Thursday, September 16, 2010

What to do when the Simple Life becomes hard to Accomplish???


Well finally after years,,,,yes thats right YEARS of procrastination and excuses, we are finally making a start on the "lets make this house a home" thing.  When my Ex Husband and I bought this place almost 9 years ago, I hated the walls and the carpet in the loungeroom.  The walls were all a grotty beige colour and the carpet in the lounge was pretty grotty but no amount of carpet cleaning really ever made it look better.  Now finally after my new Hubby and I being married for almost 3 years already we are finally making a start.  We have come to the decision that this house is where we will be staying for probably the next 10 years at least and we want to make it more "us".

Of course in doing this though, our "simple life" ambition of spending less and recycling as much as possible and trying to become more self sufficient has kind of gone AWOL.  We have so many things that we want to do that we just can't find the time to get any of them achieved lol,,,,and as for spending less....geez that goes out the window when we make a list of all the things that need fixing!!!

I plan on decorating on a shoestring and only replacing what is in need of replacement, but even so the price of paint and floor coverings can be pretty horrendous by themselves!!

The following is my To Do List in no particular order (these are the main big things that I want to get done)
Paint the house room by room (this applies to ceilings as well as walls, doors and door frames and skirting boards)
Decorate room by room as we paint
Declutter yet again
Get our boxes and boxes of items for Ebay/Oztion listed and out of the house
Get our gardens (front and back) looking presentable
Get our veggie gardens growing productively (at the moment we are mainly growing in pots)
Paint the outside of the house
Get our outdoor area turned into an entertainment area rather than just a doggie haven
Finish making my stepson's quilt
Finish my knitting (I have about 6 things waiting to be knitted up that are meant to be towards kids xmas gifts)
Get better at crocheting and make a rug (am currently learning)
Paper Scrapbook the 1000 or so photos I got printed out of my hubby and I's trip to NZ back in 2007
Digital scrapbook the 1000s of photos that I have stored on my computer of photos going back to the 1050s and all of my children's photos from birth to now.
Finish collating my recipes into files on my computer
Work through my recipe file, making each individual recipe, starting at the beginning of the file and working my way through.....currently I have approx 800 savoury meals and approx 1000 sweet dishes with a lot more still to add.

Well that is just a quick run down of the most important things I want to get done.........looking at it written down I can see why I feel stressed about it lol.


Does anyone have any ideas on the best way to tackle my to do list?????  I am normally a pretty systematic type of person, but lately I feel constantly overwhelmed by my list, there just aren't enough hours in the day to get to any of the things listed above as well as keep the house in some kind of clean and tidy order and care for the 6 kids and hubby and the pets.  I think I need to clone myself!!!!! AAAGGHHHHHHHHH

PICTURES found in domesticali.typepad.com and The Simple Dollar

2 comments:

Jan said...

I had to chuckle at your list! I'm a list person myself, although I am trying to ween myself off writing them. My lists carry over from month to month and some things just never come off, and I've even been known to write things on the list that I've just done, so that I can have the satisfaction of crossing them off! Good luck with it.

OurGangof7 said...

Thank you Jan, you make me feel more normal lol. At least you and I both know there are other people out there somewhere in the world that do the same thing.
I like to see things crossed off my lists too and I always get sidetracked from the things on my list by other "more pressing" issues and find that my list just doesn't seem to get crossed off. I think I might do your trick and add on the things I actually do get done lol just so I can seem some accomplishment!!