11 Things

Today's prompt from #reverb10 is: What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

1. Family Drama. I will eliminate this by not being a part of it. It will lift a ton of stress off my shoulders and allow me to focus on MY family and the drama free zone we have in our household (until we have teenagers or a girl!).
2. Laundry. Excess laundry piles. I will be sure to hang/fold the clothes as it comes out of the dryer instead of letting a GIANT pile form for many loads until I'm to exhausted thinking about the laundry to do it. I will feel more organized, which in turn will boost my confidence.
3. Low Self-Esteem. I will tell myself something positive every time I look in the mirror. Hopefully by doing so I can turn my self image around to be a more confident person. Confidence = Beauty. It would be nice to feel good about myself for a change.
4. Wasting Food. I will come up with exciting ways to use leftovers rather than throw them out. I am terrible about eating leftovers and I know that is just a waste of money. I will search for recipes that will utilize the food I have already prepared in the fridge. I will have more money per month since I'm not having to cook as many meals.
5. Eating Out. I don't mean no eating out at all, just a huge limit on the amount per week. We don't eat out too terribly often as it is but I think if we could cut it down to once a week we could save quite a bit of money. It would require me to cook 3 meals on weekends but I think the savings would be tremendous. Maybe then we could pay down our debts faster.
6. Cursing. I don't curse like a sailor or anything but every now and then I find a bad word slip out. I would like for there to be no foul words in my vocabulary. I want to be a wonderful influence on my baby and if I have curse words slip out then I'm not being much of an example.
7. Sugar. I know that it is not very feasible to eliminate it completely but I would like to really limit my intake. I would do this by only allowing myself a dessert on the weekend. ONE dessert. I think if I reduced the amount of sugar I ate I would see a drastic difference in my weight (after the baby is born of course!). I think it would also make me healthier and give me a better self-esteem.
8. Unnecessary Spending. If I really watch what I spend and make sure I'm only buying things a NEED rather than what I WANT I could help to reduce our monthly living costs. If I did a better job at the grocery store I could maybe lower our weekly grocery costs which would allow us to put more toward other debt. Doing this would help us feel more in-control of our finances.
9. Clutter. This is the year I need to go through all of the closest, drawers, cabinets, papers and piles to figure out what needs to be purged, donated or kept. I think if I were able to get rid of the clutter it would help my stress level. Clutter is like laundry, if the pile is big than I get to overwhelmed looking at the pile to conquer the pile.
10. Amount of television I watch. I will admit that I watch WAY too much television. I plan to turn the television off for majority of the day so that I can focus more on Rowynn and the housework that needs to get done. If I could, I would cancel our cable all together. I know that Rusty would miss having ESPN if we did though. My limiting the amount that I watch, I will have more quality time with the baby of the house.
11. Fried Food. If I were to stop ordering anything fried, I would make a dent at my weight loss goals. I also would improve my health, which would help me feel better about myself. I really want to be a good example for the kids and to do so I want to be a healthy person for my kids to look up to.

It is all kind of random but there you have it, 11 things I would like to eliminate (or cut back on) in 2011. I can't wait to share another year with you wonderful folks.