It would be true to say that I have let things slide a little bit over the last few months as we've been preparing for the wedding and dealing with a few other stressful things that come with the package called life. This is pretty much true of everything in my life in general, but there are a few areas where it has become particularly obvious and where I need to do some work pretty much straight away.
Finances
The first thing I need to get back on track is one of my main goals this year and that's to do with our finances. We should really have been being quite strict with this so that we could reach our savings goals as quickly as possible, but instead, we've been quite relaxed about it all. This was probably the worse time to do this as one of us was made redundant and then was only able to get part-time work for a bit. I've also been ill quite a few times this year (and when you're self-employed that means no pay), and there was the time we had already booked for our honeymoon. Now that the wedding and honeymoon are unfortunately over it's time to start concentrating on the finances again. This means spending less on takeaways, sweet treats and buying things we don't need, and doing more on putting money into our pensions and savings before we start working towards our long-term goals. These changes should all begin to show themselves in my monthly budget posts.
Health
Takeaways and sweet treats take us nicely onto the topic of health. Exercise isn't really the issue for me as I'm getting enough at work at the moment (though some additional stretching might be a good idea), but my diet has become particularly bad recently with quite a lot of sugar in it. The spots, low moods, lack of energy, weight gain, and a cycle that become out of whack are all telling me that things are not where they should be and it's time to get it sorted. I've downloaded the Flo app (specifically recommended if you don't have a particularly regular period) so I can keep an eye on my cycle and changes in my mood and energy level. I've also reluctantly brought some bathroom scales so I can use my weight as a rough guide as to whether or not things are changing in the right direction. Now I need to reduce the amount of sugar I'm eating on a daily basis, which basically means cutting out the chocolate and fizzy juice I've been having every day and moving my diet a lot further along the whole foods line than it is right now. All of this should help me get back to being the healthy relatively energetic person I was before.
The Flat
If there's one area that has shown visually just how chaotic things have become it's definitely the state of the flat. Admittedly it's quite a small space so it's easy for things to look bad even with just a small amount of clutter, but the flat has now become particularly bad and very far from the clean I would like. This means that it's not actually a particularly nice place to be spending our time and I want that to change. I remember sort of following a programme called the FlyLady in the past and I've decided to bring that back. The FlyLady isn't really a speedy process, more like a slow and steady one that allows you to get on top of things in bite-size chunks and then stay on top of them. So far I've done what I suppose you could classify as the hallway and the kitchen, and it already feels much, much, much better. I am dreading doing the living room area and my craft area, but I know it'll be worth it in the long run. One of the biggest issues for me here is not rushing ahead of myself and then getting burnt out. I'll get there and the flat will look great, and that's all I need to focus on.
So that is my plan to reset things that have gotten a little out of hand over the last few months. It never occurred to me that such a small wedding could have such an impact, though problems with my health etc were probably a contributing factor as well. My aim is to give myself until the end of June to get things running smoothly again, and then we can hopefully bumble along nicely from there, back to where we had originally planned on being.
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