Inside: We often underestimate the power of small changes. I’m reflecting on 12 changes I made last year that had a bigger impact on my happiness and overall wellbeing than I realized.
A couple months ago, my 15-year-old told me about an idea she heard on Youtube.
“You keep a jar of all the good things. Throughout the year, you write down on little slips of paper the good moments. Then, at the end of the year, you can read back through the good jar. They say it’s really good for you!”
I told her that it sounded like a good idea. “Are you going to start your own jar?” I asked.
She replied, “Oh, maybe…I was actually thinking it would be a good idea for you.”
[Me…picking my jaw off the floor.]
It’s super humbling as a parent when your kids start making suggestions for your mental health, rather than the other way around.
While I haven’t started a jar yet, her idea did inspire me to reflect on the past year and try to find the good.
Related: 17 Tiny Habits for Slow & Steady Wins This Year
12 Changes I Made Last Year That Had the Biggest Impact
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Full disclosure: the past year was a pretty terrible year for our family. We limped through the first half and crawled through the second half.
But looking back, I actually discovered that I made quite a few positive changes that added up to big impact for me and for our family.
Never underestimate the power of small changes.
I hope you can find some inspiration here and ideas to bring with you into the new year.
You Might Also Like: An Invitation to a Life Without Goals (& New Year’s Alternatives)
1. I swapped cinnamon for sugar in my regular coffee.
For years, I slurped down coffee every morning with a tablespoon or more of brown sugar in it.
I randomly decided it was time that January 1st was as good a time as any to ditch it.
Have I lost weight? Nope. But I would say my sugar cravings are greatly reduced (well, most of the time).
It did take me a while to adjust to the lack of sweetness. I made up for it by substituting a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, plus heating and frothing my half and half (THIS manual milk frother works great).
Related: My Simple Minimalist Morning Routine (& How to Design Yours)
2. We brought back coffee tables.
For years, we lived without coffee tables. Kids weren’t hitting their heads on them, and the space looked much more open.
But eventually, we started to miss them.
We wanted places to play games or set down drinks and plates.
So we bought not one, but two of THIS coffee table – one for the living room and one for the family room. And barring a few stubbed toes, we’ve absolutely loved the addition.
We use them all day, everyday. There’s a season for everything, I suppose, and our “we hate coffee tables” season is over.
3. I removed the area rug in our living room.
With the addition of the coffee tables, vacuuming became challenging.
Eventually, I got fed up with the layers of rug over rug. It made moving furniture around to clean a huge pain in the butt.
So I rolled up the rug and threw it into our garage. I suppose it goes along with the “one in one out” minimalist habit.
Coffee table in. Rug out.
Vacuuming is now so.much.easier. Speaking of making cleaning easier…
4. I made a hated chore easier (i.e. I bought at electric sweeper).
Unfortunately, our upstairs living area is broken up into several different kinds of flooring.
The living room and hallway has carpet, the kitchen has seriously in need of rehab hardwood floors, and the sunroom has tile.
Vacuuming the kitchen was such a pain using our big vacuum that I always avoided it. I also hate sweeping, so I avoided that, too.
And then our 5-year-old begged for an electric sweeper (similar) for Christmas.
Cue: angels singing.
I finally don’t hate vacuuming the kitchen. Plus, the kids can easily sweep up their own bedrooms, too.
I have dreams of all hardwoods upstairs and robot vacuums…but I’m not a millionaire, so an electric sweeper is the best I’ve got right now.
Related: The Only Minimalist Cleaning Supplies You’ll Ever Need
5. I block scheduled weekly house cleaning tasks.
Every night, the kitchen counters get wiped down, and the dishes get done.
I used to break up my weekly cleaning tasks like cleaning bathrooms, assigning one task to each week day.
But I hated it. Call it the undiagnosed ADHD, but I do much better when individual days have a singular focus.
By shifting those weekly cleaning tasks to Sunday mornings (and work to one day a week), I am able to dedicate my full concentration to my family on the other days of the week.
Block scheduling revolutionized not just my cleaning, but my entire week.
Related: How to Stop Obsessing Over a Clean House
6. I completely changed how we do hand soap.
One day while visiting a friend, I was introduced to automatic foaming soap dispensers.
A long time ago, we used Dr. Bronner’s scented liquid castile soap and mixed it with water in regular foaming soap dispensers.
That worked fine, but I eventually tired of the dispensers getting clogged and/or breaking. Plus, Mrs. Meyer’s lured me back in with their pretty soap bottles and delectable scents.
But when we moved back to a cold climate, my kids’ hands started to seriously suffer. They were constantly red, chapped and painful.
Once we purchased THESE automatic foaming soap dispensers and combined it with Dr. Bronner’s unscented castile soap, their sore hand problems pretty much disappeared.
(Side Note: My oldest has eczema, and she started using the same soap as her regular body wash, and her eczema all but disappeared!)
I put three “squirts” of the castile soap and fill the rest of the dispenser with distilled water. We spend much less on hand soap AND our hand problems are gone.
7. I finally got a diagnosis and started taking a low dose antidepressant.
This year kicked my butt. We sought diagnoses for some of our kids, and since neurodivergence tends to be genetic, it made me wonder about my own potential diagnoses.
I long-suspected that I was on the autism spectrum, but I didn’t know that I also had ADHD and PTSD.
The PTSD side of my diagnosis pushed me to finally do what I’d been putting off for six months (or years?): going on an anti-depressant.
For whatever reason, I was super resistant to going on a long-term medication. But the past year has wreaked havoc on my mental health.
After I weaned my youngest, I started to also have relatively severe PMDD symptoms. For a week and half out of every month, it felt like the world was ending.
I was extremely reactive to every little thing, crying at the drop of a hat, hypervigilant that every little sound in the house or car meant a repair was imminent or every behavior by a child meant another crisis was coming.
I’ve only been on the lowest dose of Prozac for a few weeks, and I am already much less emotionally volatile.
I mean, the car broke down last week (a normally sob-inducing event), and I didn’t bat an eye or shed a tear. That’s PROGRESS.
I’m also much more level-headed when it comes to parenting challenges. Finally, not every bump in the road feels like the end of the world.
Overall, I’m a much better mom – and person – because of medication. If you’ve been considering it and wondering if it’s worth trying, I think it is.
It might not be forever, but it might be what you need to be the best you in this season.
Related: 10 Things I Stopped Doing That Made Me a Happier Mom
8. I limited social media – both creation and consumption.
As angry as I am about the potential Tiktok ban (we all know it’s NOT about national security), sometimes Tiktok does cause me anxiety.
Especially after the election, I needed a break.
And when I randomly decided to attempt to repurpose Tiktok content on Instagram, I realized just how hateful so many people are today. I don’t need that.
Limiting social media for my own mental health was the best decision I could have made.
(Meta knows exactly where it can go. If I could live without Facebook, I absolutely would.)
9. I rearranged two rooms.
My favorite way to bring new life to my home without buying anything is to rearrange.
I hated being in our TV room to watch shows with the kids. The solution? Rearrange!
I angled and repaired the couch, which then made it possible to rearrange the lighting. Now I love being in the room.
I also rearranged my sunroom and set it up in a way that makes it feel like I’m alone, even though the room is open to the kitchen.
10. I made my bedroom into a haven, and I finally enjoy retreating to it.
Ok, ok, this was possibly a *big* change, not small, but I wanted to include it in this list, and since it’s my list, here it is.
For years, I spent very little time in my bedroom. I was busy taking care of kids, nursing babies, sleeping in kids’ beds.
But after my youngest moved out of my bed a year ago, I realized that I very much needed a retreat. A beautiful, safe space to go when I wanted to be away from the sometimes chaos of five loud children.
So we spent some of our tax refund money last year on revamping our master bedroom.
We purchased…
- new bedding & bed frames,
- new curtains, and
- a new couch slipcover.
We put up board and batten using THIS tutorial with fresh paint. And finally, I have my retreat.
It’s the cozy, safe space that I didn’t know I needed. I’m so thankful!
11. I repaired items, instead of buying new.
Our IKEA sectional is getting close to ten years old, and it is definitely showing its age. When boys have spent years jumping on every single cushion, the springs were very worn out.
I hated sitting on it to watch movies with the kids. It was so terribly uncomfortable!
But since we don’t have a few grand sitting around for a new sofa, and I didn’t want to send it to the landfill, I decided to fix it, instead. I ordered new springs and replaced half of them, and it made such a big difference!
We will likely replace the rest next year.
Also on the repairs note, I had a rip in a long black winter coat that I loved. I didn’t want to throw it away, but it also wasn’t great for donation since it was ripped.
Enter: Noso patches.
I ordered THIS one, and patched the coat. Now I have two to rotate through – a black one and a beige one, depending on my mood.
12. We joined a secular, inclusive co-op.
Finally, we are working towards rounding out our homeschool community with more people who share our values, and I cannot think of a better year to have joined our secular, inclusive co-op.
We have a lovely local weekly homeschool park meet-up (when it’s not frigid as heck), but we wanted to mix it up with adding a secular, inclusive community.
The kids are in a few classes each out of a five period “school day”.
They are learning how to be in classes and how to function in a much more kid-friendly classroom setting. And we are building community with like-minded people, which was particularly helpful after the election results of 2024.
If you haven’t found your homeschool community yet, keep at it! It might take combining a few different groups to get it right.
What changes did you make last year that made the most difference? Share in the comments! I’d love to hear.
