You may have noticed that a month ended and another began, and there’s been no monthly goals posts. I’m here today with the two posts combined into one.

Setting monthly goals is my attempt to keep on track with my home goals this year. It’s been a good technique to help me stay on track… mostly. I deviated from the plan a little bit in March. Some things I can cross off, but some things I can’t–I’m trying to manage my neuroses about that.

Here’s March’s report card.

Set up the ping-pong table – Done

We’re loving having the ping-pong table. We play almost every night, and I’ve actually improved a lot. Last night the score in our best two-out-of-three tournament was 2-3 rather than the 3-0 it’s been every other time. Yay, me!

Finalize light fixtures – Done… for now

The DIY foyer light fixture is staying for now. I’m going to keep my eyes open for something better though.

Get my home office under control – Half done

• Sort and file the mountain of paperwork that’s built up on top of the filing cabinet
• Add organizers to the new dresser and start filling the drawers
• Make a bulletin board
• Pull together all of the forms that we need for our taxes this year
• Figure out how to make better use (temporarily) of the closet
• Unpack a few boxes, repack some of the boxes, repile the boxes

Pretty up my work office – Not done. Not started.

• Make a bulletin board
• Recover the shade from my desk lamp

My half-organized office gave me the space and the motivation to sew my Mad Men Challenge dress, which was a fun accomplishment and a different way to spend my time last month. However, I am looking forward to getting the final things crossed off my list this month.

So on to the April goals:

First on the list is finish the projects for my home and work offices. That’s an easy one.

The rest of the list I’m a little bit less sure about, so I’m going to go with a theme, rather than specific to-dos. Given that Earth Day is later this month, I’m going with the theme of “green.”

• Don’t spend any green (on the house) — Good from two perspectives: lessens my consumption, which is always good for the environment. Good for my wallet, which is important as we have to pay off some very expensive solar panels this month.

• Go with green projects — There are lots of things I can do around the house that will make our home environment a little more pleasant, delay bigger reno projects and that I have supplies for already.
• Start planning for a green (outdoor) project – It may not save me any green–and it’s definitely more brown than green right now–but I’d like to get a few quotes to see if it’s possible to get some help outdoors. Cleaning up some of the overgrown brush between the house and the pond is, I think, more than we can tackle ourselves.

Aside: Minutes after taking this picture, Baxter cracked the ice and fell into the pond. Unfortunately, I’d already put the camera away so you don’t get a picture of the “What the… ? Wait. I don’t understand. What just happened? Where did the ground go?” facial expression. Everyone is fine, although puppy is a little sulky because he had a second bath when we got back to the house.

Anyways, back to the plan. I may focus more on project updates, rather than the weekly updates I’ve done so far. If I’m being honest, I didn’t find the weekly reports as much fun, and I’m not sure they were that interesting. They did help to keep me on track somewhat, although I obviously fell off in March. I feel like I’m giving myself a bit of a break in April, but I’m hoping that spring will arrive soon and I can start to look ahead to more outdoor projects.

What did you accomplish in March? Is anyone else going green in April?