Resolution Recap: You Should Have Seen My House!

It's August. That means summer is winding down and soon all the routine and craziness of the academic year will begin again soon. I have two kids on an academic schedule and I work at a university, so my own scheduled is affected by the chaos that is about to begin again shortly. 

July was a truly magical month, though. The only totally summer month. There are a few days of school in June and a few more in August, but July is ALL summer! And we took July for all it was worth!!

I've said before that I don't spin plates well, so it shouldn't be a total surprise when I say that some of my original resolutions got hit hard in July and some got mostly ignored.  Whatever. I'm getting used to that pattern. I guess as long as I don't ignore the same goals for multiple months in a row, I'll be okay.

The big excitement for me in July was all the cleaning and housework I got done. My main motivation was a Premier Jewelry party I had scheduled for July 18th. I've been to house parties for Tupperware, Premier, Thirty-One, and even a wine party from the Traveling Vineyard, but I've never hosted one before.  I've always considered my house to be too small and too messy to even consider it.

Then I got slightly addicted to Premier and I really wanted to host a party.  That became my motivation to go all out with housekeeping and get my house ready.  I've had a cleaning calendar for a while now, but it's always been hit or miss.  I assigned a different chore to each day of the month and try to get it done that day.  In July, I hit it hard and even had a cleaning streak of 11 days in a row!!

The week of the party, I added in the task of packing for vacation. We left the morning after the party and I needed to be ready for both at the same time.  I slacked off of some of the cleaning, but I still had the house ready and the van packed on time to meet both deadlines. The best part of all of it was this for the first time ever, we walked into a clean house after a trip away from home. Maybe that's normal for most of you, but usually when we leave the house is a mess from last minute packing. Not this time! When we walked in the house, I was able to go straight to the couch and collapse on it...for a brief moment before I had to help unpack the van and start putting things away!

The second best part was the $22 I spent on FIVE new pieces of jewelry as part of my hostess benefits! Free jewelry and a clean house!! That's definitely a win-win!!

As for my other resolutions: Unless you count cleaning, I didn't do much exercise.  We kept our money on track and I was really impressed with how well the kids have been saying their prayers lately.