Balancing Life Update

Back on 2/5/2010, I posted on my blog about balancing life and with 10 different categories which I took note of from the body and soul magazine. I haven’t really practice it until I notice tax date is due and a quarter of the year is gone and my life is not balance.

Everyday I wake up and seems to run around doing everyday chore feeding baby, entertain baby, cooking, cleaning, food shopping, pediatrician, paying bills, more feeding, cooking, food shopping etc…

So I decided to check off the month (rather weekly) of April for the 10 categories that is listed on balancing life. So far, I have done 8 out of the 10 categories and leaving community, dreams and goals not done anything at all. And this makes it clear that I am not living my life by my values.

There are a few very important items on my to-do list (in spreadsheet as I mentioned on my 8/30/2009) that have been lingering for the longest time. I have been ignoring them because I have been putting a lot of time into my everyday chores. Since checking off the categories on balancing life, I started taking action on those items. I do my everyday chores but I make sure I get started on those important to-do items. I finished one of them yesterday in one day. I started another one today but I got stuck. I am intent to finish this within the next 2 weeks.

This seems to work for me. Do my everyday chores; get started on a very important to-do item each day. And if I can’t finish it, I make sure I finish it within a time frame before going to the next one. I make sure I don’t start too many projects/to-do items. Otherwise, time and energy is wasted and nothing gets done.

Tax Date

Have your done your personal income tax yet? It’s due today. Your tax return must be postmarked by midnight today.

Have you heard of the term “tax freedom date”? If not, it was April 9 this year. You should check it out online and educate yourself.

Clutter and Depression

Recently I’ve been feeling depressed. I notice part of it is because of the clutter from incoming mails. I found myself doing too much with the incoming mails – especially the bills…I pay them, sort them, scan them, file them and then shred them and only keep the last three months in filing cabinet. All in all it’s a lot of steps. When I was ready to shred them, I have to take time to go to the filing cabinet to pull them out for shredding.

My husband and I finally come to an agreement to just keep important documents such as tax returns, insurance documents (life, auto, disability) and only keep the most recent bills that come in in one folder. So when bills arrive, I would pay them, scan them and then shred the previous month and only keep the current bill (in case we need the information when our computer is down or power is out). All of this saves me a lot of time looking into the filing cabinet and only keep the last 3 months of bills.

It’s been a little over a month and it is working very well.