I’m bringing back my monthly Goals posts! I used to love doing these so much but then life got busy and goals kind of went out the window for most of this year but it’s gone back to a normal pace now and I can focus more on the things I want to achieve each month.

Some months the goals are going to be as mundane as anything but it’s all steps to improving our life and I think I need to start focusing on some of the little things a bit – little steps make big changes after all.

• Overhaul the budget – Last month did not go well budget wise I think going forward I need to add in a few more categories to cover what I’d been grouping together as ‘miscellaneous’ costs the past few months. I’m back to being strict with the budget now as we have got goals to meet!

• Save £1,000 towards BS3b – I’m hoping this will be possible through a combination of having a stricter budget, getting outstanding blog invoices paid and having some new blog work come in

• Give the garden a pre-winter tidy – It is not looking pretty in the garden at the moment. I’d like to get out there one weekend (when it’s not raining!) and do some weeding, tidy up any tools/pots that need to go in the shed and prune some of the plants that have died back. Hopefully that’ll keep it looking neat enough over the winter so that we’re ready to get back to work on it come spring.

• Get on top of food shopping and meal planning – If I plan our food shopping correctly I should only need to do two big-ish shops a month and then just weekly top-ups for fresh veg and milk. We did manage to meal plan for some of last month but it all went a bit off track the past fortnight because I messed up the budget and we ended up just having to eat what was left in the freezer.

• Declutter my skin care and make-up – I’ve made a promise to myself to start taking better care of my skin, one problem with this though is that I’ve got quite a collection of skincare and I just can’t use it all. The same goes for make-up, I’m starting to make an effort to wear it more often but I’ve got a fairly large collection of products and brushes whcih makes it a bit overwhelming to know where to start. I’ve got a fairly drastic plan in mind for how to tackle this so keep your eyes peeled on my Instagram and YT for videos on it.

• Sort through the paperwork – There is so much paperwork laying around in piles since I moved my office downstairs. I’m pretty sure a lot of it can be shredded but I need to sit and go through every single piece of it to see. Dean has said he’ll help so I think it might take a few evenings of us sitting on the floor surrounded by stacks of paper but once it’s done we will work out a new filing system…because putting it all on one big drawer until it overflows isn’t a good filing systems evidently

• Go to the opticians – I’ve been noticing recently that I’m having some trouble with my right eye focusing! Eye problems kind of come with the job for us as we’re working with such small parts so you find you eyes straining a lot more than usual but it’s getting to the point where it’s bothering me. I’ve got a voucher from work for a free opticians appointment so I just need to book it.

• Clean the gym – I’ll be honest, I haven’t used the gym much at all lately but now that I’ve cut my work hours down I’m determined to create some kind of gym routine. Before I do that though I need to get in there and give the room a hoover and wipe down as it seems to be the place where woodlice like to congregate (I think because it’s cool in there?) and there is some pretty big spiders in there too!

Do you have any goals for the month?

Monthly Goals (and updates!) Linky

I love a monthly goals list, it sets me off on the right foot to tackle the coming weeks and it’s great to be able to update you all when I’ve completed a goal and spur me on to the next thing. I thought it would be fun to open up these Monthly Goals posts as a linky for bloggers and Instagrammers from all niches to be able to share their plans for the month and update as they go along so we can all be cheerleaders for one another.