My 10 New Year Resolutions

It is that time of the year, a time of reviewing the last year, all the good and the mistakes and thinking of ways I could have done better. Having read Gavins recent post I feel an urgent need for the emphasis on greener ways of living our life here at Catzscorner.

1) Most important to me now is my faith. An important part of respecting myself is to respect my beliefs and I know that I must put God first, no more half hearted attendance at our local church, my faith is strong but my commitment has been weak. I can use my illness and often do when energy is low, to excuse myself, but for me it is not enough, I need the company of others.

2) Looking after myself so that I am well enough to look after others. I must lose some weight and get fitter. I know not to "boom and bust" so will pace but "up the anti" and increase slowly the distance I cover when out for walks. I will improve my diet - out will go overly sugary/salty/fatty foods and in will come more fresh produce and more pulses/protein etc., Most of all I will look after my inner child and remember to have some fun along the way!

3) Reduce, reuse and recycle - We already recycle a fair bit as our local council is pretty well organised on this topic with regular collections of paper, cardboard, glass, tins, plastic and compostable materials. The rest I must educate myself in, we use the string from the organic box deliveries in the garden and for parcels, jam jars are re used for home made preserves but I can do more. I can stop buying books and magazines (new ones anyway) I can reduce the amount of plastic coming into the house, if I need food containers use pyrex.

4) Seriously de-clutter the house, using some wonderful advice from the lovely frugal trenches, I shall get this under control this year, I could either sell on ebay, amazon or send to the charity shops all the things I no longer have a use for.

5) Get the bottom of the garden sorted out and put in those veg beds and some fruit bushes. The vegetables I did grow were a great start this year - courgettes, potatoes, herbs, tomatoes, runner beans and spinach, which helped reduce our food spend and enabled me to reduce our veg box order from weekly to fortnightly.

6) Plan and stick to a tighter budget, as it will be the only way to gain the money for our 10% overpay on the mortgage next year. We need to see where the money is going and to plug any holes.

7) To stop any unnecessary shopping - it is not a healthy past time now and never was! So no more magazines, new books, sweeties (we all have sweet teeth here). I have already reduced clothing shopping as I need to lose weight (for the wedding) and so will buy what I need from the charity shops.

8) Reduce our fuel usage, we already have a £90 credit on our gas and electric bill, so our cutting back has made a difference already! Cutting back on my car usage will be the next step! When I was working I could justify this, when I was newly ill with cfs and couldn't walk very far without a stick, I could justify this! but now I will use my, car boot sale bargain, shopping trolley to get to our local Aldi for the bits we need. The shopping trolley even has a built in fold down seat, just the thing if I start to tire before I can get home! :-) Maybe if we have a good bus service (something else to look into) I can get rid of the car!

9) Volunteer - even if just once a week, I have been asked if I would like to help our local hospice by doing a shift of sorting goods at the warehouse. Sounds like a good use of time if my energy allows. I would also like to try some fundraising of some sort, for a couple of my favourite charities, most charities are going to suffer a loss of sponsorship in this economic climate and as a result will struggle. I can't fill the void made by that but they say every little helps!

10) Me time! Mum used to remind me to make time for me, even if only 1 hour a day for a hobby of some sort. Time to get the sewing machine back out!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Wishing you peace, health and happiness