Good morning, savvy savers! It’s hard to believe that we are already in August. Can you believe the start of the busy back-to-school push has begun? In fact, this morning was my husband’s first day back to school to start prepping his classroom for the 2016-2017 academic year. The kiddos will start school in our district this Wednesday. By midweek, our house will be silent during the day, except for podcasts, chirping birds, and the snoring of my Shih-Tzu. And would it be terrible of my to admit that I’m looking forward to distraction-free mornings this Fall? Super excited folks, super excited!
And on that note, while I’m a little forlorn to no longer have my family here each day to help me around the house, it will be nice to get things back on schedule this month. So today, with the ideas of scheduling and organization on my mind, I thought I would share with you all my five goals personal goals for the month of August.
To begin, let me just say that setting out personal and home management goals for the month of July was very helpful for me. So for this month, I will be continuing my commitment to my family and my homemaking capabilities. For the month of August, I will be continuing my daily use of Motivated Moms Planner, as this planner has helped to brighten my perspective on my home management skills, even while maintaining a more minimalist home. A daily, devoted cleaning schedule and plan helps me to view my role as a homemaker not as a job, but as a calling.
I am also looking forward to setting aside time to:
- Read my current stack of library books.
- Break out my Prisma colored pencils for a few adult coloring book sessions.
- Get back into gratitude journaling this coming season.
- Create a few new wreath prototypes for my ETSY shop.
- Be ready for bed each night by 9pm.
My first goal this month is to make time for home canning, and in particular pressure canning. I have long been a fan of homestead living. I love the idea becoming less and less reliant on purchasing goods from warehouses and mass goods shops. To be able to grow one’s own food. To know where one’s food comes from and how it was prepared. To preserve foods in as minimalist, zero-waste, and eco-friendly a preparation as one can muster. These thoughts bring joy to me.
And with this in mind, this past month my husband purchased for me a Cooker Cooker XL and a Graniteware Canner, and his month I plan to pressure can low-acid meal staples, such as canned beans, carrots, soup starters, and the like for winter. These canning goals will totally be in line with my goals for this month.
My second goal this month I will also be creating nature-centered products in my home. Which will I post about on the blog each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in August! My goal with this series is to learn to create basic home goods so that moving forward I have not only learned a valuable new skill set but will no longer have to purchase these good locally as well. And for those who may want to follow along, I will be demonstrating live to Periscope each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this month as well. I’d love for you all to join me live for several awesome, budget-friendly, natural demos!
My second focus for the month will be on time management. I will be creating and maintaining an at-home work schedule that is more blogging and creativity-based. One of my main goals is to have all of my professional and personal chores, work tasks, and business orders shipped by three pm daily. This will give me an extra hour and a half of free time daily before my family returns home from school.
My overall goal, in terms of personal time management, is in giving myself back an extra hour and a half of free time daily before my family returns home from school. As well as a family, we are seeking to unplug online each weekend, and so having all of my online world things under control each day will help me have more time to unwind and relax each weekend this Autumn. I will be posting about my experiences with all of my professional and personal goals for the month of August on my Instagram account. For those who may also wish to join, click here to join us!
My third focus this month will be on gardening. This year, my husband and I have fully utilized our home’s backyard tiered garden layout and have planted a wide range of vegetables and fruits, including tomatoes, various legumes, potato and sweet potato towers, corn, and Autumn ornamental selections such as corn, pumpkins, mini pumpkins, and jack-o-lanterns.
We’ve expanded our organic vegetable selection this year to include six varieties of beans, three types of corn, four varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and six varieties of squash. And as we reside in Mississippi and are blessed with three full planting seasons each year. I’m really excited to see how well small scale, minimalist, urban homesteading will pay off for us as this growing season progresses.
August is also generally the month where all of our bumper crops come in and so we are looking to be more on top of blanching, freezing, and canning this month to accommodate all of the harvested goodness we are hoping to expect this month!
My fourth goal this month relates to finance. This month, we will be continuing a personal No-Spend Challenge. There will be no spending on anything beyond absolute necessities. We plan to eat from our pantry and freezer as often as possible and to help us continue with our minimalist stance on minimizing the way we purchase and consume goods, services, and commodities in our home for the month of August.
This No- Spend month is not just about a decrease in spending, but a challenge to find ways to live well, live better, find new sources of joy, will spending less each and every day. This month proved to be a time of being able to a life rich with family, friends, and creative planning, secured by fiscally responsible measures. This month was made all the better by the amount of encouragement and accountability shared by all of my readers, too!
During the month of July, we were able to save a total of $621.34, and we are hoping to continue this momentum as well in August.
Some ways we plan to do this is by:
- Pantry Organization
- Learning Home to “Dine Out At Home”
- Rain-Check Shopping for next month’s needed staples and groceries
- Learning ways to better clean my home
- Selling unneeded items on Facebook Local Groups, Craigslist, and eBay.
My final goal this month is to continue implementing a more minimalist meal plan. Generally, my monthly minimalist meal plans consist of default meals streamlined around items already on hand pantry staples that require less than a half hour to prepare, and cost under $3.00 per meal, for a family of three to create.
This month’s meal plans are based on seasonal sales cycles with attention paid to frugality rather than simple, minimalist efficiency. And in an effort to make this month’s meal planning more eco-friendly, and less power and energy-driven, consumption we will utilize my toaster oven and convection stove top for all of our baking and food prep needs. And it’s worth noting that each week’s menu will be used for all weeks this month. So, here’s our menu plan for this month.
Monday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Three bean vegetarian chili, steamed corn, and corn bread.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Tuesday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Taco Tuesday.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Wednesday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Chicken, carrot, broccoli quinoa bake, with Crystal Light lemonade.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Thursday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Bakes Zucchini, Greek yogurt, and quinoa gyros, with Crystal light lemonade.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Friday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Meatball hoagies, side salad with Greek Yogurt dressing, and Crystal Light.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Saturday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snacks: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Chicken mole, served with steamed rice, corn, and Crystal Light.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Sunday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Crockpot cheddar, chicken, and broccoli rice, with green beans and Crystal Light lemonade.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
This week’s meal plan cost: $26.45
I’m hoping that this streamlined plan will leave me feeling anything but restricted. With my family eating well and meal planning becoming more automated, I’ll have more time to devote to spending time with my family, creating new wreaths for this fall, time for reading, and taking longer evening walks for my health.
Well, folks, those are my plans for this month! So, do you have any awesome plans this month? Perhaps a vacation, reunion, or the like? I’d love to hear about it below.
Here’s to summer,
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