March 2020 End of Month Review

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The entire world has changed over the course of the last month. All of our goals and plans were put on hold for the time being. We considered skipping this post but we thought it was best to keep some sense of normalcy during this isolation. We have no idea the impact that Coronavirus will have on our upcoming trip. Will we still be able to depart in September? Will we be able to sell our house?  Will we delay it for a few weeks? Months? A year? Will we fall back on plan B which involves leaving later in the year and spending the first winter living in Florida? I think that we will still end up taking our trip at some point in the future but I’m unsure of when that might be.

March Goals

• Continue Decluttering/Minimizing Belongings
• Eat Healthy/Dietary Changes
• Work on Our House
• Continue Planning our Trip
• Read Three Books
• Blogging/Vlogging

Continue Decluttering/Minimizing Belongings

This is one of the few things on our March Goals post that we actually kind-of achieved. This month was so weird and that weirdness will be continuing for quite a while.

We have been decluttering many things around our house. We have been using loads of our craft supplies to keep the kids occupied while everything is shutdown. We have also been using tons of our consumable types of toys such as bubble solution, Play-Doh, and glow stick bracelets. We had packed all of our excess art/school supplies and toys into boxes in the basement about a year ago. It made it much easier to keep our home tidy. We didn’t want to get rid of them until just before we left. We had decided to not buy anything new. We restock the kids’ art/school boxes and replace broken or outgrown toys from the basement boxes. The kids have been so happy to have the extra art supplies. We have also traded out toys a few times to give them more to do.

Since we are currently stuck in the house, we have set up a large bookshelf in our front entryway. We already had it in the basement so it was really easy to set up and completely free. We had many boxes of books in the basement that we have set aside over the years. We set the bookshelf up with board books and picture books towards the bottom. There is an entire shelf dedicated to coloring and activity books. One is chapter books for Isabella that she hasn’t read yet. The top shelf is for puzzles.

This bookshelf was helpful in keeping the kid’s occupied and helped to keep their rooms cleaner since the books are housed elsewhere.

Obviously, our pantry took quite a hit as grocery stores around us emptied. We were very thankful to have food on standby. As a large family, we always try to keep at least an extra weeks’ worth of food on hand during cold and flu season. You never know when somebody might get sick or too busy to get to the grocery store.

Eat Healthy/Dietary Changes

We have made some improvements to our diets including drinking more water. We had started a diet to reduce inflammation but have struggled to continue with it as the grocery stores have had much less stock than usual. We have avoided eating red meat and cut way back on our sugar consumption.

Work on Our House

We have done some work on our house. Anything that we already had supplies on hand to do, we have been working on. We are avoiding going out as much as possible so we have put other projects on hold for now.

Continue Planning Our Trip

When I have quiet free time, I have continued to research places we want to visit. I have been noting the best time of year to visit and how long it will take to see the main things we want to in the area. I’ve continued to add it to our trip because we still intend to take this trip in the future and I find it relaxing.

Read Three Books

One of my personal March goals was to read three books. It has been hard to focus this month with everything going on.

I finally finished You Are a Badass and will be writing a review of it soon. If travel guides count as books, I have read two more but I’m not sure if they do.

Blogging/Vlogging

This has been a weird time. We have chosen to keep posting on this blog. We put our scheduled posts on hold and tried to focus on things that would help during this stressful time. We tried to include things to help keep people occupied and entertained while they stay at home. We sincerely hope that our readers have found these posts helpful during these uncertain times.

We are currently discussing whether we will be putting together a goal post for April. If we do, it may look a little different than our usual monthly goals post. I (Crystal) do most of the writing here on the blog. I will be doing my best to continue to get these out to our readers but please understand that the coming weeks may be incredibly difficult. I am a staff nurse at a local hospital. We don’t know how this pandemic is going to change our lives in the near future. We do have posts on standby that were scheduled before all of this began. We may choose to post them to keep to our three times a week posting schedule. I will do my best to keep you informed of our situation as this goes forward.

Best of luck and prayers for health and safety from our family to yours! Continue the good fight. Keep isolating and stay safe!

You might also enjoy:

March 2020 Goals

2020 Goals – Preparing for Long Term Family Travel

Our Self Isolation To-Do List – 70 Things To Do While Stuck at Home