5 Lessons I learnt in 2020

In many ways 2020 has been a year of both ups and downs for all of us.

Personally I started the year by giving birth to my second son and soon found that I needed to be quarantined for my own safety. So it was paramount that I adapted and learnt some new things.

I found out I was in a high risk group so I can, if I get the virus be in a very bad shape. worse than the ‘normal’ bad reaction to COVID.

This made my year harder but it also gave me moments of joy. Being able to go on being a stay at home mom for both my boys but it’s taking a toll and the hope is that 2021 will be better in every aspect.

That I get to do what I love. I get to do what I need for my own health, my family stays healthy and we come through on the other side of 2021 better than at the end of 2020.

Lesson 1

Don’t take things for granted.

Life can change on a second.
Hearing that one in the family has a cold means you can’t visit with that person until the test comes back negative. And they can’t visit you untill your test is negative if you or the kids have a cold.
You can’t visit other family members that lives far away because you don’t want to make them sick.
Having two kids under the age of 5 at home because of a light cold, that makes you cherish the times when everyone is healthy. I love my kids. I do. but the oldest can drive me bonkers at the drop of a hat.
Like this Christmas. We had 3 people that might have made Christmas less than it was if they had tested positive: my mother-in-law, her partner or my sister-in-law who was hosting Christmas Eve this year.
But luckily it was only very bad colds they had.
I am not taking thing’s for granted again, that’s for sure.

Lesson 2

Know how to bake.

I’ve learned this year I had to brush up on my baking because bread was not always available in the store and seeing as our economy was in a slump it was prudent to sve as much as possible.
My husband worked less hours and even if I got my maternity leave payment every month it is about half of my regular pay. So we had to make do with less money which is fine seeing as I could do a lot of things homemade like bread.

I cooked a lot from scratch and we had access to a store where we could buy in bulk which helped tremendously with both budget and time spent shopping.

Not only because buying in bulk meant we didn’t need to go to the store as often but also because I baked every three days and using about 1kg flour each time.

Lesson 3

Know how to budget.

This one lesson is something that will follow us into the new year and beyond because we will start the year with a very low family income and that is ok because we have been able to put away some savings due to the budgeting and meal planning we have done this last year.

All we did to tame the money flow was to write down all the bills we had in an excel spreadsheet and then every month fill in what the different sums were for the different months.

We then put in the income we had and subtracted what we got with what we spent on bills.

I wish I had started this blog earlier though.

Lesson 4

Try to find happiness in the smallest things.

This lesson was a hard thing to learn when I couldn’t do what I usually would be doing.

I had to adapt and find new ways to activate both myself and my kids.

A tip is to get out of the house even if it is just to walk around the block or take the kids Pokémon hunting (yes Pokémon GO is a big thing with our 4 year old.)

Lesson 5

If all else fails there’s always chocolate. One of my new favorites being milkchocolate with small pieces of gingerbread cookie in it.. yum.

How did you cope and what lessons did 2020 teach you?