Our Resolutions for the Year: Home, Family, and Smarter Choices

Each year we publicly share a handful of resolutions in the hope they’ll motivate us to take action and move projects forward. So, without further ado (and yes, there’s a gratuitous Clara picture below), here are our plans for the year: practical, personal, and a little playful.

Resolution #1: Be bolder with decorating and renovating choices. This year we want to embrace more color, contrast, and creative risk. We’ll stop defaulting to the safest choices and lean into what excites us—even if that means learning from a few mistakes along the way. Mistakes are often our best teachers, and welcoming them helps us discover a stronger sense of style for the house. Concretely, we plan to try richer paint colors, mix unexpected textures, and experiment with statement pieces that create contrast instead of blending in. We expect some projects to go beautifully and others to teach us lessons, but we’re ready for both.

Resolution #2: Find better balance between home projects and family life. We want to avoid pouring every ounce of time, money, and energy into the house until life outside our renovation bubble disappears. Now that we have a little one, it feels especially important to schedule family time—day trips, occasional vacations, and simple outings like the park or the zoo—so Clara grows up with a few adventures beyond our construction zones. Because the internet never sleeps, we’ll also try to set clearer boundaries around work: fewer late nights, protected weekends, and true downtime on vacations. Small steps like blocking family time on the calendar and setting an evening cutoff for work email should help us actually enjoy life while still making progress on projects.

Resolution #3: Save more and be smarter with money. We’ve always been thrifty—some might even say tight—but we want to be more deliberate about saving for emergencies, retirement, and future college costs. That means learning practical, low-effort saving techniques that fit our lifestyle. For us that currently includes getting comfortable with couponing basics: loading digital coupons to our grocery loyalty card, clipping or buying Sunday paper inserts when the deals match what we buy, and printing online coupons for items we regularly purchase. We tried a couponing experiment recently and saved $19 on a grocery trip just by using a few offers—proof that small changes add up. We’ll keep experimenting and share what works and what doesn’t as we learn.

Resolution #4: Dial down people-pleasing and stay true to our voice. Over the years we’ve learned it’s impossible to please everyone. Advice comes from all directions: post more, post less, share more family content, focus on big projects, or keep things small and real. If we followed every suggestion, we’d lose the personality that brought readers here in the first place. We enjoy sharing diary-style posts that show what’s actually happening—the wins, the delays, the budget surprises, and the everyday moments. That balance between honest domestic reality and inspiration is what we love about this space, and we’ll keep refining that voice rather than trying to please every single request. Growth means some readers will like the blog more and some less, and that’s okay.

Resolution #5: Teach Clara a few key home-improvement words. We’re quietly excited about the idea of a toddler who says things like “Phillips head screwdriver,” “cohesive,” or “baseboard” when she points around a room. It may be a parent-only fantasy, but we think it could be cute and practical: basic vocabulary like “drywall,” “hardwood,” “paint,” and “tile” could be useful down the road and make projects feel a little more like family life. My dad once taught me to say “dehydrated” as a toddler, so who knows—maybe Clara will pick up a handful of handy terms that become part of her vocabulary and our shared jokes.

We’re excited to try these resolutions and to keep sharing progress, mishaps, and the small joys that come with renovating, parenting, and learning better habits. Our hope is to take more chances creatively, protect more time for family, get smarter about money, and keep our blog authentic to the way we actually live and work. Thanks for following along as we figure it out—one project, one family moment, and one savings win at a time.

Pssst—check out our weekly photo project featuring the beanette for more behind-the-scenes glimpses.

Pssssst—there’s one more kid-related resolution we posted over on BabyCenter. Any good faux-curse suggestions?