Revisiting my 18 in 90 list

A little over a month ago, I made an '18 in 90 list'. This is a much smaller version of the 101 in 1001 that I read about on Kendra's site. I couldn't bring myself to make a list of 101 things to work on, so my list contained 18 areas to work on in a 90-day period. Amy and I came up with this plan to go through each room of our house to determine the 18 things. See here for more details on the 18 in 90 plan.

Well, it's been a little over a month so I thought it was time to revisit my list and see how it's been going. Will you join me? I'm going to list my original "plan" (in bold type) and then comment on how I'm doing. (This is a bit humbling for me to let everyone in on the fact that I'm not doing too well, actually. Oh well.) Here goes:

Closet
-Memorize Isaiah 40 What was I thinking?!?!? Does anyone realize this is 31 verses? Could I not have started with, maybe, 5 verses? Goodness! At one point I had verses 1-3 memorized (that’s all the further I got), but I think those have since faded from my brain. Any memorization tips? Sigh... something to work on in the next 2 months, anyway...

-Pray for Mark daily (using Power of a Praying Wife as a guideline. Wow, wouldn't it be cool if I selected 30 specific things to pray for him for and then did that 3x over (over the course of the next 3 months?! Hm... maybe I'll try that.) See here for the list I made. I posted this by my sink, but kept forgetting to check it. I posted a second list in the shower, so that I could be reminded first thing each day what to pray for. This is working better, but there are still days I forget. Not quite in the habit yet. But I do love this focused prayer when I remember! I will keep this up!


Bedroom
-Organize & declutter clothing (in drawers, closets & bins under the bed) Check! I have done this. A few weeks ago I got rid of MANY clothes (4 garbage bags full!). I also went through my closet and drawers and pulled out all my wintry clothes and brought out all my spring stuff.

-Plan romantic evenings, 2x per week Yes. Doing fine here, too


Kitchen
-Work on kitchen clutter areas (by phone, on top of dishwasher, 5 minutes per day) HA! I haven’t done this once. Well, no. I think I did do this ONE time. So, maybe instead of 5 minutes per day, I should change that to 5 minutes per MONTH?!?! Arghh.

-Practice hospitality by having guests over for a meal (1x per month) Uh, no. We haven’t had anyone over for a meal. We have had people over for desserts and snacks. But… no meal. This actually makes me really sad because I love having people over and I want to grow in the area of hospitality. How do some of you others do this? Is there one day a week that you set aside for having guests over?


Bathroom
-Clean out & declutter & reorganize cupboards (throw lots of stuff away!) Um. I started this one day. Everything came out of the bathroom cupboards so that I could go through them all and decide what to keep, what to get rid of. And then I ran out of time to do it that afternoon. Everything sat on the bathroom floor for a day or two until someone dropped by one evening and I went straight to the bathroom (in an effort to quickly clean!) and pulled the stuff (bins, bags, boxes, etc…) off the bathroom floor and sat the pile in my bedroom, on the floor. And there it sits. The bathroom cupboards look great, though. Just not my bedroom floor.

-Use shower time to pray for the day/activities ahead. Yes. I like doing this.


Kids' Rooms
-Clean room WITH them, teach them how to make their beds (1x per week) Yes on the making of the beds. Each day they’ve been making their own beds, and I’m very pleased about this! As for the cleaning of the room?…This has happened a few times. We were in a good routine for a few weeks and then the accident happened and all routine is off. We’ll do this again though!

-Extended prayer time for each child by their bed, while they're sleeping (1x per week) I have done this only twice, honestly. And I’m ashamed to say it because this is one of my favorite things and rather than doing this once a week, I would someday like to be doing this every night!...


Living Room
-Clean out desk drawers Yes! Did this. And boy, do I love cleaned-out-desk-drawers! It was long overdue, let me tell you!

-Sunday service training (each Saturday evening on couch) We’ve done this 3 times, I think… and it’s been great!


School Room
-Make Chore Chart for E & I Check! See here if you missed it.

-Individual time with each child (14 minutes per child, 3x per week)
*E- alphabet pages, practicing writing her letters
*I- puzzles, cutting or coloring together, play w/ little cars
*I- sing action songs, read board books
We’ve done this a few times (3? 4?) and I really loved it (as did my children!), so… when things pick up around here again will get back into it! I love having this built into the schedule.


Outside
-Purchase gardening gloves, practice weeding, which I dread Yes. I actually turned over our garden this year (since Mark couldn’t). Only because I had to, though. Otherwise, I don’t think this would be a check!

-Weekly walk with the kids, just for the fun of it (ie- not 'on the way' to get somewhere, but taking our time!) Ahem. Twice, we’ve done this. My poor children. They love to go for walks! What is my problem?!


Laundry
-Set specific (weekly, or twice/week) laundry day(s), and stick to it Yes. Mondays and Tuesdays are my laundry days- and I love this! One of my favorite changes!

-Have E & I help with folding and putting away laundry Yes. They love this, as do I!

So. There it is. Not too bad, then. There are a few 'yeses' as I skim over it. Making some progress. And, much more progress than I would have made had I never made this list to begin with, so that's a good thing! :)