Getting Back On Track: My Fabulous Five For Fall

Labor Day doesn’t just mean a long weekend, it means summer time is ending and fall is just around the corner! Those cool, crisp fall days bring out all kinds of cravings in me for apple cider, apple crisp, leaf peeping and my biggest one: a return to routine.

Even though I enter every summer with the best of intentions to stay on schedule, usually a few weeks into it I end up forgetting about the schedule and just enjoy the long,  leisurely days with nothing much to do but enjoy life. That is certainly ok for a time, but as we know if we just float through our days with no plan, well, not much really gets accomplished, does it? That may work alright for the lazy days of summer but wouldn’t exactly work well if I kept this pace year round.

Being that I also have this terrible habit of tackling more than I can handle, I am learning the fine art of limiting myself. I have so much I want to learn, to be, to do that I could burn myself out in a week if I tried to tackle it all!

So I have decided that I am going to create a fabulous list of five things to focus on for the first five weeks of fall. My fall fab five in five (say that five times fast ). I can’t tell you how hard it was to narrow down my choices to only five things, but after some hemming and hawing, I have done it!

If you are anything like me and love to take on way more than you could possibly handle in any given week, maybe asking yourself the same question I asked myself will help:

What are five of the most important and specific accomplishments that I need to make these next five weeks in order to feel better about my family,faith,home,finances, physical and emotional well being?

For me, these things are:

1. My morning quiet time with the Lord

I have really slipped out of this very important, daily habit so it is definitely first on my list!

2. Being more diligent in training my children up for the Lord by reading God’s Word to them daily, praying with them daily, reading quality books to them that will grow them in the Lord, and using “teachable moments” to share the Word.

Again I have really been slack in this area these past few weeks and have noticed the fruit of my laziness. This is high on the list of priorities!

3. Get back on track with our family routines and schedules: daily schedule, morning routine, cleaning schedule etc. by recreating my home management binder and establishing a weekly planning day

I just get nothing done without a plan, so it is time to dust off my binder that has been sitting in my kitchen drawer since the end of June and get it working for me again!

4. Create a budget for the rest of the year, establishing a “catch up plan” for bills as well as a regular savings plan (and stick to it!)

If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you remember that our finances have taken quite a hit through this recession, but thankfully God has provided for us to be able to put the pieces back together. I know that if we don’t have a plan for our finances, we will just spend away what we make. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, especially in the area of finances!

5. Continue with a healthy lifestyle of eating well and exercising 5 days per week

The past few month or so I have been doing really well with eating right and faithfully exercising. I can’t say enough about much better I feel! . I have dropped 11 pounds, several inches and would like to lose another 20 more.  I don’t want to lose my momentum in this area!

In order for me to stay on task with these five things, I have typed them out and printed them onto a pretty piece of paper. I plan on keeping that paper very visible and reviewing it every morning and every evening.  I may even get super ambitious and create a checklist…but here I go again J Keeping it simple isn’t always my forte.

I can’t be the only one who has the urge for order when the fall weather hits. How about you? Do you have the urge for order and routine now that summer has passed us by? If you want to get back on track too, join me and we’ll keep each other accountable. Accountablity, I’ve learned, is a huge motivator! I’ll be sure to keep you up to date on my progress on my fab five!

I am sharing this post with the fun ladies who participate in Tackle It Tuesday Tune up Tuesday and To Do Tuesday!

Tagged as: fall, goal setting, Motherhood