Progress Project

I made good progress on the Life Style Challenge this week.  I still need to exercise tonight, but otherwise, I've completed all the tasks.

Life Style Challenge Week 6 Review:

(1)  No bread, no pasta, no rice
(2)  Cardio exercise for 30 minutes, 3 days a week (T, Th, Sat)
(3)  Strength training exercise for 10 minutes, 2 days a week (W, F--or after cardio)
(4)  Average 2 or fewer Triscuits per day
(5)  Pick a new paleo recipe for next week

Not only did I find a new paleo recipe, I made it and it was actually pretty good!  It's a recipe for cookies made from shredded coconut, sweetened with maple syrup, and flavored with cocoa and walnuts.  They turned out a little less sweet than I would have liked, but otherwise tasty.

This week looks identical to last week by design.  The length of one standard American "hour long" TV episode without commercials is about 43 minutes, so that's how long I typically go.  But 43 minutes x 3 days a week is 2 hours and 9 minutes...getting close to the general recommendation of 2.5 hours per week.

Life Style Challenge Week 7:

(1)  No bread, no pasta, no rice
(2)  Cardio exercise for 30 minutes, 3 days a week (T, Th, Sat)
(3)  Strength training exercise for 10 minutes, 2 days a week (W, F--or after cardio)
(4)  Average 2 or fewer Triscuits per day
(5)  Pick a new paleo recipe for next week 

I have also been doing another big closet clean-out.  So far I've tried on and made decisions about all my dresses, shirts, and skirts.  Pants, sweaters, and jackets I haven't done yet.  I have filled a bunch of bags with items to take to Goodwill and my closet is looking a little bit more reasonable (a bit).  Going through my wardrobe, and looking at the new items I've ordered recently from the crazy Jones New York sale, I decided that it's time to revisit the wardrobe database project I had considered months ago--this time, to support my new personal wardrobe challenge.

I'm tired of forgetting about the things I have (and holding on to things I maybe don't really like enough) so my new challenge, starting on Monday, is the Work the Wardrobe Challenge. 

Let me explain first by way of analogy.  In the birding world, among people who are into keeping lists of bird sightings (life lists, state lists, etc.), one type of list is the year list--the goal is to record how many species you see during the year (usually the calendar year).  I've decided to flip this around a bit because even in Coldville, it doesn't really make sense to try to maximize the number of clothing items you wear in a year.  (And any such goal would reinforce my tendencies toward extraneous shopping, and I don't need the help.) 

Instead, my goal is that by April 19, 2016, I will have worn everything I own at least once.

To many, perhaps all of you, this will sound crazy--like having the goal to chew my food this week with my teeth, i.e., not much of a challenge.  But I own enough clothes/shoes/accessories that it's easy to overlook certain items, and it makes me a big disappointed at the end of a season to realize that I hadn't gotten around to wearing something that's now too hot/cold/whatever for the new weather. 

I am not going on a shopping ban or anything like that.  I am perfectly free to add to and subtract from my wardrobe as I desire.  But I hope that this goal will push me into the back of the closet rather than grabbing whatever has just come off the drying rack.

I'm going to keep track of my wardrobe items and what I wear when in a simple Excel spreadsheet.  I've decided that what I want to record is just not complicated enough to warrant the up-front time sink of developing an Access database and data entry forms for.  So far I've added most of my dresses and all of my skirts to the spreadsheet.  Keeping track of things will give me some new data to geek out over, which is always fun.