Personal Checklist and Bullet Journaling

It's a new year (although this post is going up a bit later than planned) and everyone sets new goals. I personally never aim to set resolutions because I know I never follow through with them. I usually spend a lot of the time throughout the year pondering how to better myself overall. I want to be more organized and I want to be more minimal - aka cut everything out. I had the mindset to do that for most of 2016 buy alas life caught up to me and I kinda dropped the ball on that. I've been following some Bullet Journal accounts on IG for a while now and I thought it'd be a fun idea to do one myself. Now I'm not in school so I don't need a thorough planner and I have an excel sheet that I use at work to keep my workload organized, so I just needed something to help keep all my notes organized. I don't know about you guys, but I love writing things down so I might as well keep it all in one place. My notebook where I doodle most of my blog ideas is finally running out of space so it's time for an upgrade. I'm also trying to improve myself a bit more and up my calligraphy/drawing game - I've never considered myself very artsy but I do have quite neat handwriting - so I suppose that's a start.

Aside from my Beauty Discoveries for 2016 post earlier this week, you may have noticed that I've taken a short hiatus. I'm kind of just getting back into the swing of things and not having the pressure to get content created and written for the blog. As lame as it sounds, I'm trying to remember what life was like pre-blogging. I literally found myself sitting around for hours wondering what to do with all that extra time. Well I watched a whoooole lot of TV shows (so TV shows to binge watch part 2 to come soon). But I kinda just enjoyed having the time to myself to clean and organize things, and just get myself back on track. I focused more on exercising, preparing food, and even doing some house hunting on the side - it's crazy. I do have posts planned sporadically over the next few weeks, but I'm really focusing on getting the following few things done:

  1. Tidying up my online life. I wrote a post back in October (here) on some things to do, and it's about time I do this again. My poor laptop is out of space and in need of an update, so I'll probably spend a Saturday just deleting old files and doing some maintenance.
  2. KonMari all my clothes and place anything I want to donate / list on Poshmark in a separate box. 
  3. Sort through my (ridiculously) large shoe collection and toss old pairs that I'm stupidly holding onto for sentimental reasons and semi repeating step 2. 
  4. Exploring some new restaurants and cafes - I've been in a routine over the last year and am in need of some new change and a bit less regularity. 
  5. Focus on organizing my blog and getting to the items on my blog to-do list here

On the blog front I'm trying to build up my followings across the board this year on Instagram, Twitter, and BlogLovin', so I thought it'd be fun to track my numbers and see how everything grows over time. I'm also working on a few tracker systems to help with better life habits, skincare/makeup usage, and just see how a change in lifestyle may impact my overall life. If you're wondering what I mean by tracker systems, I have a little grid that lists things I want to accomplish each day, some include: waking up by 6:45AM, making my bed, drinking water (cause I'm sh*t at drinking water throughout the day), tidying my room, exercising, etc. And in an effort to use more products up, I'm going to be doing a sort of capsule makeup wardrobe / skincare wardrobe to power through products - especially for products that I know I haven't been reaching for. Using this tracker it's very clear to see which products I'm loving / neglecting, and perhaps if something is very neglected I should pass it on to a friend / or toss it in the bin. I'm hoping to move out towards the end of the year so fingers crossed that this will help me eliminate a lot of extra "stuff." I also mentioned on an IG story that I was thinking of doing a blog sale on the blog for US/Canada readers - a good few people showed interest so I think that it may just be something I look into! And if you guys know of any ways to donate lightly used makeup to any charities / shelters in the US, please let me know so I can look into those as well.

I mentioned in my last monthly favorites back in November that I wasn't planning on doing anymore monthly favorites - perhaps a seasonal favorites / loving lately type post so you guys can keep up to date with things I'm loving, but I didn't want to have to force myself to find things I "loved" each month. I'm planning on doing monthly edit posts just so you guys can get to know a little bit more of the things I'm up to. I'm thinking of putting a few snippets of my bullet journal in these monthly edit posts so you guys can see a peek into that, but perhaps I may just do seasonal bullet journal updates. (PS if you're bullet journaling for your blog / life please share below so I can gain some inspiration!!)

In the meantime I'll be spending a lot of time cozying up, drinking tea, and burning all the candles while I read my new Little Book of Hygge! What are some things on your personal checklist that you're interested in ticking off this year? And have you been swept up in the bullet journaling craze that is life?