I plan to go through a room a month doing the following:
1. Clean top to bottom, moving furniture, vacuuming the nooks and crannies, dusting everything, cleaning ceiling fans to baseboards, assessing each and every item along the way (donate anything no longer in use and #2).
2. Repair/replace items as I come across them, when needed. I know of several such items and we simply haven't taken the time to do them. 2010 is the time!
3. Touch up the paint. Interior was painted in Fall 2006 and is holding up well. I figure now is a good time to touch up anything I see in order to maintain the paint job long-term.
4. Assess existing decorations and create new decorations. Most of our house has been remodeled in some way, shape, or sort since the purchase in the summer of 2000 (fixer-upper from the get-go). Aside from a few more big projects (windows and bathrooms and furnace and kitchen -- not all of which will be done), I mostly have sewing projects to do at this point. I just got my sewing room back very recently. We had a major flood back in May 2009 and I sew in our "project room." It gets used basically as a garage whenever we have major home improvement repairs/projects to do. I have a long list of items to make and I have most of the fabric already. I need to create designs and get BUSY!!!
My plan:
January - Family office and backyard (soil prep)
(DD is on break from school most of January and my dad is out of town most of the month, too. She'll be helping me or some of this will get pushed to a later date.)
February - Project room and painting projects from around the house
March - DD's bedroom and backyard (spring gardening prep)
(DD's birthday is late in the month and she starts her school break the following weekend. Whatever isn't finished by mid-month is likely to wait until May.)
April - Bathrooms/powder room/laundry room
(DD is on break from school most of the month. These rooms should be fairly easy for my part. DH can handle the repair/replace items with my dad's help, if needed.)
May - Catch-up month since first three months have INTENSE projects/rooms
June - Master bedroom and backyard (summer gardening prep)
July - Kitchen
(DD's summer vacation starts on the 21st. I should be done by then. This room got a lot of attention with the flood renovations.)
August - Living room
(DD is on break from school. This room should be fairly easy as it also got a lot of attention with the flood renovations. The only major thing is new window coverings, which we still need to agree upon and locate.)
September - none
(This is notoriously a BUSY month and nothing I plan gets accomplished, so I'm setting it up as a "break" time from the house.)
October - Linen closet and master bedroom closet and any other spaces I miss along the way although I aim to do the closet of each room as I go (so basically a catch-up month again)
November - Front yard and backyard (winter gardening prep)
December - Storage closet (in project room... This deserves a month of its own and since we already tear it apart in order to get the Christmas decorations out, December seems like the perfect month.)
Other projects:
~ We are planning to take a family vacation this year that got canceled last year due to the flood. I've done nothing towards this, so it'll take a dedicated amount of time. I'm strongly considering 3-4 hours a week starting this coming week until it is planned. Mostly computer work and talking to friends/neighbors.
~ We replaced our sliders in 2009 and now wish to replace at least the two huge windows in the master bedroom and DD's bedroom in 2010. We may just replace all five windows in the house (all LARGE) if we can get a good price. Dad and I can do the labor with DH helping on weekends (or summer evenings).
~ Our furnace is currently unsafe to use (cracked firebox), so we are without heat. In our climate, this hasn't been a big issue. However, it needs to be replaced at some point and we've decided sooner versus later.
~ I am starting with the family office since that is where I scrapbook. I tend to scrapbook mostly in the cooler months and my desk is a mess right now. I did a major re-org of this room a year ago and scrapped all the way up to the day after the flood.
(The day of the flood DD and I had been at two scrapbook stores with friends. The next day was National Scrapbook Day and I already had a ticket to crop with friends. The professionals were busy at our house, so there was nothing I could do anyway and DH sent me off to have fun. I was already packed, so it was easy. The office is upstairs and was not directly involved in the original flood.) I haven't scrapped since that day and I am sooooo far behind!!!
My first goal is to finish the three albums I am in the midst of (one series) while my ultimate goal is to get all physical photographs into albums. A friend and I were scrappin' every week in 2008 and I was doing really well finishing albums! She is back to work full-time, so I either need to find a new local SB friend or make a "date" with myself weekly.
~ I used to work on our digital pictures once a month and had gotten current back then (2008). Um, I went a little crazy and asked everyone I know to send us digital pictures to add to our iPhoto library. Exciting and a lot more work!
Now, I need to go back and get everything up-to-date again (!) up to where I left off and then catch up to current day. I'll schedule this for twice a month this year.
~ We have a main music library and then DH & I have our personal iTunes libraries on our respective laptops. I am the organized type and like to fill in the album and year information when the CD didn't load it properly. My personal library is the smallest in terms of number of songs, but it is the most complete in terms of accurate information. I want to get the main music library complete in terms of accurate information. I'll work on this once a month this year.
~ My biggest NEW project for 2010 is gardening. I've done little things here and there dabbling and learning along the way. In the Fall of 2009, I got involved in a local food movement and lecture series and am now committed to growing more of our family's food. Our backyard is teeny tiny, but I plan to use every square inch I can. We also joined a CSA with another family (splitting one farm share), so I need to revisit the farm's web site and figure out what to grow at home to supplement / complement what we'll be receiving. I'm working on the soil (again!) in January and got some new plants last week (for pots). I need to schedule gardening three times a week this year to really get into the habit of caring for our food plants. (We have a year-round growing season.)
Whew! Thanks for the incentive to write this all out and think it through!!!
I am copying it to Word and printing it out for my weekly folder of things to look at. (I do finances and paperwork every week.) I will spend a few more minutes this week creating tasks in Entourage to aid me in accomplishing all this in 2010!