Are you ready for 2014? Housekeeping, restocking, and prep.
What did you do for New Year’s Eve? We celebrated “New York New Year” at 9 pm with a bunch of other families, and then came home and drank champagne in bed (just Josh and me, not the kids) as we talked about our plans for 2014. We rang in the New Year as I was right in the middle of explaining my rationale for reorganizing the garage (I know, we’re so boring!)
One thing I have given a lot of thought to in the past few days is the concept of refreshing, resetting, and reorganizing. I love the idea of starting the New Year with a fresh, clean house, a new calendar, a tidy closet. With that in mind, I’m sharing a few of the things I did to refresh, reset, and reorganize my Points and Miles “closet.” It feels great to start the year with tidy shelves and a plan for how to stock them. Have you done something similiar? Here’s what I did:
- Josh and I had a credit card housecleaning session in which we reviewed the cards in our wallets and determined the ones to keep and the ones to close by making a few retention bonus phone calls. By the end of this session, we were 27,500 points richer, we had closed five cards, and we determined that we don’t really want or need four more (but are holding onto them as “bargaining chips”).
- Motivated by the elusive Hilton Anniversary Night bonus (the one I thought I had earned but actually totally missed), I created a spreadsheet to track important bonus spend.
- Armed with triple calendars (mine, Josh’s, and the school district’s), I figured out all of the possible times in the year when we could go on vacation as a family. I want to be prepared in case of a “miles emergency” like the one that happened a few days ago when Delta had those crazy mistake fares! It definitely pays off to do a little advance planning so you can book quickly if you need to.
- I also started a list of department/drugstore store needs and faves (premium towels, luxury beauty products, etc.) so that the next time a shopping portal features an amazing amount of bonus points per dollar, I will be prepared for that as well.
I am ready for 2014! I’m excited to see what the next 12 months hold in store. I’d love to hear what kinds of things you guys have done to prepare and refresh…what are your great ideas, big plans, housekeeping strategies? Bring on the inspiration!
Happy New Year!
You are an inspiration! I can’t say I’ve done anything spectacular WRT NY cleaning/reorganizing. But I have started packing for an upcoming move. I label the boxes with numbers then make a numbered list of boxes for quick reference as to what is where.
I suppose I should tend to the pile of boxes I came home to after my holiday travels – PopSugar galore, Birchbox, BarkBox, ConsciousBox and more. Woe is me.
Happy New Year!
Rebecca – Woe! 😉
I spent NYE knitting. I finished two socks. Yesterday I knitted a little more and almost finished the second slipper sock for Sasquatch sister that wears size 12 shoes. Her slipper socks as almost two inches longer than my size 10’s. Today is a hibernation day due to a bunch of snow. About eight inches in the last eighteen hours. County has declared a level two snow emergency which means travel only if absolutely necessary. If it goes to level three you are fined if you are on the road.
Wendy – Sounds like a productive and cozy evening. Laughing at the thought of Sasquatch socks 😉
Wow about the snow!! Here in California we are in the middle of a drought. It hasn’t rained for months. Right now it’s blue skies and sun, not a cloud in the sky.