Baby Steps

So, yesterday I finally put my re-usable grocery bags in the back of my car. The bags have just been sitting in a closet for over a year. Occasionally I'll use them to throw some of my son's toys in if we are traveling, but generally, they go unused. Meanwhile, we have a gazillion plastic grocery bags piling up in the cabinet under our kitchen sink! I actually have a thing to mount on the wall to hold all of those (because we do have 3 dogs... we need some for poop bags on walks) but that will come when I organize the pantry. I'm planning to mount it in there.
Anyway... I put the grocery bags on the floor in the back seat of the car on the side that I usually get my son out of his car seat. I'm hoping that I will have no trouble remembering to actually bring them inside and use them!

I'm noticing that a funny thing is happening as I work my way through this list... I'm starting to work on other things not even on the list yet a little bit at a time. I really thought that this would be a way for me to not feel overwhelmed because I'd only HAVE to do one thing a day, but I'm finding that I'm accomplishing my one thing and then working a little bit on some of the "bigger picture" items. For instance, I'm really wanting to start becoming good at using coupons. I'm just starting to read up on the best methods, etc. There are a TON of blogs out there to read about couponing. I'll have to compile a list of my favorites once I really get into it.

Tonight I just finished writing, addressing and mailing all of our thank you notes from Christmas. I am absolutely terrible at procrastinating on thank you notes. I feel incredibly guilty that I never sent them for my son's first birthday (which was at the end of August), but after a certain amount of time I kind of just said "forget it!" It still nags me though. The funny thing is that it takes an average of about 3 minutes to do each note. Really, it isn't hard! I don't know why I always put that off. Especially considering how good it feels to get it done! I even just walked up the street to the mail box at 9:45 p.m. in the 30 degree weather to put them in the mail. I know myself well enough to know that if I didn't do it right then that they had a 99.9% chance of sitting on my counter all week waiting to go to the mail box.

I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself for the things I've gotten done so far. My son has had an ear infection and then an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin and I haven't slept through the night in almost a week, so I'm exhausted. BUT... I've been catching up on laundry and housework since our family left on Sunday and still knocking things off my list. I know that the old me would have been laying on the couch watching TV instead and just feeling stressed that nothing was getting done. That said, I am really tired and definitely need to go get some sleep!