2014 - WITH

Last year my New Year's Resolution was to go without one thing every single day, the thing varied from month to month.  I had limited success.  I tended to forget or just decide that it was worth paying the dollar fine to the charity fund.  With a little more reflection I think there were two major flaws with my "without" plan.

1. Its inherently negative.  I've been trying very hard to be positive and having to subtract something from my life every day of 2013 was more challenging than I expected.
2. I was stuck on the idea that it would be something different every month.  There were several months where the "without" I chose was arbitrary and not really productive for me.  I should have repeated my "withouts"; I would have gotten more out of it.

So, in 2014 my New Year's Resolution is:  To go with something every day.  I am going to decide what that thing is a little in advance of each month, and I will definitely be repeating the ones that are challenging or particularly helpful.

January will be the month of exercising or stretching.  We have to do one or the other every day.  I think it is very possible and has all sorts of benefits.

Other ideas include:

• Dinner at the table (or a table, it doesn't have to be our home table) every night
• Pay someone a compliment
• Take Leonard for a walk
• Contact (text, email, phone call) someone I don't live with and say hi
• Take my Vitamins

 I am open to other suggestions - any ideas?

The same $1 dollar to charity applies for each day when I fail to do my "with" of the month.  Here we go!

Happy 2014!!

December - Without Popular Radio; and "The Year Without" Recap

December without popular radio went very well.  My theory was that I can look away from a bright ad at the store, but I can't just un-listen to 3 minutes of ads between songs I enjoy.   The biggest negative was that we both got pretty sick of NPR.  I didn't realize they repeated so many stories!  But, the positive was well worth it for me, I avoided all of the obnoxious Holiday commercials and kept up my Christmas Spirit.  Success!


So if it was relatively easy, why are points on the board?  Well, there was one day where Josh and I worked in the garage.  The garage radio is up high and we turn it on by plugging it in (incidentally this is the same boombox I got for my birthday back in 1996).  It's just too hard to reach, so we listened to whatever station was on.  My other tally is from when I was running Christmas errands around town.  It took me several hours and I needed some music to sing along to and keep my energy up.  It worked and as I was doing my errands I was giving money to charity :)

December:
Josh: 1
Kiki: 2

So, this means our final tallys for 2013 are:

Josh: 161
Kristina: 147

Looking at those huge numbers, I'm not impressed...percentages are equally disappointing.  I'll talk about why I think those numbers are so high in a later post, but, lets focus on the positive here.

Look at all that money the Schafers are giving to charity!

We will give out that money throughout the year, and we will keep you posted on how it gets distributed.  If anyone has any great causes in mind, I'd love to hear them.  Right now I know we will be giving money to S.O.D.A., Heifer International, and the Seattle Symphony's Youth Program.

We hope everyone had a fantastic 2013, and here's to an even better 2014!

October, November - Without the Withouts

The Schafer household has had a fabulous Fall.  We've been hiking, had Josh's Mom out to visit, built a coffee table, finished the mantle and the living room, went to the Apple Cup (outcome irrelevant), and gotten in one day of skiing.  We were so busy having a great time that we completely forgot about our withouts. 

October - Coffee:  Ha!  Without coffee...that didn't happen at all.  In all honesty, this may have been a very strong subconscious desire to continue drinking my daily morning coffee, that allowed me to conveniently forget about my without for the month.  Josh and I both failed miserably, but at least we were caffeinated.

Josh: 31
Kristina: 31

November - Chips and Sweets:  This would have been an excellent month for me to remember my without.  I could have done it.  I should have done it.  I was so in the habit of not thinking about the withouts, that I genuinely forgot.

Josh: 30
Kristina: 30

Forgetting is expensive.  Good thing it all goes to charity!

December is about avoiding popular radio.  I will go without listening to the radio, when it is in my control (I'm not going to penalize myself for being in someone else's car, or at the Grocery) for the entire month of December.  NPR is allowed, Slacker and Pandora radio are allowed.  The general FM stations are not.

The purpose of this is to help me maintain my Christmas Spirit.  I don't watch much TV so the radio is my biggest exposure to relentless advertising.  Last year I got pretty cranky listening to the same commercials telling me to buy random crap to make the people I love happy.  I am going to buy gifts for the people I love because I think it will make them happy, not because Snow Mom tells me to or because Radio Shack has great deals on remote car starters.