By Dawn Barnes
Senior Extension Agent, Family and Consumer Sciences
During my 4-H member years, we were encouraged to “Make Your Best Better.”
At that time in my life that meant things like expanding my sewing skills from sewing simple seams to putting in zippers or practicing talking in front of groups of people without my knees shaking.
At the beginning of a new year many of us make a list of changes we want to make in the upcoming months. Weeks or months ahead we are feeling down or low because we have been unsuccessful at making those changes in our lives. Would we be more successful if we rethought our list? How about a list of strengths we would like to improve…. make our best better?
You like to cook but, you know that you could add more vegetables to your meals. Resolution; try four new vegetable recipes a week. You enjoy listening to music and find yourself moving along with upbeat tunes. You want to exercise more. Resolution; spend a total of 30 minutes each day moving along with your favorite songs. You find it easy to make a shopping list and stick to it but don’t do as well in other areas of spending. A spending list could be viewed as a bigger shopping list. Resolution; develop a spending list for household spending.
A key piece to accomplishing the items on our lists is to have resources to support our efforts. Our Virginia Cooperative Extension website (https://ext.vt.edu/) has resources addressing most aspects of your life; Food and Health, Family Financial Management, Child Development, Gardening, Home Food Preservation and many others. Be sure to check other states’ Cooperative Extension websites for additional resources.
If you like the resolutions identified in this article, here are some additional sites with information that might help accomplish them. https://fruitsandveggies.org/ https://americasavesweek.org/ or https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ And of course, don’t forget your local library.
