The To-Do Blues

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas/whatever other holidays you celebrated and are ready to start the New Year out right! I have quite a few goals and have already started initiating them (Goal 1: Don’t eat cake for breakfast – Work in Progress). I posted on Twitter (@Serestia) yesterday that I'm going to start adding "Feel Accomplished" to my to-do lists so that I will feel good about myself even if I only complete one thing on the list. You can borrow that idea. Pin it. Feel good even when you fail.

But in these things below, I shall not fail!

The Nameless Room

The spare room is pretty high on my list because I am SO CLOSE! I just need yellow curtains, a trip to Ikea, and to get the futon I’m dreaming of from Target’s website. I expect (read: pray to God) that it will be completed by spring. Probably. [Please note that having deadlines for projects is not one of my goals].

I want you in my house! Get in my house!

Re-Organization

Then we start the other project (projects like this is how we test the patience of my husband). 

I like to think of myself as pretty organized and I think if you ask many of my friends they will share the same opinion (I hope), but I find that it is a process. I keep excellent records, spreadsheets, and files but there are other areas of my house that are not what I want them to be. Here's what I'm going to do and you may want to consider doing it yourself! 

Step 1: Easy-mode. I have been keeping records of utility bill payments since 2006. I really only need to keep the last year so I'm pitching all the pre-2013 paper stuff. (I also keep spreadsheets and have the "Bills Monitor" app which is a wonderful tool, I highly recommend it. Setting up all your accounts takes awhile, but once you get the info in there you will have an easier time.)

Step 2: Grunt Work. Post-Holiday rampage. All Christmas stuff put away in an organized fashion. (This will actually lead to cleaning out our hall closet too because I store my Christmas village there).

Step 3: Gonna need a step-ladder. "Re-move" into my kitchen. I can’t find things in my cabinets and I have unused items in them that have been there since we unpacked (in Fall 2010). Make them navigable using matching Tupperware/storage for uniformity.

Step 4: Organize linen closet and other nooks and crannies. 

Step 5: Get rid of stuff! Seriously!

Low on the Totem Pole

The Shed. This is part of Step 5 up there. We have a shed FULL of stuff. It's boxes upon boxes of things we keep for sentimental value, but the truth remains: we haven't used it all this time... we aren't going to.

The patio. Yea... I've mentioned it before. We don't even know what we are doing, but we have narrowed it down to 2 options, both involve taking up the stones that are there now. I have a feeling it will be both options in this order:

1) Let it grow over into a normal patch of grass until we have taken care of other projects.

2) Have a concrete slab poured for the entire area.

Pictured: "Ugh"

The Bathroom. Eventually it will get to the point where the bathroom is the only unloved room in the house. I dislike everything about it, but it's not as easy to tackle as some might think. So it's low on the list, but on my mind. We'll get there.

Pictured: "Grrr"

So what about you?

Have you set up some goals for yourself? Are you going to make your house more livable? Are you going to shed some pounds (that's on my list too)? Are you going to (not) eat cake for breakfast everyday?