Household Goals 2026

We’re already over halfway through Month 1 of 2026 (shakes head in disbelief). Here we were ringing in the new year just a mere minute ago, and now the year is almost 5% over already.

There’s no time like the present then to share my goals from my 4th and final domain for 2026:

Household

Main Goals:

1. Get my photo project finally up to date + establish a consistent, monthly photo clean out ritual.

This has been floating around on my Goals lists since 2020. What is this long and sticky “photo project”? Well, it’s really a multi-part goal. It’s a bit hard to explain….

Backstory: We’ve had Amazon Photos as our cloud photo backup since 2016. It does automatic backups, so all photos are backed up from 2016- present. However, all older digital photos from ~2007 – 2016 are on an external hard drive, NOT in Amazon photos, and I only started paying for video storage more recently (i.e. the cloud back up is not “complete”). Also of note, Ethan was born in 2008 and Asher in 2009, so that date range includes some VERY important-to-me photos (which are currently not in the cloud!).

So what I have been trying to do (since 2020), is:

#1: Copy all pre-2016 photos + videos from the external hard drive –> Amazon Photos, creating a full online archive of my entire married life + the boys’ childhoods. (Also weeding out bloopers/ duplicates.)

#2: Review pics + videos already in Amazon Photos (2016- present) and weed those out, then copy them to the external hard drive (creating a 2nd backup).

*Basically what I want is ALL OF MY post-2007 photos + videos to be both on an external hard drive and in the cloud!*

#3: Finally, once this backlog is addressed, I want to stay on top of it, doing a monthly clean out (and backup to the external hard drive).

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If you have not noticed, I take a ridiculous number of photos. I can’t help it- I love it, and I’m not planning to stop. So this is not a small feat!

On the plus side, I have made progress- it’s just been very slow going, and I often can go weeks or months without remembering to work on it. When I do work on it, it can take pretty long to review even one month’s worth of photos and videos (especially if that month contained a vacation, oh dear Lord 😬).

I have a note in Google Keep to remind myself where I’m at:

As you can see, I am complete from 2016- 2021! Yay. But then it got spotty (and remained spotty).

My main goals for 2026 are to: 1) stay on top of the current months!! At the very least, this will help. 2) Work through the backlog through 2022. This means then at least 2016- present would be all up to date. I’d love to say I’ll get all the way back through 2007, and maybe somehow I can! But that also may be is definitely too ambitious, so honestly I’d settle for this first part and maybe the rest can happen in 2027.

*One perk about the way less yucky phone scrolling I’ve been doing (thanks to Opal blocking my Facebook and other distracting apps most of the time), is that I can potentially replace some of that bad scrolling time with more “productive scrolling”, i.e. cleaning out my Amazon Photos app.

2. Work on decluttering 1 room per month.

We don’t really have a major clutter problem in our house, despite not having the largest house, thanks to a shed in the backyard, TONS of built in storage in our garage, 2 basement storage rooms (with shelving) and other great built in shelving and cabinets and closets throughout our home. I am very grateful for this (and to the previous owners who did a lot of this!).

However, we’ve been in this house since 2013 now, and there are definitely some smaller spots that can use attention. Think less-visited cabinets or drawers that just need everything pulled out, cleaned out and reorganized. Or certain trouble spots.

My goal with this:

1. Pick one “focus area/ room” for each month.
2. Set a timer at least 2 times per week for 26 minutes (get it, 26? 2026?) and work on decluttering something in that area.

I figure if I can do even the minimum 2x/ week, that’d only be 52 minutes/ week (not even an hour!), or ~3.5 hours in an average month. Even if I don’t FULLY clean out every last thing, I feel like I could make a very good dent in a room in 3.5 hours!

Behold, some newly cleaned out desk drawers in my office….

*So far I’ve been trying to schedule these 26 min blocks on my calendar. It can be a good task to schedule when I need to just listen to something for work, like a Grand Rounds presentation. I can quietly declutter something while listening to the talk! I’ve also spent 26 minutes during a couple of lunch breaks doing this.

So far, January= laundry room/ office. I need to decide what February’s focus area will be. I want to prioritize bigger trouble areas during months we have no travel or other big events, and be mindful/realistic of the busy fall/holiday season!

3. Complete several lingering household tasks:

We have a good list of things that have been nagging at us for a while now and I’d really like to just TACKLE THEM for once and for all this year. These include:

• Replace our sunroom glider (we actually already shopped for this last summer and found one we like at a furniture store!) We just have to pull the trigger on wanting to spend the money on it, basically….and go order it….

• Our kitchen bar stools need replacing.

• We need to get cabinet and drawer pulls installed in the boys’ bathroom! (which was remodeled over a year ago now…). This is one of those tasks it’s easy to procrastinate on because technically you can open the drawers/cabinets without them… it’s just a little awkward.

• Submit photos to the garage floor company who did epoxy on our floor a few years back now to have some cracks repaired. (Lifetime warranty, and I already called- I just need to submit the photos! And schedule the visit.)

• Plant grass/tree where the the boys’ old swingset/ treehouse/sandbox was. This was a goal from last year (“dismantle and dispose of old swingset + plant grass and a new tree there”). Fortunately, the swingset is gone! We did accomplish that in 2025. But now there’s just a bare spot in the yard with no grass. At the very least, we need to plant grass there. Ideally, I’d like to plant a tree!

• Get a hot tub height end table (or bar stool even could work?) for next to the hot tub. This has also been on the list a long time. I just want somewhere to set my phone or a Kindle or a book if I’m in the hot tub (not the patio chair we keep next to the hot tub, which is too low and then water runs down my arm when I reach down to grab anything and I hate that. #firstworldproblemsomg 😳).

• Get a new desk for the living room. We have a little desk in the corner of the living room that has seen better days. Need a new one!

Bonus Household Goals:

1. Make a master household task list with Ivan for recurring tasks. I don’t think this needs to be a major endeavor – I’d just like to spend 20 minutes with Ivan going through the calendar and thinking through what quarterly/ seasonal tasks need to happen, when, and then ADD THEM TO THE FAMILY CALENDAR. Frankly I’m just tired of mentally managing a lot of this. I’d like to feel less behind the 8-ball on some of these things and more proactive AND have these tasks more visible.

2. Continue using Monarch and stay up to date with our monthly financial audits.

3. Make a curated “family favorite” recipe or meal list. I have several lists of “meal ideas” in Google Docs, by category, but I’d like a more narrowed down (yet still robust?) list of true FAN FAVORITES that we can reference when we’re trying to plan meals for the week.

4. Get my 2nd monitor set up for work! I have been using my laptop as my “second screen” for years now and let me just say, it basically sucks. ha. I have a 2nd monitor, but there is some weird issue with the cable set up. I know I need to request a specific cable (but I need to take the time to move all my stuff and figure out what exactly I need, again, because I can’t remember now….) and I also need to get a webcam (currently just use my laptop camera). I NEED 2 FULL SIZED SCREENS TO FUNCTION and I am committed to making this happen like, this month.

5. Make a new recipe each quintile. I have saved dozens of recipes be it on Pinterest or Facebook or other places, but I just want to make a point of actually making more of them.

6. Get the boys’ passports renewed. One that truly HAS TO HAPPEN this year (well, by December 2026 when they expire). I guess technically we don’t have any specific international plans for 2027 yet, but Ethan is currently mulling over a few ideas for a Graduation Trip, and anyway, we seem to need the passports frequently between our family vacations and family that lives in 2 different countries.

7. Get Asher’s Mexican citizenship. When Ethan was little, we took him to the Mexican consulate in Chicago and processed his Mexican citizenship. Since Ivan is a Mexican citizen (well, he’s a dual American/Mexican citizen, now), the boys have the right to Mexican citizenship as well.

Later, when we took Asher to get his, we somehow screwed up and had the wrong version of his birth certificate along (needed the “long version” which you have to specially request and we didn’t have that). So we couldn’t do it then. We intended to request the correct birth certificate and go back soon after and….. well, yeah. Asher is now 16 and we still haven’t done it!!! I don’t actually know if it “has” to be done before he’s 18, but we don’t want to risk somehow missing out on the chance to do this.

It’s one of those things it’s been easy to ignore because it’s not like he really “needs” it, currently. But the world is tumultuous and who knows what the future holds. It’s good to have options! 😉 Maybe he’ll want to move to Mexico someday! Maybe WE’LL want to move to Mexico! Maybe he wants to travel to Cuba! lol. It can also provide certain legal benefits, like social security type things in Mexico, should he ever need that. And finally, it’s just cool to be a dual citizen and “officially” be both Mexican and American, like his parents. 🙂

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Whew, yeah, there’s a lot in this Household domain. We’ll see how it goes. 🙂 Again, my main focus is on those “Main” goals. (Although, reviewing this list, there are quite a few on the Bonus list I feel pretty strongly about wanting to get done, too…).

And that’s a wrap on all my 2026 goals! For reference, you can find the first 3 domains here: Health, Self-Care, and Fun/Family.

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for a looooong 3 day weekend! I LOVE these 3 day weekend holidays when unlike the larger holidays, we don’t actually have big celebration/family plans for the time off (MLK Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day). They are truly just bonus days for us and they are the best!! They always make me wish I could always just work 4 days/ week… 😩

Bonus Pic:

Yep, it is STILL CHRISTMAS TIME at our house. I was planning to take everything down this weekend (over the long weekend) but it turns out our belated Christmas (hosted at our house) with Ivan’s siblings got pushed to next Saturday instead of yesterday. So…. we decided to just leave everything up until next Sunday! I guess we are those “weird people” in the neighborhood, haha. (Ivan says in Mexico it’s common to leave the decorations up until some date in early February, I guess? So he’s okay with this plan. Besides, it’s been SUPER SNOWY this weekend and I do love the twinkle lights…).