2019 : The year of discarding

2019 started off with a bang.. hanging out with friends and family. I am usually not a fan of resolutions :). But Jhanvi and I thought we would try something different this year.

2019 is going to be a year of discarding. As we get older, I have realized we have accumulated a lot of baggage (literally and figuratively) over our lifetime. We thought for each month in the year, we will discard something (can be permanently, but at least for that month). And it can be an object, habit or action.

Creating this page to track this challenge. Happy New Year!!

  • January
    • Overall goal is to reduce time spent on “browsing” the net. With that in mind, here are three sites, I am blocking discarding for the next 30 days (BBC, Hacker News (catch up with once a week summary news letter 🙂 ), Reddit)
  • February
    • January was a good month.. Spending less time on news has definitely calmed me down emotionally. In February, planning on continuing to reduce “browsing”. Coming to February, the goal is to “discard” casual look for the month. Virat goes to a school that requires him to wear a tie and he always complains how it is not fair that he has to dress up for school when I can waltz to work in jeans :). I thought I also need to stop being lazy about dressing up :). I am so looking forward to folks at work wondering why I am coming in a tie and suite everyday :). Wish me luck..
  • March
    • I freaked everyone out at work by wearing a tie for the entire month of February :). The most common question was “are you interviewing?” :). It took a few days of watching youtube to learn how to tie a tie, but by the end of the month, I have become an expert on single and double windsor knots :). The whole exercise also made me appreciate my jeans even more now :). An additional bonus for February was a last minute decision to “discard” Amazon for the month. It was tough :), but our finances were appreciative of it. The exercise made me realize how much we have come to depend on Amazon for shopping and how much stuff we buy when we really don’t need it. Hoping to continue the new and shopping diet for as long as I can. As I was coming up with the challenge for March, I was surprised about how difficult it was to come up with new things to discard in my life. The kids finally reminded me that we use a lot of plastic in our house. So my March goal is to “discard” plastic when we go shopping for groceries. I am going to turn into one of those earth loving people that bring their own bags to the grocery stores :).
  • April
    • March resolution of discarding plastic at grocery “kinda” worked. I didn’t remember to take a reusable bag most every time I went to a grocery store, but I stuck to the promise by declining bags and carrying everything by hand :). Lots of plans for April, but keeping with the theme so far, going to stick with one thing. So after much thought, I am planning to “discard” elevators for anything less than 5 stories. Not truly discarding, but hey if it helps :)..