Once again we’ve arrived at that magical time of the year. The special time where hope springs eternal and a new year is upon us. I’ve always loved this last week of the year because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on the past year and plan what’s to come. On today’s episode, I layout the steps I always take to ensure I’m ready for success going into the new year.
• To begin this homesteading journey, head to http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/grow to access my full library of resources to guide you down the path.
Once again we’ve arrived at that magical time of the year. The special time where hope springs eternal and a new year is upon us. I’ve always loved this last week of the year because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on the past year and plan what’s to come. On today’s episode, I layout the steps I always take to ensure I’m ready for success going into the new year.
• To begin this homesteading journey, head to http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/grow to access my full library of resources to guide you down the path.
Welcome to the old fashioned on purpose podcast as I record this episode. It's that weird limbo week between Christmas and new years. It's kind of that point where you are spending most of your time eating leftover Christmas candy and a lot of cheese. Like why is there so much cheese around this time of year? Like, Holy moly, anyway, you're in this cheese and chocolate induced stupor and you're not quite sure what you should do with your life. Are you on holiday break? Are you, should you get back to work? And anyway, that's kinda where I am. But all that to say I actually really, really love this week. It's always felt a little bit magical, a little bit glittery, just feels full of promise. I think it's because, it's often free of a lot of obligations, right? You know, all the holiday stuff is mostly past. You might have a new year's Eve party, but that's pretty easy. And most businesses are kind of chilling out and there's not a lot of activities and people kind of leave you alone and you just have that mental space where you can analyze and dream and journal and plan. And so I do a lot of that during this week and I wanted to go through some of my very favorite end of the year rituals that I have been doing for a while now. And I look forward to these every single year. And maybe you do some of the same or you just need some inspiration on how you can start your year off with a bang. So that's what we're going to go over in today's episode. I'm your host Jill winger and for the last 10 years I've been helping people just like you who feel disenchanted by modern life. I'll show you how to leave the rat race and create the life you really crave by learning how to grow your own food and master old fashioned skills no matter where you live. Okay, so this week we are home. We didn't travel anywhere for Christmas. You may have seen my posts on Instagram and Facebook where I talked about keeping things very, very simple for Christmas this year we cut out a lot of the extra things that just didn't resonate with us and just focused on the pieces of Christmas that we liked the most. And a lot of time to just rest and relax. I just felt a deep, deep need this year for hibernation. Like I've just been craving the darkness and the quiet evenings and like the forced relaxation that comes, especially in Wyoming when it's snowing, like, uh, you know, 15 times a week. So anyway, I think this year more than ever, I really felt like I needed that peace in that quiet and I'm getting it and it feels amazing. But anyway, in the midst we've been watching movies and we've been sitting by the fire and drinking hot chocolate and all of that stuff. Now that Christmas is over, I also am in a little bit more of a creation, planning, purging mode. So here's what I do generally, pretty much every year to set me myself up for success in the coming year. So first off, this is a fun one. I get to order new seeds. So you've heard me talk about this before, but it's really important if you're ordering heirloom seeds that you get them ordered early because they do sell out from some of the bigger catalogs. So I will go through my seed box, which is usually a disaster from everything I shoved in there, you know, during the growing season. So I'll kind of clean it out, take inventory of what I have and order new seeds. Baker Creek is a great seed company and they send out a beautiful full color catalog. So it's kind of a, a tradition. We get the catalog out, I'll get a cup of coffee and a Sharpie and I start circling and making notes about new varieties to try or old favorites we want to introduce and then we get get online and order them. I'm also excited to order from truly market this year. They're the company that has those amazing cover crop seeds that we talked about in a previous episode. They also have some great just regular heirloom vegetable seeds. So I'm going to be incorporating both of those companies into my garden plan this year. Kind of in that same vein, I also like to decide if we're going to order chicks this spring and then put a date on the calendar, and it does seem a little early to be doing that, but let me tell you, once January and February hit, things start moving quicker and quicker. Is that a word quicker? Maybe it's more quickly things start moving more quickly. That sounds more grammatically correct anyway, and you will lose, you will miss your Mark. So it's not as much of a big deal if you're getting them from a feed store because you're dependent on the feed store schedule. But if you're going to be doing meat birds or shipping in chicks from a hatchery, put it on the calendar. I have to always make sure it's in and around our travel schedule and just be mentally prepared for when that will occur. Okay. So that's kind of my homestead prep. Then I get into purge mode and I know everyone else does spring cleaning. I do like new year's cleaning. I get this crazy insatiable desire to purge and declutter and I haul a carload of stuff to the thrift store. Like I don't know about about you, but I get this ridiculous high, like a literal adrenaline high off of purging. When I, the car, when the boxes leave my car, I like, I don't know, it's just like this weird spiritual experience anyway. Um, I love it. So we'll go through cabinets, closets, get rid of clothes, get rid of extra cooking stuff, get rid of toys, get rid of books. Like I've, I kind of follow the Marie Kondo method, not like perfectly religiously, but basically I've really gotten stricter with myself. And if something does not bring me joy, that's the thing, right? Does this bring you joy? Or if I just don't use it and are, or if I have duplicates, like lately I've been like, Hey, I have too many nine by thirteens, no person needs this many, so let's purge some of those just to reduce the clutter. And it feels amazing. So I probably purge and I like to do kind of a deep clean, you know, the refrigerator like especially on top of the refrigerator. Can anyone tell me why that gets so disgusting? Like it's Epic, but anyway, we wipe that off. We will wash the rugs, wash the throw pillows, sweep and vacuum under things that usually never get swept and vacuumed under. Um, and just kind of do a deep wipe down. I did a little bit of a window wash the other day when it was 40 degrees outside and the Windex wouldn't freeze to the glass, which is kind of a small window here. But, just anything that kind of makes things feel sparkly and ready to roll. Now, one of my favorite rituals of the new year, the part I think this is the one I look forward to the most, is filling out my new planner. I have used passion planners for four or five years now and I know there's a million different planners and everybody has a favorite. Passion planners are mine just because are simple. Um, I don't do the whole planner scrapbook vibe or the stickers and all that. I just keep it pretty basic. And my planner like looks like it's been through world war three by the time the year is done. So it needs to be very functional. But I will go into brand new crisp passion planner and I like to put wasyi tape on the month pages so I can easily find them. And I will fill out big events for the year. I go into the back pages and make lists of goals and my books I'm gonna read and little things not to forget and kind of plan out my year. Um, and I use, cause I know somebody's going to ask, I use these erasable pens, they're called pilot friction pens and you can find them on Amazon. They come in lots of different colors, but Christian and I fight over them. I have to hide them from him cause he steals them and it makes me very angry. But they write super smooth and pretty, and they're 100% erasable. So if you have OCD like me and you cannot handle someone's scribbling something out in your planner, they're a good investment. Otherwise, you know, go with a regular pen and you'll be fine. But I do like my planners who not be super scribbled. So anyway, that was a weird rabbit trail, but there you have it. My favorite pens just in case you were wondering. I'm okay. As I kind of mentioned that in my planner I make a list of the books I want to read this year. So people always say, Oh, what are you reading? And I have to admit that I probably read really boring books compared to the rest of the world. Whenever I see people that I know on like Facebook, putting out their book lists, they're all these cool fiction books. And I'm actually kind of more of a nonfiction girl and I kinda really, really like business books. So I realize how boring that sounds, but it makes me happy. So like this year, a few of the examples on my list, um, there's a couple of different marketing books. There is a book called the weapon, or excuse me, weapons of mass instruction by John Taylor Gatto. I actually started it already and it is rocking my world. Um, it's a, it's a brain tweaker but I highly recommended if you're homeschooling or looking at homeschooling or just unsatisfied with the public school system as it stands today. It is, it's crazy. Anyway, I can't stop talking about it and my poor mom and sister I think are tired of me mentioning it. So I have to of course mention it to you because just so you know. But anyway, weapons of mass instruction. Um, I also want to read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography this year. I've heard it's one of the best autobiographies ever written. I want to get the emotion code. I've heard good things about that. So anyway, let's just a few of them, but they're usually all nonfiction. Um, okay. Also I choose a word for the year and I've had better success with this versus like trying to do the whole new year revolution, new year's resolution things. So I know a lot of people do this. It's not my own idea. Choose a word for the year. Last year, my word was intentional. This year my word is bold and I had a previous podcast episode this week. Uh, why I chose bold and I kind of got into the nitty gritty of that, which is a little bit scary, but I'm trying to live true to that word already. So I choose my word and I like to not just choose it, but I like to break down what that means because it's really easy to let that word stay in vague land where it just, Oh yeah, here's my word. But we actually don't distill it down and say, okay, but what does this equate to in my marriage, in my parenting life, in my personal life and my business? You know, how does that break down? What does it mean? So I like to make little bullet points of what that's going to show up like when I apply it to the different portions of my life. And then lastly, I like to set specific goals in three areas of my life. Family/personal is one. So like the goals that would be in that category would be goals with the kids. Um, homeschooling goals, family organization goals. Um, how I want to get better with my horsemanship this year cause that's one of my passions. If I want to get more fit or build more muscle or lose some weight, like all that kind of fits into that category. Then category number two is our homestead. So I usually list out which projects we're planning on for the year. Our few of our homestead goals for this upcoming year are to finish our milking parlor to get in a way, a better routine for milking. Cause I've been totally slacking on that. Um, and then just to get our garden a little bit more organized and maybe build this really crazy hail netting prototype we have floating around in our brains. I'm not sure if it'll work, but we're going to try. So if we do it, you'll definitely be coming along for the ride on that one. But anyway, that's our homestead. We have family, personal is category one, homestead is category two, and then business is category three. And that includes, you know, where I want to take my business for the year, whether it's what I want to create or different revenue marks or different marks of, you know, this many email subscribers or this, you know, create this system and get this organized. So that is all encompassing there. But anyway, those are my rituals and they worked for me and I truly look forward to them. And I love once we kind of get back into real life when this holiday season is over in school starts again and work starts again. I just feel so much more prepared and just bolstered to hit the ground running and not feel behind and stressed. And I think it's totally worth the little bit of time. So anyway, I would encourage you to start creating your own rituals for the new year, and figure out what resonates with you, what's going to give you the best boost for your upcoming season and then tackle it. So I'd love to hear what you come up with. Feel free to send, send me a direct message or leave a comment over on social and less chat about rituals. So anyway, I hope that was helpful. And if you are meeting a little bit of help with your homesteading in 2020 but you're not quite sure how to start, I happen to have an entire library of resources I've put together for people just like you. And you can get complimentary access to the whole thing over at theprairiehomestead.com/grow that's www.theprairiehomestead.com/grow and that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, and if you could just take a minute to pop over to your favorite podcast player and leave a quick review, that would go a long way in helping other folks find this podcast and I would greatly appreciate it. So that's it. But I'll see you in the next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast.