Planning

I love lists. I love making lists. I have lists for everything. I appear to have amassed a number of notebooks over the past twelve months for various things. There’s the notebook for house administration, a notebook for things to do in the house, a separate book I purchased all beautifully sectioned out to keep track of house cleaning activities. I have a notepad for my new found gardening “to do” lists. There’s a book on the kitchen counter with the week ahead activity lists and any telephone calls I need to make. Yes I am officially a crazy list woman!

When I was working I had a diary on my desk where I recorded the daily, weekly, monthly tasks and kept a track of what was needed to be done. I had a similar one at home. The sudden, life changing events of last year turned my brain to mush and as such my organisational skills were kaput. I found a blank notebook in a drawer last November and started to record what I was doing on a daily basis. I was attempting to restore some order to my life, to keep track of myself and very slowly it started to work. I felt more control over myself and what I was doing.

I was also recording what I was eating. On the whole I was fairly good with my diet; some days I was bad with my diet and I just went with the flow. Getting myself back to me was more important to me than any lack of fitness or weight gain. I’m a lover of Instagram, my newsfeed is full of lovely people, positivity, sparkle and lots and lots of things I want to buy…that’s a whole other blog post!

When lockdown hit in March it caused another revaluation on my life. I decided that life was far too short too be worrying about diets and that I should just eat healthy 80% of the time and have some treats along the way, in moderation. That it was important to move more, get active, look after my heart, lungs and brain. Yes, that’s another blog post also.

I noticed on Instagram that a number of people were purchasing a box from Nonna Diary https://nonnadiary.com/ mostly to track what they were eating as they were following various diet plans. People were raving about this box of goodies arriving and in the end, after much visits to the website, I gave in and bought myself one.

Oh was I thrilled when it arrived. A personalised diary for tracking what you eat, your water intake, your exercise, goals for the week or month which do not have to be diet related, your own general goals can be recorded here. Lots of motivational quotes, a notebook, a shopping list pad, a to do list pad, a pen, a lovely shopping bag, a wishing bracelet…you get my drift. I love these kind of things and I have used it everyday to track myself, motivate myself, dream big and allow myself to be without pressure. I set goals for the week and check at the end of the week on what I achieved and what I didn’t achieve and why didn’t I. This is helping me to keep engaged with me, it’s getting my brain back into gear and a huge benefit is that I’m supporting a small business.

One area of my life which is not at all orgainsed is the music. Oh I have notebooks galore, but nothing is listed in order, nothing is neatly written, nothing is easy to locate. I can only assume that the musician within me is so creative that I cannot be bound by the tidiness and countless lists of the homemaker in me.

To another happy day of lists.

With love and sparkles xxx