Organizing, Saving, and growing

by Aaron Bronander

During this time that we have to save and raise money, there are a few other things that Ashley and I really want to work on.

• Organizing and De-cluttering

Normally, Ashley and I are pretty organized people. We don’t have a ton of clutter but we both realize that there are things we have that no longer serve us. Now that we’ve started this process we both can look around at things and realize that in the grand scheme they don’t mean as much as they used to. In the lens of building a family, they serve little purpose. We are planning on having a few garage sales to raise money. We are using this time we have to de-clutter, get rid of things we no longer need, and generally make space for a new addition to the family.

• Baby Proofing

While we know that we are a little ways off from our goal, we know that baby proofing is going to be a big deal down the road. We are going to try to tackle some of that right now to avoid the rush once we get further in the process. We’ve started thinking about things we need like gates for the stairs, outlet plugs, etc. I have shelves in my office that I need to secure to the wall. Just generally making sure that the house is safe not only for the baby but for us as well.

• Health

Ashley and I have always had this drive to try to be healthier people. We’ve done many diets and tried a lot of different workout routines. Some of the diets we did seemed to work (like low-carb) but contain longer-lasting health effects. We are both realizing now that if we want to be parents, we need to stop trying to “lose weight” and start trying to be healthier people.

A few weeks ago I decided to try P90X again. I had done it in the past and  back then, it was hard but I was able to get through most of it. When I tried it a few weeks ago…. wow. I was miserable, in pain, and just not able to complete it. This is of course partly my fault for being so out of shape but it also got me to thinking “I am going to hurt myself”.

I hurt my foot back in college when I decided I was going to be a runner. I started out great but pushed myself a bit too hard and tore a muscle in my foot. It’s never been the same since. In fact, I stopped altogether. Stopped working out, doing anything. I think I put on the most weight at that point. So, when we decided that we needed to get healthy, this weighed heavy on my mind. I don’t want to hurt myself and end up stopping and being in worse shape.

There’s also something about this mentality that I don’t like. A TON of workouts are trying to push you to the limit, trying to force you to be something you aren’t: in shape. It felt like we needed a foundation, a place to go to ground ourselves and get stronger the right way.

So, we started doing Yoga. I know, it seems awkward at first but when Ashley and I do it, we have a lot of fun and I think we get closer because of it. It’s just her and I in the living room, no distractions, no judgments.

To anyone who thinks that yoga is not a workout, you should really try it. It had my blood pumping and my muscles aching, but in a way that was gradual, not forced. A lot of the concepts of yoga were the things I had already started to realize. Don’t force this thing, ease into it and its more sustainable.

Sustainability is key for us right now. If the workout sucks we WILL quit or worse injure ourselves. We want to work on a really strong foundation and go from there. It also helps us to reduce any stress we have and you just feel awesome afterwards. We may not do Yoga the rest of our lives, but it serves a really unique purpose for us right now.

In addition to that we are just trying to eat less and better foods. We try to cook at home as much as possible and eat fruits and veggies. We are trying to keep things really simple so that we can stay with it this time. We want to continue to be healthy and to help our child be healthy in their life as well. You can only do that by leading by example.

So, that’s what has been going on with us lately. We’d love to hear from you though! Feel free to comment below and let us know if you have baby proofing tips, or de-cluttering ideas!

Aaron and Ashley