February 2018 Goals – Use Everything

Every month I review how I did during my last month and plan out my focus for the next month. Since I do these goal posts monthly, you might want to read them all by checking out the goals category. For January, I focused on writing way too much and gave myself a B- for my efforts. Here’s what I’m focusing on for February.

February 2018 Goals

The word “use” has many connotations to me. When talking about people it immediately takes on a negative spin right away. In the context of things though, they want to be used. Perhaps I’ve been reading too much by Brandon Sanderson, who has a tendency to anthropomorphize things in his worlds, but I want the things in my life to have a clear purpose. With that in mind, my goal for February is around this topic.

By March 1, 2018, I will have gone through all possessions, services (online and in the real world), digital files, food and websites I visit and determined which ones I use and which ones I should stop using.

This seems like a lot in a month, but with the recent move, the possessions side has been drastically slimmed down. The digital clutter side is on the rise with the recent addition of my photo scanner, and I want to get that in check before it becomes a problem. The outcome of this goal is to earn more time that can be spent in a number of ways.

This impacts my yearly goals in a few ways. I’ll be able to Be More Active and Slow Down when there are fewer distractions in my life to prevent me from those areas. This (what I use) isn’t an area of my life where I am in dire need of an intervention.

My hope with this is to look at items in my life through a lens of “Do I use this?” and “Will I use this soon?”. This is a question Cait Flanders mentioned in her Year of Less, that stuck with me. It’s about looking at things from a new perspective and understanding if they are things for the “ideal you” or the “current you”. My hope is to remove things that are either not going to be used, or not part of the “current me”.

This isn’t just about stuff either. It involves raiding the food pantry and figuring out what we should eat that’s been waiting for us to make it. That ties in with my year’s goal of cooking more as well. I’m excited to see how this small mindset shift will impact my consumption habits and relationship with my own possessions this month.

What are your goals for February?