As promised, I’m back with my 2023 Goals Idea List.
I’m calling it that instead of a firm “Goals List”, because I wouldn’t say these are like, hard goals exactly. It’s more of a…. brainstorm list, honestly. Which probably is not the right way to approach goal setting, but oh well.
I basically just sat and down and reviewed my list from last year and copied over anything I felt I still cared about, and then added a few new things. No fancy categories or anything… just a good old brain dump.
Also, I decided against naming it a 23 for 2023 list and I didn’t even number them, initially. I just wrote until I felt like stopping.
Here they are!
2023 Goals Idea List
1) Use photo printer monthly to add a few pictures to my planner.
2) Continue working through my photo backup project (i.e. weeding out/ backing up old photos). Schedule which months/years I’ll work on each week to ensure consistent progress. – I did work persistently on this in 2022! It’s just a loooooong project, need to keep going!!
3) Finish my Europe trip blog recaps (only 3 days left!!) and have my blog posts printed into another keepsake book.
4) Figure out if we are going to take down the old swing set and plant a new tree there instead?
5) Have evening reading time with the boys a few times per week. (They read their books, I read mine…. or if they’ll let me, I’d still love to read to them! 😉 ) But at least sit together, quietly, reading. Track the days we do this in my planner!
6) Commit to making a weekly meal plan!
7) Go back to tracking social media use minutes in my daily habit tracker (FB/IG). – I did this for ages but fell off recording it mid-way through 2022.
8) Workouts: Keep doing 4-5 strength workouts per week! Goal is to get back to being REALLY consistent all year (as I always used to be, every year, for years!). Would like to aim for >80% completion (so, approximately at least 16 of 20 per month, at least.) Also, I signed up for Em’s January Shred! I mostly just want to try it out. We also have “swimsuit needed/ beach” vacations coming up in both March and June- not too far away now! Would like to feel my best for those.
9) Keep up with 2-3 x/ week cardio! Continue the 20 minute morning cardio routine a couple days per week (as I started in December and has generally worked well).
10) Keep going with keeping the floor clean next to my bed. (LOL. This sounds weird, but I have a bad habit of accumulating piled up clothes on the floor next to my bed. It drives Ivan insane, first of all, because he makes the bed every morning and then is tripping over my yesterday’s sweatpants that belong in the closet. And our room is just much nicer looking when I don’t have a pile of stuff over there!! I focused on this on December and am VERY PROUD of how I’ve done.)
11) Shower every morning. (Okay, this also needs explanation. Many days I don’t go to the gym until later in the day. So, in the interest of efficiency, sometimes I don’t bother to shower in the morning- I just get dressed. But I always just feel kind of blah when I don’t shower, or I end up working in workout clothes all day- which just makes me feel sloppy. I’ve found that showering + getting dressed + ready EVEN if I’m planning to go to gym later on makes me feel much better all day. If I’m just lifting, I don’t always actually get that sweaty at the gym, anyway- or if needed I can just rinse off quickly again.)
12) Keep up household Google docs + expand. (Made one for Christmas stuff, Thanksgiving shopping list, etc. so far. Want to make a master vacation packing list next!)
13) Order prints for basement photo wall (already have frames up).
14) Get glass insert for kitchen cabinet + finally hang the kitchen window blind.
15) Buy and install garage wall slats or other way to hang stuff up! (Remodeled our garage over a year ago now and we still haven’t finished this part!)
16) Track movies/ shows watched in my daily journal page. (Already track what I read/listen to, but thought it’d be fun to have a record of what we watch, too. I shared this with Ivan and he said, “Don’t you have anything better to do???” 😄)
17) Help the boys learn to cook! Come up with some sort of actual plan for this.
18) Read 30 books, including at least one more book in Spanish. Give the new work Book Club a try. (Starts this month)
19) Whenever I make a favorite recipe, save it in my Google Drive. Work on adding other “family favorites” there as well. (I made a bunch of folders there this year in an effort to back up/ organize my recipes a bit.)
20) Get a hot tub height end table for next to the hot tub!
21) Diet: Try cutting out dairy for the month of January, take note if bloating issues feel better or not. Also in January, going to limit “added sugar” (cookie, sweets, etc.) to 1-2 servings per day max.
22) Clean out downstairs and upstairs file cabinets.
23) Clean out/ purge my exercise clothes drawers, replenish and update as needed. (I know for a fact there are tank tops in there I wore when Asher was a baby!)
24) Find a really great pair of black dress pants.
25) Hit 7,000 steps per day. (Yes, 7,000, not 10,000. Honestly, 10,000 is too hard for me many days. That has to be a GOAL goal, if I’m going to always do it, especially in the winter, anyway. Even with a daily walk + gym session (lifting doesn’t generate that many steps!), I often don’t get anywhere near 10,000…. my job is sedentary, and I work from home!! By default, many days I hover around 5,000. 7,000 feels like a much more doable step in the right direction and a more practical goal. Requires a bit of effort sometimes, but not nearly as much as 10,000.)
26) Get our finance tracking spreadsheets all caught up to date/ re-organized!! (Dreading this because it’s just a tedious hassle to go backwards and fill things all in after the fact. Bleh.)
The end! I know this looks like a lot, but I also feel like many are very doable??? Nothing too crazy on there, in my opinion. Now the key is to LOOK AT THEM frequently and prioritize making them happen. And of course, need to get started!
And a bonus pic, because it’s cute:
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for refillable water bottles.
GRATEFUL KAE 
That puppy!!!
Love this list and these seem like a great mix of personal development, home management, and fun – and ALL achievable. I really should have the kids help more with cooking; they enjoy doing it, but tend to fight if they’re both in the kitchen with me. Like you, I need to sit down and come up with some sort of actionable plan…
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Get a dog. Get a dog. Get a dog. (Okay, or don’t. They’re so much work and so expensive. But they are so wonderful and sweet and get you out of the house every day and sometimes they cuddle.)
Your shower every morning made me laugh because my secret goal that I don’t tell anyone else about is to put on lotion every time I shower. I don’t shower every day because my skin is so dry, particularly in the winter, but when I do shower, I need to put on lotion, but I hate to do it because I’m just slathering goo on my freshly clean body. Anyway. Maybe that’s TMI for you. I just want you to know that there’s some solidarity in showering activities!
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Haha…. yeah, the dog isn’t happening. My husband is a HARD no on that one, and unfortunately, not really the sort of thing you can just make a unilateral decision on!
I am soooo bad about putting on lotion too! I rarely do! But I really need to. I do try to put some lotion on my heels before bed because they end up all scaly and crusty looking. I also don’t like the feeling of putting cold lotion all over my clean body.
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The shower every morning would not have gotten a second look from me! I usually delay my shower, too, if I am working from home. I hate showering twice and am not one of those people who can workout and then not shower! My husband can – I would feel gross! But I feel like I sweat a lot and w/ long hair, I just feel greasy and gross.
You put together a fun, inspiring list of things to do! I love reading people’s goals lists! It is fun to see what others want to accomplish. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll feel ready to do something like this. I’m still in such a weird place w/ goal setting!
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I just feel so much better when I am showered and have some makeup on and hair feels more “done”! I wish that I could feel great NOT showered, because it’s not really that I feel dirty or anything, it’s more that I feel the need to re-set my appearance, I guess, if that makes sense. A shower is a whole fresh start. 😉 Even if I just wash my face and put on makeup, I still don’t feel as good as if I’ve showered!! My hair isn’t the type that really goes more than a day though without totally falling flat and looking all bent and weird, either. And I have these side swept bang things that really need to be wet down and re blowdried in order to look halfway decent! lol. I WISH I were like those people in the movies that crawl out of bed with their thick, beautiful hair and fresh faces, looking beautiful already… lol.
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I love the 7000 steps goal – does that count daily, or is it ok, if it averages out to 7000 during a week?
I also have to get those vacation recap posts written (sigh – it’s fun but also so much work!).
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Yes, I was thinking of you and your SW trip recaps!! I think we’re in the same boat, trying to finish up our long past trip recaps! I’m already thinking ahead to our March spring break trip… I KNOW I will want to document that, but at the same time, it’s a full 2 weeks, and I am not sure how much free time/ down time I’ll have to blog in the moment, but then it gets to be SO much to recap later… of course, I complicate it by writing so much and making them so detailed, but in my case, I want to print them into a book, so I really prefer to have them be more complete, full recaps, versus just a very brief overview with only a couple photos.
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I have many similar goals as yours as reading with the girls, help girls to learn to cook, cut out diary (and gluten and sugar) for January, track movies. Overall I feel like you have a lot of household goals or tasks, scheduling them and delegating to the boys might help to accomplish them more. And I agree, goals are kind of flexible. I’m doing the same process of reviewing 2022 goals and setting up 2023’s. Almost done. Starting a more structured process this year as it feels like a real post pandemic year so things should be more predictable.
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I considered cutting out dairy, gluten and sugar all together, and then I decided that did not seem realistically feasible for me to do. WAY too hard!!! Cutting out all of that leaves so few options, considering my normal diet definitely includes those things. So I decided to just go with dairy only right now, and am trying to severely limit, but not eliminate, sugar. I did a week or so gluten free in August and I can’t say I noticed any difference at all, so I feel like that may not be the issue anyway for me.
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I am laughing at your list because it really resonates with me. The photo purge (never ends!), the showering (I only do it after I work out, which is about 5 times per week), the working out (motivation has been LOW lately)… it is a very random list, but there are so many things I can relate to!
I don’t really do “goals” either but I always have a running list of To Dos and this year’s list is already in full force. I think that for some things, it is good to relate them to something else, for example, I always do my email purging when watching Grey’s Anatomy, so that is on Friday, and I do not try to get it all done, just a little bit each week. That way I know if it’s Greys, its emails… and I don’t forget to do them.
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It’s funny you say you don’t really do “goals”, because just 20 minutes before you commented this, I was lying in bed reading your latest post about 22 Things learned in 2022, and I was thinking, WOW she accomplished and did SO MUCH! I was thinking you must have some very impressive goal setting/ goal monitoring system!
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I guess you are right; I definitely do have “try new things” as one of my goals every year and I try to do at least 12 (one per month seems doable!) but I would rather do a lot more than that! Also I think that one is pretty easy to accomplish because I am always up for an adventure.
Oh, also I have been having a lot of recent issues with bloating too and have tips for you (that are way too long to list here) if you want any; shoot me a separate email if you do!
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Yes! I will email you tomorrow!!
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The bed area clear is big for me too! I call it a “floordrobe” :). I don’t mind it for myself, but I do worry that the three year old will trip on something when she tries to climb into our bed in the middle of the night. That is literally the one reason why I make sure there is a path through the floordrobe.
We have a bench at the foot of our bed that also accumulates clothes and packages and what not. Actually – I was inspired by your 30 day challenges to see if I could keep the bench clear of clothes for one month. I did pretty well until Christmas, then things just started piling up. Well, new year, new attempt!
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Floordrobe!! 😂 that’s great. If I had space for a bench in my room, I would definitely pile stuff there! Hahahah!
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Okay, that picture is too cute!!!
These sound like amazing goal ideas, and I hope that many of them come to fruition! I especially love your black dress pants goal (I would like to copy it LOL) and the one about reading together with the kids. Such a good plan!
The floor-by-the-bed thing made me laugh, as my husband does the clothing pile up too. (I pile my clothes on the dresser, which is surely MUCH better hahaha.)
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Well, I can’t pile stuff on the dresser, because that spot is already taken up with my laundry I haven’t put away yet. 😅😅😅
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