New Year’s Resolutions and Plans for 2025

It’s that time of year again already! As 2024 draws to a close, we are making plans for the year ahead and setting goals to help us get the very most out of the coming 12 months. Join me as I set out my new year’s resolutions and my intentions for 2025!

I explored my approach to setting goals and, in particular, New Year’s Resolutions in a previous post. It might be worth giving that post a read before delving into my goals for this year!

Low Buy Year

In previous posts, I have explored my decision to be a full time mum for the foreseeable future, meaning that we are a single-income family living on a budget.

Even before I became a parent, my desire to live a low carbon life and minimise my impact on the environment meant that I tried to minimise spending on material goods.

However, my husband and I have both noticed that we have become more slack in this area. We have been enticed by advertising. Our formerly black-and-white views on what constitutes an “essential item” or “enough” have been skewed.

In particular, we have both strayed from our intentions to minimise online shopping. We live in a rural location, so couriers have a long distance to travel when delivering to our address.

There was a day in December when we had three different courier companies as well as the postman delivering packages to our home. It made us stop and consider the environmental cost of all those deliveries. All in addition to the environmental cost of materialism and consumption.

We knew we had to do better.

I then stumbled upon this video. which really resonated with my thoughts around overconsumption and my feeling that we need to reconnect with our low impact values. So I decided to join in and do a low buy year as well!

Aims for the low-buy year:

• Reconnect with our drive to live a low-consumption life
• Live well within our means
• Rebuild savings and save for our child’s future

Rules for the low-buy year:

• Discuss all purchases with each other
• Approved but not immediately necessary purchases to wait until first weekend of the following month
• No online shopping unless the required item is not available locally
• Stick to a budget
• Groceries, bills, essential animal expenses and moving money into savings are all allowed
• Replace essential kitchen and household items if they are broken beyond repair.
• For all other items: make do, mend, improvise or create.

Pantry Challenge

We are keen to road-test how self-sufficient we really are!

The more I learn about ultra-processed foods (UPF), which sadly have become incredibly commonplace, the more determined I am to feed my family an honest, whole-foods diet. And the more that we can grow ourselves, the better.

The aim of the pantry challenge is to first stock up your pantry with basic ingredients and home-grown food. Then get creative and see how long you can manage on your food stores without going grocery shopping!

So I will aim to do a month without a food shop, probably in autumn this year, as we will have the harvest coming in. I will ensure that our store cupboard is well stocked with any whole-foods ingredients that we cannot or do not currently grow ourselves.

I think that this will give us a good benchmark for how well we are doing currently in terms of our desire to become self-sufficient. And will give us an indication of how much food we should aim to preserve to maintain good stocks in the pantry.

No New Projects

We have a very long To-Do list. So long that we have multiple stratified lists according to priority: 1-2 year list, 2-5 year list, 5-10 year list.

These lists keep getting longer and longer. So we have decided that this year, we need to tackle urgent projects as a priority. Our aim to tick of as many items from the 1-2 year list as we can in 2025.

The bigger goal for me is to really get on top of the house and gardens, and establish a manageable and sustainable routine for keeping all areas clean, tidy and functional. I think that this will free up a lot of my time and mental energy, which I can then pour into the jobs in our longer-term to-do lists!

Stop Watching YouTube

Time is a very valuable commodity at present! We really do not have a minute to spare. There is so much pressure to get the most out of every day.

And yet, it is so easy to get sucked into the YouTube vortex when we just want a little downtime. Before I know it, I can waste an hour or more in the evening, scrolling and watching ridiculous videos for “entertainment.”

I feel that I can view this problem objectively, as I have already reaped the benefits of coming off all other forms of social media. Very quickly, I noticed that I had more brain space, that I generally felt more positive, that I had so much more time to be productive.

This year, I will change my mindset so that YouTube and the internet more generally are seen as tools for work and research, not for entertainment. I have turned off my YouTube history and recommendations to make this transition easier!

I look forward to spending more time talking to my family instead!

I hope this has given you some ideas for your goals for 2025. Have you set any resolutions this year? Drop me a comment – I would love to read about your big plans!