  10. 15 Minutes: Pick Up Trash and Rest – Set a timer for 15 minutes, gather all the trash you can, and take it out.  Set a time for another 15 minutes and rest.
  11. Inspiration In 15 Minutes – Take 15 minutes to write some inspirational quotes.
  12. Delete Her Emails – It’s been less than five days since I signed up, and I have 30 emails from her.  If she averages ten a day as she says, you should be deleting 120 emails on Day 12.  This is ridiculous.  She doesn’t like clutter but is providing digital clutter.
  13. Do The Mission for the Day – Now for some cleaning.  Take a break here and jump to the next section on Zones and Missions.
  14. Time for a Calendar – Find a place for a calendar (high traffic area) and get one up.  We’ve used this one for a couple of years now.
  15. Make Your Bed – Add this to your morning routine.
  16. Back to the Website – She wants you to read what others are saying about the system.
  17. Set a Bedtime and Stick to It – Don’t wait until it’s time for bed to do your evening routine either.  Start right after dinner
  18. 11 Commandments – But wait…another list. Luckily this one is mostly a repeat of what she has already told you with additions like don’t be distracted, do one thing at a time, and pamper yourself.
  19. No Rushing – This one was hard to figure out as she had another testimonial in there.  But don’t rush, slow down and set a time if you need to.
  20. Laundry – Start a load of laundry at night, put it in the dryer when you wake up, fold/hang, and put away as part of your morning routines.
  21. Clean Out One Drawer – So technically, this day was to read more things on her website, but she also said to clean out one drawer for each family member to make it easier to put laundry away.
  22. Office in a Bag – Work on building your control journal and keep everything you need to pay bills, make a grocery list, etc. in one portable place.  Just in case you need more to do, here are 15 steps to create your control journal.
  23. Afternoon Routine – Start dinner in the afternoon.  Plan your meals a week at a time and get them added to your calendar.
  24. Swish and Swipe – Swish the toilet bowl with the brush and wipe out the sink and clean the countertops with a rag.
  25. More Reading – Read some more of her website, but if you have more than one bathroom, use a different one each time you need to go and do the swish and swipe.
  26. Never Behind – A reminder to start wherever you are, even if you get behind.  I also noticed she added lunch and to drink plenty of water to the afternoon routines.
  27. Dinner – Prepare for dinner either the night before or in the morning.  Remove anything from the freezer you need, and don’t forget your side dishes.
  28. Take Care of You – Set a timer for 15 minutes and read.  Remember to eat good food, drink your water, take breaks, and get some rest.
  29. Weekly Pamper Mission – It looks like the idea for the day was a testimonial from a reader who got a back rub from her hubby after a relaxing bath.  Breakfast was added to the morning routine.  Water, meds, and vitamins were added to both morning and evening routines.
  30. Important Dates – Look at the calendar for next month and see what important dates need to be planned for.  This is also where you learn about your weekly plan, which is more routines.  Head to that section below to learn more.
  31. Don’t Worry – Another reminder to not get overwhelmed with all of the things she has you doing.

Zones

Zones are different parts of the house that she assigns you to clean each week.  There are five zones, and ideally, you would hit them all in one month.  The goal is to spend 15 minutes a day cleaning your zone based on the mission you are given (see next section).  Here are the zones and when she says they would be cleaned:

  1. Entrance/Front Porch/Dining Room – the first few days of the month until Sunday
  2. Kitchen – the first full week of the month
  3. Main Bathroom/Extra Room – the second full week of the month
  4. Master Bedroom/Bath/Closet – the third full week of the month
  5. Living Room/Den/TV Room – the last few days of the month, starting on Monday

 

 

Missions

Missions are your daily to-dos for the day.  Each week she tells you one mission to do each day.  It doesn’t appear that this information is laid out in advance anywhere, so you only get one week at a time.  Here are last weeks (the current weeks is here), for example:

Monday

Spend 15 minutes getting rid of 27 things from the Main Bathroom.  Do the same in the Extra Room.

Tuesday

Shine your tub/shower in the Main Bathroom.  Set your timer for 15 minutes and get the guest bed ready for company.  Wash the sheets if needed.

Wednesday

Wash your Main Bathroom rugs, shower curtains, and accessories.  Dust in the Extra Room, ensuring you get those cobwebs in the corner.

Thursday

Toss old or unused cosmetics, perfumes, and other hygiene products.  For the Extra Room, either spend 15 minutes getting rid of 27 more things or sweep/vacuum.

Friday

Clean the counters and sink in the Main Bathroom.  Take 15 minutes to relax.

Weekly Plan

Monday’s – Weekly Home Blessing for an hour

This includes tossing old magazines, changing the sheets, emptying the trash, vacuuming, mop kitchen and bathroom, clean mirrors and doors, and dust.

Tuesday’s – Free Day

Water and fertilize plants.  Spend 15 minutes in the current Zone

Wednesday’s – Zone Cleaning and Partial Desk Time

Finish zone cleaning and weekly cleaning. Clean the fridge. Write thank-you notes. Work on the menu and grocery list for next week.  Balance checkbook.

Thursday’s – Grocery and Errand Day

Make sure your menu is ready for grocery shopping. Confirm the list before you leave.  Go grocery shopping and run errands.

Friday’s – Paperwork and Misc.

Date night. Get food from the freezer for next week.  File papers. Write letters and cards. Cleanout purse.  Mend clothes and polish shoes. Pet care. Clean out car and check fluids. Clean laundry room.

Saturday’s – Family Fun Day

Sunday’s – Renew Your Spirit Day

 

 

But Wait There Is More

But I am not about to make this post any longer.  I found her detailed before bed routine, morning routines, weekly checklist (not to be confused with the weekly plan), and finally, the detailed cleaning list. The list alone is nine pages long.

Seriously it is almost easier to check her emails every day to figure out what to do.  She sends what is called a flight plan that gives you the daily checklist, challenges, and missions.

My house needs a good deep spring cleaning, so I am going to take a look at everything else and determine if all of this information is truly needed.  Or maybe I can see if I can figure out a way to simplify this or find simpler systems.

Look forward to more post about cleaning our home as we make this happen.  Have you heard about Fly Lady? Tell me what you think below.

*I’ve used my referral link in this post for Grove.  This gives you a 5-piece gift set for first-time users.

*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases using the links included in this post.

Categories
Home Productivity

Rhenáe’s Randoms: Failing At Time Management

Failing at Time Management, Routines, and Schedules

I had a much-needed therapy appointment this week.  I advocate for therapy on the regular, but in this season, it is needed!

I had a significant life change happen recently, and I’m not adjusting well. And because God knows what I need, my therapist stressed the importance of me creating a schedule, sticking to a routine, and doing something that helps me relax or brings me joy each day.

Then she said something that mimicked the same advice a friend gave me a little while ago.

You don’t have to schedule your routines necessarily but instead, know that you need to get them done and accomplish them when you can.

Why does this simple advice seem so profound to me?

I want to say I was this way before, but when I felt myself losing control, I recognized that I tried to hold onto what I had control of a bit tighter. And that’s when planning stopped being fun for me, and it was a struggle to just get through the day.  And in this recent season of my life, my routines have gone away completely.

But now that I’m focusing on making my home a sanctuary, I recognize the need to establish those routines again. Those routines, in turn, improve my time management and productivity.  With me starting on my journey to entrepreneurship, I can’t add more to my plate without managing what I currently have on it.   Which calls to mind two Bible verses:

‘Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much. So if you have not been faithful with worldly wealth, who will trust you with what is genuine? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own? ‘ Luke 16:10-12 CSB

‘He must manage his own household competently and have his children under control with all dignity. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of God’s church?) ‘ 1 Timothy 3:4-5 CSB

I’ve started to take some steps to help me with this and will be looking into doing some things that I know have worked in the past.

I’ve been using technology.

I know you are probably like, didn’t you just get off of a digital detox?  Yes, and I still have most of my notifications off in this season.  But I’ve been using my Reminders app (on the iPhone).  I created many different lists and just started to add things to it that I need to do.  And as I think of things, I go and add it to my lists.  This helps me eliminate decision fatigue and I never have to spend time worrying about what needs to be done.

  • To-Do List – Anything that pops into my head that needs to be done.  Then I go and schedule when I want it done using my Erin Condren planner or Google Calendar.
  • Affirmations – If you caught my post about this, you know I had some reservations, but it’s biblical! So I’ve created some.  Or when I hear some that I love, I add.  I have some set up for me to say daily, weekly, and monthly.
  • Morning/Afternoon/Evenings Routines – Things I would like to do at that time of day or things I typically forget to do (like taking meds/vitamins).
  • Weekly/Monthly Routines – These are more house and Bambi girl related.  So I know which days to wash my comforter, change out Bambi’s litterbox, or even self-care items like exfoliating or doing a mask based on when I did them last.
  • Blog/SM Post – A loose schedule of what I would like to post.
  • Spirituality – Reminders to pray, express gratitude, repent/confess.  Reminders of different types of Bible reading I could do if I am in a rut (a Psalm, a chapter in Proverbs, a New Testament read, an Old Testament read, or scripture writing).
  • Prayer – Requests and topics I want to be sure I am covering each day/week.
  • Business/Personal Development – Whenever I come across a course or interesting blog/person that I want to look into, they get added here.  This mostly comes out of recent summits I have been attending.

Time Blocking

This is something that I need to start doing again.  Lately, I have been waking up and just randomly tackling my to-do list around meetings/calls I may have scheduled until it is time to start on dinner.  It’s annoying me, not to mention, I am not all that productive.  With time blocking, you group like tasks together, so you aren’t having to switch to something completely different and lose your groove.  For example, I would have the following blocks:

  • Homemaking Block – laundry, cleaning, and all things home related
  • Learning Block – This would be when I want to take courses, do webinars, do research, etc.
  • Writing Block – This could be journaling or writing for the blog.
  • Content Creation Block – Creating my social media post or creating printables to help me with my routines
  • Admin Block – Emails, budget review, and planning.

Obviously, there are other areas that aren’t covered here like my faith life, self-care, cooking, etc.  But when I start to test this out, I will make updates as needed.  Keep an eye out on my Instagram because that is where I will share day by day things I will be doing and learning.

Where I’m Winning

One thing I can say that I have been doing great at is ending my day.  Typically when Chris lets me know he is on his way home, is when I shut it down for the day and switch into wifey mode.  I start cooking dinner and try to finish any cleaning that I may have started early in the day.  And then, when Chris is home, I focus on spending time with him.  This is a direct result of some of the conversations we have been having in our marriage and me wanting to be more present with him.

I feel like relying on my reminders to help me with my routines and time blocking will help me set a baseline so I can start focusing on home as my top priority again.  I’m going to give this a try and see how it goes.  Let me know in the comments below if you have been able to stick to your routines and schedules.  I would love to hear some of your tips.

*I’ve included my Erin Condren referral link in this post.  This gives you $10 off your first purchase and I get reward points in return.

Categories
Family Home

Year of Health – April: Home

If you read last month’s post, you saw that I struggled to choose between two topics: marriage and the Word of God.  I decided to do both.  Well, I think focusing on both of those things allowed me to naturally lead into what I chose as my topic for April: Home.

I know what you are thinking, “Tanisha…we are all trapped at home, so that’s an easy one.”  Well, first off, you aren’t trapped at home.  You are safe at home.  Home should be a sanctuary for you.  More on that later.

Second off, I am a hardcore homebody.  I’ve always been a homebody, but in 2017/2018, I forced myself to go out and be more extraverted and do more things, and I promise you I am still recovering from that.  😂

 

So when I returned home from my sabbatical, I struggled to leave the house even for the simplest of tasks.  I ordered my groceries online.  Amazon became my BFF again.  My hubby made sure I had gas in the car.

And it wasn’t until my therapist told me I need to get outside the house more that I became intentional about going to the store more frequently or helping friends with their dog a few times a week.  But my preference was still being home.  It also helps that I am a housewife.  I have heard from a few other homebodies who are saying now that we aren’t able to go anywhere even if we wanted to, they realized that they aren’t much of a homebody. That is not me at all.  Yes, I would like to go to the grocery store when I want, but not much has changed for me. (I recognize the blessing in this)

But what I noticed is that now that we are forced to stay at home, a lot of people are having a hard time just being in their homes.  It’s almost like they don’t really like their home much.  And that breaks my heart.

So it made me think, how can I help people see that they should love their home more?  What is it about our homes that make us want to be elsewhere? Our responsibilities? Chores? Our housemates?

When I made the transition to housewife, I struggled with the idea that I now had increased responsibility at the house even though I wasn’t the only one living there.

My mindset didn’t change until an older friend shared with me that when she is doing tasks around the house, she prays while doing them and is grateful for having them to do.  While she is doing laundry, she is thanking God for clothes her family wears.  While washing dishes, she thanks God for the food that they get to eat.

Honestly, it made me feel ungrateful.  The same things I complained about were things that I prayed for at one point in time.  I made the switch to being grateful for all that I had, but since I’ve been back from my sabbatical, I’ve been slacking a little bit.

So last month, when focusing on the Word of God and my marriage, it naturally led me to wonder, what could I do to show my gratefulness and thanksgiving to God better?  What could I do to show my husband that I love and appreciate him, mainly because he is the one in our family that goes out every day and works?  And it all comes back to making my home the sanctuary I knew it could be.  Which automatically makes me think of my favorite verse in Titus.

‘the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.’ Titus 2:3-5 NKJV

I love the NKJV version of this verse because it explicitly says homemakers.  Other translations say workers at home, keep a good house, makers of a home [where God is honored], keepers at home, work in their homes, taking care of their household, busy at home, and working at home. But I’ve also come across another verse recently that has helped me as well.

‘But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone. ‘ 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-12 CSB

So for April, I am going to do my part to be thankful and fall in love with my home again.  I’m going to make sure that it is a place that my husband can be proud to come to.  And to focus on removing a lot of the noise that surrounds our lives and to lead a simpler and quiet life.  If you know me or followed my social media for a while, you may know that I love routines, cleaning, and organization.  I will be showcasing how I use all three of those to achieve my goal for this month.  But because I am a researcher at heart and love seeing how other people do things, I will be checking out and trying different methods.  I hope that you join me this month in curating your home and setting the atmosphere that you want.  Leave me a comment down below what you love most about your home.

 

 

Categories
Faith Family Marriage

In The Middle of a Hard Marriage

When I settled on marriage as one of my March themes for Year of Healthy, I had no intention of actually writing about it.  I mentioned that it was extremely personal, and I hadn’t been released to from God or my husband.  Then one weekend, while talking with Chris, we were going over how we both have had some wins lately.  In our marriage and out of our marriage.  We recognized that it was because of God and openly gave Him praise.  Then I started to think about some of the advice I’ve been given throughout our marriage.  What worked and what didn’t work.   I thought about the research I did when I was struggling and what I found and what I didn’t find.  One of the things that I did not see was someone that was in the middle of difficulties and what they did.  So many people gave advice multiple years removed from their struggles.  The frustrating part would be, when they reminisced about having a difficult time, but couldn’t tell you how they overcame them.  I vividly remember only two people that were able to give me advice on what they did (I will mention that these two people, we look to as wise counsel, and they have sat with us multiple times, mostly individually).  So after talking to Chris about that, I told him I wanted to share our “in the middle.”  He gave me his blessing, and I believe, that, and the fact that this even popped into my mind, was God’s way of saying do it.  I will say this will obviously be written from my perspective and thoughts.  Chris will read it before it’s published (as he does any post where he is mentioned, or the information may be sensitive to us – like when finance was my topic).  My goal is to write in such a way that I don’t have to remove anything.

Very Little Background

Today, we are celebrating eight years of marriage.  In the midst of 2019, I would have told you that each year was getting harder. Before marriage, I was someone who was driven, strong-willed, and a planner.  I knew exactly how I wanted my life to go, and I followed that plan.  And expected it to continue when I got married.  But the first three years, disrupted that plan.  Now to be fair, I want to point out that we had some outside factors that impacted our marriage that we could not prevent.  The first three years were lived in a blur. Those first three years, we were in survival mode and didn’t have time to have problems.  Once things settled, though, that is when our problems started.  The next five years were hell because we refused to deal with those earlier issues or communicate at all.

But I also thought I knew what was right.  That plan I created?  Even though things didn’t go that way, I expected us to get back on track.  And when it didn’t happen, I focused on other things.  But because I wasn’t successful at being a wife, I started questioning every other role in my life.  I eventually lost who I was.  Now, this wasn’t at the fault of my husband.  More so from what I exposed myself to.  Other people and marriages that I was trying to mimic ours around.  Things that I wanted to do that were discouraged. Somethings I didn’t want to do, that was pushed on me. I was so unhappy that I was willing to change anything.  So I tried to do what I saw people who appeared to be happy do.  This is the dangerous part of building a community.  I got to a point where I couldn’t take any of it anymore.  If you have read some of my previous posts, you will know that in 2019, I left for what I call a sabbatical.  During that time, I strengthened my relationship with God and dived into His Word.  I focused on me.  I had to work through all of this when I realized I didn’t know who I was anymore.  I couldn’t tell you what I liked.  And what I could come up with (for example reading), I hadn’t done in ages.  It was time for a change, so I started working on me.

But I Can Change Him

Now, some advice that I have been given a bunch of times was I can’t change Chris.  And I tried to—a lot. I fought against this advice because I wasn’t the problem.  He was, and he had all types of issues to work out. It took me a while, but I realized that this was toxic thinking.  Because I was trying to make myself out to be perfect. I was also speaking horribly over my life partner. And let’s be real, the problems in our marriage, clearly showed that HIS issues were really OUR issues.  So all of the years, I spent trying to get him to change was wasted.  Because guess what? You can’t change another person.  Well, you kind of can, but we will get to that in a second.  But one thing you can for sure change is yourself.  Give me a moment to explain because if you were like me, you are probably yelling at your screen, saying, “I am not the problem!”

After a million times trying to change Chris, I gave up.  It was exhausting; I was drained; I was tired.  I decided to become selfish.  But in a good way. I went searching for things that bought me joy.  Because of my personality, a lot of that ended up being self-improvement things.  I was reading again.  I was listening to podcasts.  What I was watching on T.V. was either educational or funny.  Now, to be completely honest,  this was shortly after a time where God was convicting me on the useless things I allowed to come into my spirit.  I wasn’t listening to secular music.  I wasn’t watching movies with a bunch of cursing and sex scenes.  But I want to be clear that although this is something that God convicted me on, it ended up helping me find me and what I enjoyed again. I also focused on how each thing could be applied to my life and what changes I could make because of what I was taking in.  This became a big part of why I created this blog and what I try and showcase.  How I saw things and thought about things was changing.  What I worried and stressed over was changing.  And then I realized, maybe how I was handling my marriage was wrong.  So my prayer became, God, how can I become the wife you need me to be for Chris?  I finally realized that Chris wasn’t going to change.  But I could. I was already starting to see what focusing on me was doing. What would happen if instead of doing this for me, I did it for my marriage? My relationships with others? My community?  I started to focus on being a better person for others after I took the time to focus on me.

That’s Great And All But What About My Marriage

Now our marriage didn’t magically become better.  I had moments where I slipped up.  Things were still pretty rough.  But after one particularly bad argument, we were told to do somethings that I think added to the work I was already doing.  We were told to do a daily devotional together.  And for Chris to pray out loud for me every day.  We were giving some other things to do, but those two things are what we were told to start with that we are currently doing.  We are doing the Kingdom Marriage Devotional by Tony Evans (I’m also reading the book on my own).  The devotional is formated in a brief 1 1/2 page devotional, three application questions, and a prayer.  Specifically, the questions have allowed us to be open and honest and communicate with each other about things that are important to our marriage.  Things that we had long forgotten about or just didn’t seem relevant to each other.  This paved the way for conversations that came from our answers, us sharing our concerns, and just being able to talk again.  It was a safe space to say, “this is the problem I have, and I would like to work through it.”  We always add to the prayer that Dr. Evans gives and try to cover things that we spoke about in our answers.  Chris also prays over me before he leaves for work.  This has made me feel loved and appreciated. We have started to dream again and talk about goals.  The important part is we are back communicating.

We are a long way from our problems being fixed.  We still have to do work every single day. But we see fruit from this.  In our marriage and our individual lives.  I think this is because we finally found the right order to things (thanks to the book).  My husband had to come under submission to Christ as the head of our household.  Not saying that wasn’t done previously, but it wasn’t done with intentionality and wholeheartedly.  At the same time (and that part is essential), I had to come under the submission of my husband.  Now I have always believed in the husband being the head of the household.  But my actions didn’t always show this.  I mentioned I was a strong-willed and driven person.  So I thought I knew best and didn’t honestly want to hear my husband’s opinion.  This was wrong in so many ways, but mainly because we are in a partnership, and I shouldn’t discount his thoughts and suggestions.  I was, also, 100 times nicer and more accepting of other people’s views and opinions outside my home.  But what I have learned from this is, the more I come under actual submission under Chris, the more apparent it is that we really are in this together.  He isn’t trying to rule me.  He listens to my ideas, and we, as a couple, create a solution.

Speak Life and Praise God

Changing my thought life and what I speak, also helped a ton.  I wrote about affirmations and manifesting before, but I started to put this into action.  I began to talk to Chris like the man and husband I knew he could be through Christ.  I spoke positively about our marriage.  I spoke scripture over us.  I asked God to let me be a wife that Chris can love, and he be the husband that I could respect. (Ephesians 5:33)  Allow us to be indeed one flesh.  (Genesis 2:24) Allow us to fulfill our marital duties to each other. (1 Corinthians 7:3).  I also spoke some specific scripture over the goals we had together and individually.  And actually, in my Bible reading now, I specifically look for things that I can turn into prayers and affirmations.  Characteristics of people that God found righteous.  Verses that speak to our identity in Christ.  So…many…proverbs.  I was previously one of those people that was making prayer so hard, and therefore, I struggled.  But God’s Word is so full of things that we can pray over ourselves and our loved ones.  This has made such a huge difference in how I have felt, how I look at situations, and how I handle things.  I am still not 100%, but I’ve come a long way, and it’s important to acknowledge that.

Lastly, it is important to give praise and honor to God for what He is doing in our marriage and our lives.  I make it a point to thank Him daily (multiple times a day really) for what He is doing.  Even if that particular day was terrible, I still thank Him for the work He is doing in our marriage and lives.  This frequently leads to me being thankful for other things and talking to God about what He is doing and His attributes.  I never want to forget who it was that made this happen.  Who allowed us to be able to do the work.  I know for me specifically, when I turned to build my relationship and foundation with God, and then when we brought Him into our marriage, mountains moved.  And to think, it started with me realizing that no, I couldn’t change him, but God could if He saw fit.  Thank God that He ended up changing us both.

Tl;dr? Marriage is hard.  We are in the middle of one now.  Here is what we are doing:

*Get closer to God.  Get selfish.  Focus on you and start doing what brings you joy.

*Don’t mimic other marriages.

*Pray about how YOU can change and do better

*Do a daily devotional with your husband.  Preferably, one with questions.

*Have your husband pray over you, out loud, each day.

*Get your house in order, and both of you come under submission: Christ -> Husband -> Wife

*Speak life into your husband and pray scripture over them.

*Give praise and honor to God along the way.

Categories
Family

Rhenáe’s Randoms: 3/14/20

This post is not about that virus!  But it accelerated my plans a little bit, so I wanted to share.

Background

If you follow me here or on social media, you know that for February, my Year of Healthy theme was going Plant-Based. And while it didn’t continue through March, I decided instead of heading to the grocery store, I was going to eat and cook based on what we had at the house.  After a ton of eating out and ordering in, of course, cause I was tired of cooking! But sometime in February, we cleaned out our pantry to reorganize it.  We trashed anything that was expired.  Took stock of what we were low on and added them to our grocery list for the future.  Chris and I also talked about things he wishes we kept on hand that he liked to eat.  Of course, we need to find a balance of healthy foods.  But it started me thinking about what should be in my pantry?  What should I always have on hand?  I planned to potentially talk about this in a future Year of Healthy post where I focus on food again or maybe concentrate on my home.  I added it to my “do later” list.  Cleaning out the pantry showed me what I had on hand, and I knew we had a good amount of meat and dairy in the freezer to use up.  So we were good to go for a while.

Challenges

However, I am also dealing with a couple of problems that might make this a challenge.  First, I have a medical condition that requires me to know exactly what goes into my body to prevent flare-ups.  I am still learning what I can and cannot eat.  While I have eliminated most processed foods, some regular foods can still be tricky.  Secondly, Chris is a picky eater.  Before February, I would have told you he hates all things healthy, but he tore up most of the vegan meals I made.  But his preference is processed foods.  The opposite of me.  I need to find the balance of what foods to keep on hand that he will eat and foods that are good for us.  Lastly, I hate wasting food.  I want to be able to rotate out the items because having to trash things that have expired hurts my heart.  Pantry and freezers items tend to have a longer shelf life, so I wanted to plan out what we could buy, keep for a while, and the best time to replace it.  Currently, I am doing better about not wasting my perishable items because I am going to the grocery store more often and am learning to buy what I need to get me to the next trip only.

What Changed?

So here it is, March 13th (yesterday), and since I’ve been on a cooking strike, Chris and I have been relying heavily on what we have on hand.  And our kitchen was starting to look a little bare…in the middle of a virus pandemic where people are panicking and stockpiling like martial law is on its way and we won’t be able to leave our house for months.  I get it.  People handle these situations in different ways.  And thanks to consistent time with God, therapy appointments, and St. John’s Wort, I am feeling pretty well despite all of this…while I stay in my house.  (BTW #SocialDistancing is now my practice for life)  But I usually am consistent with heading to the grocery store and staying stocked up, so I was starting to get a bit concerned.  I mean, we are finishing up week 11 of the year, and I have already gone to the grocery store 15 times (not including Amazon deliveries).  So to be running low on essentials and not being able to find them, it’s a bit annoying. I got what I could, said a prayer for the rest, and started planning.

What’s Next?

Staying prepared means you do not have to get prepared.  I know this well enough as a military wife and a Floridian who has survived a few hurricane seasons.  So I decided to hit up YouTube and IG to see who could help me with this.  One person I love is Jordan Page from Fun, Cheap and Free, and she had a video on what you should store at home.  She recommends to slowly start with a stockpile of 3 months worth of items you would need to survive (food, water, supplies).  Buy 1 for now and 2 for later when things go on sale.  Doing this allows you to rotate through your items without stocking up and going too crazy.  I will note that she appears to be following her denomination of Christianity, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and how they recommend staying prepared.  I’ve checked it out, and it is pretty solid advice, but Jordan has it packaged in a way that anyone can use it.  Here are some posts of hers that I enjoyed:

Emergency Prep and Food Storage

Grocery Shopping on a Budget

Kitchen Staples

So while, at this very moment, I can’t do much about the essentials I ran out of that the store didn’t have stocked (like beans), I was able to make a decent grocery trip yesterday.  I built a list of items that we should keep stocked.  I added the things that we consistently eat.  Between grocery apps and circulars, I will pay attention to sale prices to know when to purchase again and stock up (Remember buy 1 for now and 2 for later.  Let’s save food for the rest of the world.).  Tracking this information also lets me know when the best time to buy these items is as well.  I’ve created a list of things I should buy every week (perishable items like milk, eggs, and spinach) and what I should buy every month (potatoes, rice, etc.).

This also goes beyond my kitchen and into our household products and cleaning supplies.  Guys, when this pandemic hit, we had four rolls of toilet tissue to our name.  I knew I was going to the store soon, so I wasn’t anxious about getting that low.  Until I got there, and there were zero paper products.  Talk about being concerned for a second.  But then I laughed and said, “God, we need toilet tissue.  I trust that you will be able to make that happen before we run out.”  Do you know what happened?  Chris called before he came home today and said he stopped at the store and they had toilet tissue, did I want him to grab some?  So he did.  We grabbed a big pack to get us through and left the rest for others.  Because I trust that when I need more, either this thing will be over or God will provide.  This faith has been years in the making, by the way.  Two years ago, I would have had a breakdown and cried about this.  Progress.  So while I know this is a scary time for many, I recommend using this time to plan and prepare.  Hurricane season is right around the corner.  Something like this may happen again.  Heck, a personal emergency could happen.  It’s best to stay prepared.  Let me know in the comments what you consider a staple item to keep on hand at all times!  Stay safe!

 

 

Categories
Faith Family Marriage

Year of Healthy: March

I was pretty torn between two topics for March: marriage and my relationship with God.

My wedding anniversary is in March, and to be honest, marriage is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I feel like I’m failing at it every day.  But I’ve also been feeling a stronger urge and push to strengthen my relationship with God through an in-depth study of His Word. You can read about my initial pursuit into this in my All 66 Books posts. But now that I’ve finished reading the whole Bible, I want to go deeper. Dive into all of these questions I had and the topics I wanted to put together. So I struggled with what I wanted to focus on. If you’ve read this Rhenáe’s Random, you know that I am slowly making my way through the New Testament again, focusing on Acts and struggling a bit with the gospels. (this struggle has actually been getting better! Praise God!)

I started to read Kingdom Marriage by Tony Evans. His wife, Lois, recently passed away, and his dedication and devotion to the life she led and the way he is still cultivating the legacy they are leaving made me realize that they were someone I admired and wanted to know more about. He is also a powerhouse Bible teacher and pastor. While reading, I realized to strengthen my marriage, it would take me praying and following the order and alignment that God has outlined. I would only know how to do that by digging into God’s Word.

Here is the thing, my marriage is intensely personal, and not only do I not feel comfortable going into detail on the internet, but neither God nor my husband has released me to do that. But what I can do is let you into my studying of God’s Word. I already do bits of that with my All 66 Books series. As I dig deeper, I’ll share with you my Bibles, resources, and anything else God allows me to share.  I know some of that will touch on marriage.  Just don’t expect the full details that I normally give on these Year of Healthy posts. 💖

Categories
Family Food Home

About This Vegan Thing…

Welp, I did it.  I went vegan for February. Errr…for 24 days at least.  I’m officially calling it a vegan journey, but as much as I wanted to stay entirely plant-based, it did not happen.  I bought a bunch of premade “meat” items and some cereal (did you know Captain Crunch and Cinnamon Toast Crunch are vegan?).  I made a quick post on social media about how the first ten days went, so I won’t recap those items (but now that I think about it, I should have made that a blog post).  You can go here to see it. I am going to use this post to talk about my overall thoughts now that it is over and what we are going to do going forward.

I won’t say that I had my hopes super high for this plant-based journey, but I was very much interested in the benefits that I’ve seen with others.  I was, however, disappointed when not only did I not experience many of the benefits, but a couple of my medical conditions became worst (specifically my fructose malabsorption/IBS and my fibromyalgia).  And shockingly, my doctor wasn’t too happy with my decision to go plant-based.  Now, I really should have gone to her before I started and let her know what I was doing.  I didn’t until more than halfway through when I started having some pretty unbearable symptoms. She actually sent me back to a GI.  Who advised me that most likely, my body couldn’t handle the increase in fiber.  So needless to say, I am not going to continue to be vegan or plant-based.

I did lose a total of 7 lbs.  And that was all in the first week, so I do believe it was water weight.  When I added processed vegan foods into our diet, I started to gain 1-2 lbs back.  I would then lose those same 1-2 lbs over and over again.  So while I think most of it was water weight, I could tell looking at my body, I lost weight.  I tend to carry my weight in places that have me in disbelief when I step on the scale or can’t fit certain clothes anymore.  I mean, I’ve gained 20 lbs since I’ve been married and didn’t realize it because it is pretty well hidden in my stomach and thighs lol—areas that are already pretty chunky (or as I like to say healthy).  But I’m starting to see my little shape again!

Here is why I’m okay with my decision to add meat and dairy back to my diet.  I eat pretty healthily regularly.  I’ve eliminated most of the added sugar from my diet.  I very rarely eat processed food.  I dissect food labels before I buy anything (to avoid fructose/sugar and unnecessary ingredients).  And I’m eating more than my fair share of fruits and veggies daily.  But one thing that going plant-based helped me with is seeing that I could be doing better with the range of fruits and vegetables I’m eating.  It doesn’t have to be a side or secondary to meat or pasta in a dish.  It can be the star!  Now I will be making some permanent switches.  Instead of using regular butter, we will switch to plant butter.  I always buy plant milk, but I discovered and love oat milk now.  I’m not afraid of tofu anymore.  I plan on using cashews to make some sauces because it’s been amazing.

Now there are a few symptoms that I am going to try and target with food.  For example, I finally tried celery juice, and it wasn’t bad (today is actually day 2 of me drinking it with my warm lemon water).   And while I’m a little skeptical about the delivery (the guy who founded the movement), I can’t say that the tons of benefits I’ve heard from hundreds of people (seriously search YouTube or Instagram) aren’t tempting.  So I want to try and do celery juice for at least seven days to eliminated some inflammation and see improvements with my depression and anxiety.  Depending on how that goes, I’ll then try 21 days or 30 days.  But I wanted to start this after I made the vegan journey to clearly see the benefits of being vegan vs. benefits of the celery juice.  I mentioned above I have been doing my warm lemon water again.  When I drink it, I immediately notice a change to my digestive system, which is why I want to keep doing it.  But sometimes I skip a day, and that turns into a week.  But since the benefits are immediate, when I get back on track, it helps me on day 1.

I didn’t go plant-based for ethical reasons.  I do care about the animal,s and I wish we as a planet would find a better way to treat them since we are using them as food, but I do believe that it is okay to use them as food.  Maybe when we are in the second Eden, we will be plant-based.  Who knows? 🤷🏽‍♀️ For now, the hubby and I have decided to split our weeks.  3-4 days will be no meat meals, and 3-4 days our meals will have some meat, and it will most likely be seafood or chicken.  I am not a fan of meal planning because my cravings very much lead me.  But I am wanting to plan to buy certain things each week to make sure we have and do better with having prepped quick items I can snack on throughout the day.

But what is the biggest thing I enjoyed most about this journey?  How much Chris enjoyed the food.  If you know us personally, you know that food is a big issue for us.  I love to cook and eat.  Chris, not so much.  I like eating and cooking whole food and meals.  Chris could live on junk and fast food.  It’s led to plenty of arguments and hurt (on my part).  Another thing…Chris hates veggies.  He could go days/weeks without eating vegetables if I didn’t physically put them on his plate.  But Chris frequently went back for seconds and thirds for these meals that were plant-based.  He wasn’t adding things like hot sauce or siracha to cover the food.  I was so happy to see this!  Seriously this made it all worth it!

Have you tried to go plant-based?  What were your results?  Let me know in the comments.

Categories
Family Food

Year of Healthy: February

I’m Going Planet-Based 

If you know me, I can hear you laughing now.  Tanisha…the foodie…giving up meat?  I am.  For the month of February, I decided to go vegan.  I knew on this Year of Healthy journey that I wanted to dedicate at least one month to food (to understand why read this post).  I had a good friend go vegan late last year, and her testimony has been so inspirational that I figured I would give it a go.  I’ll be honest, I expect this to be hard, so I picked the shortest month. 😂 Jokes on me because 2020 is a leap year, so it’s not as short as I expected.

What Is Vegan?

I’m including a quick definition because when I share with people that I am doing this, they make it seem like I can’t eat anything.  According to Webster, a vegan is “a strict vegetarian who consumes no food (such as meat, eggs, or dairy products) that comes from animals.”  That’s it.  What’s a vegetarian? Back to Webster.  “A person who does not eat meat: someone whose diet consists wholly of vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and sometimes eggs or dairy products.”  That leaves A LOT of options for me to eat.

Now, I have spent some time watching YoutTube videos and reading blog posts and man, the community really gets up in arms about vegan vs. plant-based.  Honestly, the difference seems to be that vegan means a lifestyle.  So you don’t wear anything from an animal, buy anything that came from an animal, etc.  But I also see that vegan means you still can eat processed foods.  Oreos are considered vegan.  While plant-based means you are eliminating animal products AND processed foods.  As of right now, I have no plans on changing my whole life around behind this.  I mean, I think the only animal things I own “may” be leather purses, but I’m not even sure if that is the case.  But for right now, my only change will be with food.  I may continue to learn more that may change this.  The purpose of me picking a topic for a month is to learn what I can and create healthy habits.

Why Plant-Based?

I’ve been working on my relationship with food for a couple of years now.  I’ve done Whole30 plenty of times, which is when you eliminate dairy, grains, legumes, sugar, alcohol, and soy for 30 days.  We live a Whole30 lifestyle 95% of the time because I can’t consume sugar and dairy without having some major stomach issues.  I’ve also gone without meat a couple of times during different fasts that I have done.  My goal is to get the inside of my body healthy.  While I understand medicines are beneficial, I would love to control my different health concerns with food.  I would prefer that I get my vitamins and nutrients from what I eat and drink.  And since the holidays, I have done a horrible job at cooking and eating my vegetables.  It also doesn’t hurt that my husband hates vegetables, and it gets pretty annoying to prepare them and him not eat them.  So going plant-based and trying out different recipes allows me to increase my vegetable intake.  I’m also hoping that a side benefit is that I can show my husband healthy food made only from plants isn’t a bad thing.

How I’m Getting Started

Planning and Preparation.  Those are seriously my two most significant tools for this journey.  I created a vegan section under my food board on Pinterest.  I eat very little processed food day-to-day, and I cook most of my meals at home.  So I will continue doing that.  Because I am cooking with even more fresh produce, I was advised to continue to go to the grocery store multiple times a week to prevent food waste.  I started on Friday by planning enough meals to get me through the weekend.  I hit the store Saturday since I had enough food to get through breakfast and lunch (oatmeal, grits, smoothies…I have options).  I made a grocery list for 2-3 days worth of meals and then picked up what I needed from the store and got to cooking.  I’ve had a fantastic time and experience so far, and a certain someone has even enjoyed the food.  Keep an eye on my Instagram and Facebook stories to see how this goes!  I’ve already created a story highlight just for this journey.  Are you plant-based or have tried vegan before?  Please leave me your tips below in the comments.

Categories
Family Finances Home

Our Monthly Budget Spreadsheet Part 2

I hope that you were able to get some valuable information from last week’s post on Part 1 of our Budget Spreadsheet.  I shared our Income, Giving, Saving, and Debt sections.  To read Part 1, head here.

While what I shared so far are some notable heavy hitters, I believe what I am going to share next are things that we most often have forgotten about.  The things that month to month may be a struggle to remember to pay, or they pop up unexpectedly.  Things like our household bills, auto-related expenses, and subscriptions.  These items for me are still sectioned off on the left side of my budget and grouped with their related bills.  On the right side, they are listed under our Bill Tracker, and most items have trackers to keep up with the day to day details.

Insurance

Our home insurance is connected to our mortgage, but we still have Life Insurance, Auto Insurance, and a Home Warranty to pay for.  If we had any supplemental medical insurance, we would include that here as well.  As a reminder, the left side of our budget consists of the following columns: Budgeted, Actual 1-15, Actual 16-31, Diff/Remaining, and Notes.

I am hiding the section of the Bill Tracker that I showed you last week, so you can still see the column headings.  But here is what the insurance section looks like.  Here I can document the exact Due Date, the exact Amount, the Method of payment (mail check, scheduled, autopay), which Paycheck it will come out of,  and if it’s Confirmed Paid/Payment Cleared.  Then I also have a Notes section here.

Utilities

Depending on where you live, if you rent or own, and what is included with your rent, this section could have less or more than what I have listed.  For us, we only have to worry about Electric, Security System, Internet, and our Cell Phone.  But for others, they may also include Cable, Water, and Trash.

Here is what the Utilities section looks like under the Bill Tracker.

Home

This is another section that will depend on your specific living situation.  In this Home section, we include almost everything else dealing with the home that hasn’t already been covered.  For us, that contains Groceries, Home Improvement (a sinking fund which I will discuss later), Yard Maintenance, Alarm Permit Renewal, Pest Control, Septic System Agreement, and Septic Permit.  A lot of these are quarterly or yearly payments and can be a considerable chunk out of a paycheck if it hits all at once.  So having it here in our budget allows us to put money towards it each paycheck.  For example, our Septic System Agreement can cost up to $450 a year.  So instead of paying all of that out of one check, we can set aside $37.50 from our “bill light” paycheck (meaning we don’t have a ton of bills coming out) each month.  Then when it is time to pay the agreement, we pull the $450 we have saved to pay it.

For the Bill Tracker section Home, I only have listed actual bills that need to get paid.  This section is essential, especially for the bills that are due quarterly and yearly.  When I created this sheet and going forward every year with my planning, I will include the estimated due date and amount here until I get the actual invoice/bill.  So, for example, I see last year in November is when we paid for our Septic Agreement.  It is yearly, so I know this year, in November, it will be due again.  My tracker will most likely show an 11/01 due date to help me plan out the monthly amount I need to save.  And then, when I get the invoice in September or October, I will update the exact due date and amount.

This section also includes the first of the specific trackers.  Probably like many of you, if there is one area of our budget that we are likely to overspend, it is on food.  I love eating, and I love cooking.  A couple of years ago, due to some health issues, I had to make a significant change in the type of food I was buying and cooking, which increased our food budget.  Knowing how easy it is to have this category get out of control, I knew I needed to create a Grocery Tracker.  One thing that has changed recently is I am going to the grocery store a couple of times a week (from 5 times in November to 12 times in December).  I am trying to reduce the amount of food we end up wasting because it stays hanging around for too long.  So each trip I document the Date I went, the Amount spent, the Place I went to, if the Payment Cleared and Notes. One difference is the total here gets automatically plugged into the Groceries category in the Home section of our budget. And that cell is merged because it doesn’t exactly matter much for me which paycheck we spend money on groceries. After all, it is something that is needed, no matter what.  Here is a sneak peek: Next month’s topic for Year of Healthy will be me going vegan (just for that one month).  This will be interesting to see how that impacts my budget as I always hear (and have experienced) that it is more expensive to eat healthily.  But cutting out meat and other animal products should help.

Auto

The auto section is where we have our Gas, Car Maintenance, and Car Registration listed.  I can also tell you that Driver’s License Renewal will get added to this section thanks to me thinking I lost mine last month and having to order a new only to find it later. Car Maintenance and Car Registration are both categories that we tend to save up for by putting money aside each paycheck mostly.  But due to the number of miles we drive each month, we have to get an oil change on at least one of the cars each month.  So at a minimum, we have to put that amount aside each month.

For the Bill Tracker, this is where we keep Car Registration #1 and Car Registration #2.  Ours come in the mail what feels like 3-4 months before they are due, and as someone who frequently forgets hers, it needed to be added to the budget.

Based on us having to get an oil change for one of our cars monthly, you may have concluded that one of our vehicles gets a lot of miles put on it, which means a ton of trips to the gas station.  While I can get away with going once a month, my husband sometimes has to go 2-3 times a week.  To keep up with how much gas is costing us each month and if we need to increase our budgeted amount, we track the Date, the Amount, the Place, which Car was filled up, if the Payment Cleared and Notes. This helps us keep an eye on which gas station tends to have the lowest price for gas, and we can plan better.

His/Her

His/Her section covers items that are specific to Chris or I.  This is where we will have our Blow $ allowance, Clothing allowance, and Personal Care (hair/nails/etc.).  You will notice that Chris has an Entertainment section, and I don’t.  At first, I thought that I don’t need one because Chris is more likely to go out to the movies with his friends, whereas if I go, it will be with him and will go in the next section we talk about.  But this would probably be a good spot for any books I buy. I usually put them under blow $.  I’ll try it for a month, and we will see.  Also, this is where I keep the categories for my Website Domain and Website Support.

Out of all of those categories, the only ones that go on our Bill Tracker pertains to my Website Domain and Website Support.

All others get tracked under the His and Her Trackers that we have.  Here we are monitoring the Date, Amount, Place, if the Payment Cleared and Notes.  This is only for transactions that we use our debit card for.  So if Chris and I decide to take out cash for our blow $, we wouldn’t include that info here.  But again, having this track the individual purchases helps with planning our budget for things like clothes or personal care that may not be a monthly thing or may have one month that has more spending than others (like when Chris needs a new uniform for work). Notes usually are where I will document which category the transaction would be apart of.

Sinking Funds

Another section that I picked up from following Dave Ramsey is Sinking Funds.  A sinking fund is a mini savings “account” that I may or may not use each month.  For us, this includes a Pet Fund, Date Nights, Eating Out, Gifts & Misc., Medical Expenses, and Home Goods.  Most of these are also areas that we can quickly cut if we need more wiggle room in our budget (except the Pet Fund and Medical Expenses).

We do have a Sinking Funds Tracker where we can track the specific transactions for all the sections mentioned above.  Here we document the Date, the Amount, the Place, which Sinking Fund it goes to, if the Payment Cleared, and Notes.  We also record our Home Improvement sinking fund transactions here as well from the Home Section.  Putting money aside in that fund monthly, helps me save for a larger project we do during the year like redoing our patio or my office.

Subscriptions

This is a newer section for us because when I was going through our bank transactions, these little suckers always came up unexpectedly because we didn’t plan for them.  While I usually would have generic categories here, I wanted to leave our exact subscriptions to help refresh your memory! This section took three months to build out because each month, I was saying, “Oh yea, we pay for that also.”  Some are monthly. Some are yearly.  Some we canceled for the moment but may use again.  Either way, it is all here, so I know that it comes from our budget.

I consider these bills, so they go under our Bill Tracker as well. Because most of these are on Autopay, it has been a lifesaver knowing when they are going to hit our account.  And seeing the number of subscriptions we had, made us do some cutting down.

Odd Balls/Summary

I keep this Odd Ball section just in case there is a random category that comes up that doesn’t fit any of the other sections or categories that I already have.  I have yet to use it, but just in case.  The final part of our monthly budget is our summary.  They are formulas that show what is left after our Actual Expenses are subtracted from our Actual Income and what is left after our Budgeted Expenses are deducted from our Budgeted Income.  This gives me a high-level view of if our budget is in the red for the month and lets me know I need to make some adjustments.

Here is a full view of what the Bill Tracker looks like.

What’s Next

Since Finances are such a big part of my life and super important to talk about when it comes to marriage and families, I am thinking about adding another month to focus on budgeting.  Maybe talk a bit about our goals, paying down debt, or even what it took to transition to a one-income family.  Let me know what you think about our Budget Spreadsheet and if you have any topics you want me to cover in the second month.