February 2020 Goals – End of Month Review

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This is our February goals end of the month review post. This month was not kind to us. The flu and illness swept through our house. We spent the majority of the month with somebody sick. The flu is still making life hard at work. We are short-handed with people being out sick and the patient census is up.

February Goals

Declutter
Establish a Blogging/Vlogging Schedule
Finish/Post Our First Vlog
Finish Two Books
Continue Planning Our Trip

Declutter

We have been working on this a ton. We had been slowing working through all the stuff we have collected over the years. There are five of us and we have been in our current house for seven years. Before this, we were stationary nearby in an apartment so we actually moved into the house with quite a bit of stuff.

After spending this month sorting through things, I realized we really needed a better plan to get rid of all of our stuff without it being so overwhelming and having a constant mess. There is a fourth bedroom downstairs that we don’t use. We have decided to use that room to store and sort items. We moved everything that was already boxed up to be sorted in there today. As we declutter each area of our home, we can place the items in there to be processed. This will make it a two-fold process but it will allow us to focus completely on one or the other at a time.

We are going to take one box or bag out of the room at a time and deal with it before getting out another. Dealing with it could mean listing it on our Facebook yard sale group, selling it to local resale stores, putting it on eBay or similar sites, giving it to friends or family, dropping things off to charity, setting it aside for our yard sale in the spring, and processing our keep items. I think doing it this way will stop it from being as overwhelming as it is currently. I don’t want to spend the last of my time here stressing out about a bunch of stuff.

Establish a Blogging/Vlogging Schedule

We have finally decided on a schedule that will work for us now and a rough plan for our future schedule. Our blog posting schedule going forward will be Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I think we can keep up with posting three times a week. I know that many people swear by daily blogging but we simply don’t have the ability to do quality work that often. Recently I bought a new day planner and will be using it to help with scheduling. Once we know that we have something that works, we will share more details about the planning and scheduling process with all of you in the future.

Our Vlogging and social media schedules are still evolving but we have started to get a rough idea together. Vlogging 5 times a week is one of our goals once we start traveling so I really need to figure this out. We hope to post at least a vlog a month until we leave. Honestly, we want to do this so that we can all get used to filming and so I can practice editing. I really, really need the practice!

Finish/Post Our First Vlog

Between illness and my inability to figure out the editing software, this didn’t happen. I tried. I really, really did. We have filmed a few times. It wasn’t the best but I used that footage to attempt to make a vlog. It was so bad but I did learn a lot while doing it. I ended up downloading a new video editing software because I didn’t love the one that I had. I’m going to keep trying and I might see if Michael has any better luck figuring out the new program.

Finish Two Books

One of my personal goals for this year is to read more. I picked two very different books so I could trade back and forth as I pleased. I finished The Journey In Between last night. It was such an inspiring read. It’s the perfect book for when you find yourself in a bit of a rut or bored by everyday life. This book gave me serious daydreams. I started You are a Badass but I’m only about halfway through. I hope to finish it in the next week. So far I am enjoying it.

Continue Planning Our Trip

While spending most of my month being sick and holding a sick Octavia, I was able to do a ton of travel planning. I (Crystal) am definitely the trip planner of the family. We have a plan A (if things go perfectly as planned or real close to it) and a plan B (because life doesn’t always go as planned). Our plan B eventually takes us back to plan A. We made some general route ideas together for both options. Plan A has us leaving Cincinnati, heading west towards California. Then heading north to make our way to Canada and Alaska. Once we mapped out a general route, I could start researching places we want to visit and things that look like fun along the way.

Our plan B has us spending our first winter in Florida. We will use this plan if it takes longer to sell our house or if we don’t hit our financial goals. If our house sells late, we don’t want to fight the elements on the trip west. From Cincinnati, Florida can be reached by going straight down I-75.

If it’s a financial issue that leads us to plan B, we will stay here longer to work which in turn leads us back to it getting too cold to head west. We are planning to go fulltime with the blog and start vlogging when we leave. We don’t know what our income is going to look like over the next couple of years and we don’t want to constantly be broke while on the road so we want to have a good amount of savings on top of everything being paid off.

I know Plan B is our backup plan but I wouldn’t be mad about spending months enjoying Florida. We all love Florida. There are beautiful beaches, loads of parks, and we can’t forget about the theme parks. Also, if we decided to stay in one area, we could easily work part of the time that we are in Florida.

This was a busy month for us! What have you guys been up to? Do you have any recommendations for places that we should visit?