2013: Order

I love the beginning of a new year. It's refreshing for me and I feel like the possibilities are endless as to what I can accomplish in the months ahead. Although I feel like I'm constantly refining myself and setting goals on a regular basis as things come up, I do like to focus on something each year. Rachel suggested my word this year be FUN. Yes, I know, I need to be more fun. That's an ongoing struggle, trust me. But that didn't seem important enough to be my main focus. Instead, I chose to focus on order. After all, if I can get all areas of my life in order, we'll have more resources for fun. I love this scripture and have thought of it often over the last year when things seemed to get more chaotic than I'm comfortable with.

Organize yourselves; ^aprepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a ^bhouse of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of ^corder, a ^dhouse of God;

Doctrine & Covenants 109:8

House - There have been a few times when my house has been pretty clean. However, I have never been completely happy with my house since we've lived here. I want it to be orderly. I want everything to have a place. I want every cupboard and closet organized. I know this won't happen overnight. In fact, I'm giving myself a good six months, longer if I keep working as much as I am. So far, I've been improving in this area. I've been de-junking little by little. It feels so good and I can't wait to be done.

Finances - The last couple months we have been pretty careless with our spending. And before that, we hadn't stuck to our budget for months. I can't tell you the last time we actually stuck with our budget. Most of the time we weren't spending more than we made, but we also were not saving as much as we could have and that really started to irritate me. Jason's first paycheck of the year had no OT (the first since switching jobs). Plus, it had our life insurance premium deducted, our HSA contributions and the increased social security tax. It was a pretty lean check and made me realize how important it is to get our finances in order since we never know when that will be the norm. I thought the timing of that check was impeccable and inspired me to double my efforts in sticking with our budget. I'm happy to report January was a success. We stuck to the budget and we're on our way to doing the same with February. Hooray! It feels great.

Work - The last year or so has been plentiful for me in regards to work. I kept waiting for things to slow down so I could get caught up and organized. However, I have decided it may never slow down so I need to do things assuming it won't slow down and adjust accordingly if it does. My solution? Hire people to help me. It has been so nice to have help and I've wondered often why I didn't do this before. There's not a lot that others can do for me, but anything is better than nothing. I still have a long ways to go before I feel like everything is in order work-wise, but I like the path I'm on. I don't like having things I should be working on for clients constantly hanging over my head.

Life - And in general, I just want my life to be more orderly. I don't like feeling like I'm always scrambling and frazzled. I know there will always be times like that, but I don't want that to be my norm. This means I am committing to less and trying to make smarter decisions. Instead of trying to do everything on my list, I do what is necessary. Instead of planning things just to have something on my calendar, I just let life happen and usually, that keeps us plenty busy. Instead of making sure we go do all sorts of things as a family, we opt for evenings at home. I want organization in my life because then I'll be more available for my kids. I'll be more available to help others. Order creates such a peaceful feeling and I know it increases my sensitivity to the Spirit. By being disciplined enough to have order and be organized, it really gives us freedom and more control over our lives. And that feels really great. It's gonna be a good year.