Wow! Keep 'em coming! I look forward to these bios. Thanks!

Just spent three hours cleaning out a few closets with dd14 who could seriously make a MINT as a personal organizer. As soon as I was flagging, she'd say, "We're almost done. Can you do X while I organize these boxes?" I listed three things on craigslist for a total of $50. I hope they sell, mainly because I want them out of the house! I got closet space back and I think I'll feel more relaxed at home, and therefore less likely to spend, with less clutter around the main rooms. I also have about six bags for donation, a few extra bags of trash, and a collection of e-waste and chemicals to dispose of later this month. I also found a red tablecloth that we can use for the month of February. 🙂 We didn't eat anywhere near as much fruit last week as I thought we would, so I can skip a produce trip today. I am going to cut back to every other night beans because my kids have been making comments about digestion issues 🤣. We ate leftovers last night, but needed to toss some uneaten oatmeal. I opened checking accounts for two out of three teens yesterday. One more to go! ETA: Found about $75+ of personal care products while decluttering hall closet: 20 bars of soap, 6 deodorants, 3 floss boxes, 10 toothbrushes, 3 containers of feminine hygiene, etc. all in box, unopened. Emily

I made some progress that I'm excited about! I am going to print out my "next week" plans and put them in my planner (or maybe I'll just hand write them). @Quill whoohoo - great job dealing with the cardboard boxes! @Granny_Weatherwax you are inspiring me with your blood donation goals. When I should have been starting to donate blood (high school, college), I was ineligible due to having lived in Europe during the Mad Cow scare. I never looked into it again until now. I hope to donate this year (baby steps), thanks to you. @Carrie12345 I love your water drinking goals. Emily

@Ting Tang and @Lori D. about eliminating written narration if doing a writing program (IEW): IEW seems like... so little compared to what I've done with the narrate-every-reading mindset. @lewelma I have tried dictation with this kid, but he really hated the open-ended aspect of it and felt like he was never good enough or finished. He loves having workbooks that define what finished is. That's also why we are doing IEW; there is a rubric that defines "done" and "excellent." I have kids who range over such a huge spectrum that it is hard to know what reasonable or normal is. Thanks for the help.

Argh, @historically accurate, that's a bummer about the knee surgery. I hope the PT helps. It was sweet of your hubby to consider your busy day. Nights like the one you are describing have driven me to more tv than I used to watch... Emily

Wow, that sounds like a great idea! I've been decluttering around here, as nothing reminds me better not to spend than throwing out stuff I thought I needed and have never used. I found 12 bars of soap and 4 hand soaps under a very neglected sink. My goal of decluttering is to get 2 closets back and to get ride of piles and boxes on top of cabinets. DH is traveling right now (the first major major trip since COVID hit) and I hope to deal with some major hotspots before he gets back. Finally, I found a few things to list on ebay (perfect condition Disney dollars from the early 90s!) or Craigslist (child's table, some wooden maps). I am hoping to make $50 and a fair amount of space. 🙂 Emily

DS-barely-11 is a handful to homeschool and I have a hard time recognizing what is the right expectation level. Here's his weekly writing (composition) and language arts load: IEW Fables and Fairy Tales (one lesson per week) One written narration (usually 5-10 sentences) per day One oral narration per day IEW Fix-It grammar (one page per day) Getty-Dubay handwriting (two lines per day) Sequential Spelling (one lesson per day) Am I overdoing the writing (composition)? Doing too little? Thoughts? He types most of his work as fine motor skills are hard; he only handwrites for Fix-It, Sequential Spelling, and Getty-Dubay. ETA: I am not concerned about the handwriting aspect, but the composition. I wasn't clear at first. Thanks! Emily

One of my best friends was in such a situation and she took a good year+ off (which meant leaving the country because of her visa). She went home and was able to put her life back in order in a way that made it possible for her to come back 15 months later and thrive. My brother quit his college after freshman year, went to a community college, and then transferred. I think that it would have been better if he'd transferred earlier. Emily

Inspired by this and other discussions, I googled most of my nearby hospitals (dd16 wants to go into healthcare, she thinks) and "high school". Most of them had a page with information about volunteering and/or paid internships. Emily

That's impressive!

No purchases yet, but I need to make an Amazon purchase, so a goal for today is to figure out how best to do that without putting more on the CC. Maybe I'll use "rewards" to do so. 1/5 I need to enroll ds11 in winter/spring basketball, but the link isn't working. That'll be expensive, but we've budgeted for it. I worked on my YNAB budget and am feeling pretty good about it. I am glad for my paycheck, but I felt pretty guilty about working yesterday. Dd6 had come down with something and was feeling nasty, so she sat on the stairs crying as I went to work yesterday. Then, when I came home, she sat in my lap and cried for 5 minutes. She felt better later in the night and didn't remember any of it, though. If I hadn't been leading in-person trainings, I would have stayed home yesterday. Sigh. Finally, got two SNAP cards in the mail (for last summer!) and was worried that they were sent in error. I did some googling and found out (I think) that our kids in high school qualify for them because their high school has a high enough poverty rate, or our district has a high enough poverty rate, that everyone at the school/district gets the cards. So, that should cover February groceries. I followed some links in the "buying a dress for ds's wedding" thread and that was dangerous. Argh. I did not buy anything, but I also should not look at clothes websites when not buying, LOL. I decluttered old sheets and kitchen linens yesterday. I think that has to do with budgeting because watching what I spend also means being honest about the effects of overspending: buying stuff I don't need. I need to declutter my homeschooling stuff. It is USING curriculum, not BUYING curriculum, which causes people to learn! Emily

I'm making more progress on the physical goals than the food ones. 🙂

I put some books on hold at the library, or got on Libby, for inspiration, though I'm going for a month or six weeks, and not a year. 😄 The Year of Less The Year without a Purchase A few years ago I read Not Buying It. It doesn't get great Goodreads ratings, but I found the conversations the author and her partner had thought provoking (are crackers necessary? wine? how do you draw the line between necessary and luxury?). I may pick that one up again, too.

...what other math games did you like? Ideally, the game would have some deep connections in it. (Here's a blog about how Prime Climb formed some of ds11's thinking. I'm looking for the next big thing for him.) Thanks, Emily

Agreeing with @mathmarm. RightStart teaches 4-digit addition with regrouping on the abacus in one step, skipping fewer digits. I just did it last week with dd6. It made sense to her rather quickly; she went from abacus to paper to "this is easy, why are we still doing this" in four 20-minute sessions. Wrt Science of Math, I don't think there has been the same breakthrough as with reading. Reading dealt with the question of whether good readers sound out words or not. fMRIs showed that good readers used phonics and that perceptions that they did not (which is what all the Marie Clay stuff was built on) were wrong. I don't think there is a puzzle piece for math that big that science has uncovered. If I am wrong, let me know! 🙂 I came across this website: The Science of Math that has some short, research-based rebuttals to some math questions, but it isn't as deep as I'd like. ETA: I work coordinating a study through psych lab currently that does research about young kids and mathematical interventions. Research is messy. I wish there was something as clean as an fMRI that could show what is really going on with some key part of math. Emily

1/2 - Worked on decluttering the bookshelf next to my bed and found a large amount of money. This encourages me to keep decluttering and to stick to the budget. DS17 reminded me that he needs something off Amazon for next week. I may just buy an Amazon gift card with the money I found to purchase it because it'll keep me honest and away from the credit card. Food: Made Pumpkin-Teff bread (teff flour) for breakfast. Made baked beans (white beans) and Boston brown bread (rye flour) for dinner tonight. Also served coleslaw. I'm working on that pantry! Emily

I need to do this, too. Do you have videos you recommend?

I think they postponed it to 2023 (it was originally scheduled for 2022), which helps me be motivated to get those accounts set up this week. 🙂

@Soror I love your specific steps towards saving money on food. That motivated me to find some recipes for weird foods I'm trying to clean out of our pantry (ragi flour, anyone?). I've printed out recipes now for a few of the strange flours and will look for ones for my strange lentils. I had fun at an Indian grocery store a while back. @Hilltopmom Being financially mindful after a raise or new job is so important! Not doing that is what got me where I am. We had an increase in income and I began thinking, "I can afford that." Lifestyle creep happened and now I'm needing to cut back. @NorthernBeth Realistic food budgets are important! How are you working on it? @73349 What great goals! We've got free pantries all around, but I haven't thought of dropping off. Thanks for the inspiration. @JennyD Food waste is the worst, but we're totally guilty. Let me know if you come up with routines that help you. @Carrie12345 Go for it with those returns! Great concrete goal: keeps unnecessary stuff out of your house and puts money back in the wallet.

My January breakdown: Wellness Weigh every Saturday morning Do NML 5x weekly = 20x in January 2x yoga per week for 20 min Make a big pot of veggie and bean soup to eat for lunch each day Limit snacks to fruits and veggies Family Walk with dd14 at noon each day. She'll walk partway to work with me on days I work. Otherwise we'll just do a mile-long loop in the neighborhood. (We walked 4 miles together today. We both love walking.) House Watch a video on how to repair the oven and gather everything I need Use the Declutter 365 missions for January and July. Choose a brain-candy audiobook to listen to while decluttering. Relationships Make a list of people to invite over for dinner Have two families over for dinner and a single friend over (when DH is traveling) Homeschooling Put For the Children's Sake on hold Do four watercolor nature journal entries Spiritual Read 1 Samuel with the ladies at church

Thanks, @Granny_Weatherwax, for starting this thread! I was inspired last year and am excited to join this year. Word of the Year: Refresh (give new strength or energy to, reinvigorate) Wellness Get back to my WW goal of 155 (12 lb loss) Be able to do 10 real pushups in a row Family build a better relationship with dd14 by walking 1 mi a day with her 200x this year (basically, M-F most weeks) House repair the oven repair broken tile on the first floor repaint 3rd floor bathroom declutter to prepare for a possible move Relationships and Region have a family over for dinner on Saturday nights 3x/month, Shabbat-style = 36 meals this year join the Architecture foundation and go on 8 tours Homeschooling Reread For the Children's Sake and another book to reignite my excitement Do 50 watercolor nature journal entries Spiritual Daily Bible reading (starting off with my church ladies) I'm leaving financial goals off here because so much is up in the air.

Here are my goals: Cut way back on spending by: Only use my credit card for gas. Buy groceries with cash on hand. Eat down my pantry and freezer. Keep a list of desired purchases in my planner. (I bet I won't even want to own most of them by the time February comes around!) Except for gas, not use my credit card until Feb. 15. That's when the February bill is due. I want to get that bill down. Put money aside for upcoming big purchases: a violin and braces. Goal for January: $X. (decided to keep amount private, will post percentages) Open a CC in my name - DONE! Open checking accounts for my teens. Emily

Hi friends! This is your place to be make your own financial well-being goals and work towards them this month. Here's what I'm envisioning. Write up your goals for the month. Break them down week-by-week. Post your progress. Share ideas to help others. Celebrate with and encourage one another! Please don't share any links to shopping; if you find a great deal, post it to the Frugalistas thread! Emily

I will run weekly threads this month, since this is a January "focus" challenge!

This is great advice. Thanks!