Monday: Make a List of Projects
Oh boy, this is going to get a little lengthy, bear with me.
Entryway
- Add a boot tray (front door and back)
- Organize Landing Strip
- Mirror
Living Room/Family Room
- Put away Xmas decor
- Unpack remaining boxes
- Hang curtains
- Corral DVDs
Kitchen
- Frame & hang artwork
- Add curtains
- Add shelving
- Replace wibbly-wobbly outlets
- Touch up paint on cabinets
- Remove paint splotches from floor
Dining Room
- Clear off & demo bookshelves
- Patch walls
- Redo moldings
- Add tin ceiling
- Hang (and hem) curtains
My Study
- Fix outlets!
- Clear out random crap
- Add shelves to closet
- Hang curtains
Matt’s Study
- Hang curtains
- Remove ceiling tile
- Connect ceiling light to switch
- Add closet door
- Replace moldings
Bedroom
- Excavate dressers
- Hang curtains
- Add jewelry storage
- Excavate closet
- Remove closet door mirror
- Fix baseboard trim
Tuesday: Purge the Pantry
Our pantry is in relatively decent shape at the moment. This is probably because we only moved in 6 months ago there’s no better pantry purge incentive like moving. Our pantry is also not very deep so we don’t tend to lose things in its depths. We do need to tame our tupperware though and corral some smaller items in bins. The pantry will get a complete over-hall, hopefully within the next year, but it’s functioning decently for now.
Wednesday: Set up an Outbox
We were actually ahead of the game on this one and already started an outbox with a bunch of tupperware from our pantry. I added old hangers some clothes I don’t wear anymore as I worked on other projects during the week.
Thursday: Declutter a Drawer
BAM! I…. didn’t clean out any drawers, but I DID clean out my closet and found some clothes I didn’t even know I had (that’s a good sign your closet desperately needed cleaning). I also picked up some foam core board to redo the dividers in my underwear drawer though. I never put my existing ones back after we moved and I just made use of Kohl’s Intimate Stock Up Sale to refresh said underwear drawer. I disliked my existing dividers (HOFTA from IKEA–too flimsy and doesn’t fit perfectly in a MALM dresser) so I’m going to make my own with the foam core (although I will not be sharing a picture of my knickers on the internet when it’s done. sorrynotsorry).
Weekend: Flowers + Kitchen
There wasn’t a lot of deep cleaning to do in the kitchen since we’ve only lived here 6 months and I did a full kitchen overhaul when we moved in. Instead I chose to do a general cleaning and then tackle a couple of the smaller kitchen projects from my list: touch up cabinet paint, replace wonky outlets, hang curtains.
The outlets turned out to be a way bigger pain in the ass than I anticipated. Our wiring is a little jacked up (yay for old homes?) which makes things incredibly frustrating. First one of the outlets sparked on me AFTER we cut the breaker. Turns out it was still getting a very slight current from somewhere (which one of our testers could detect, but the other couldn’t), but we couldn’t link it to a specific breaker so we had to cut the power to the entire house. Has anyone else had this happen to them? Because it’s absolutely mind boggling to me.
The other 2 outlets I was working on were easier despite having some weird existing wiring happening. Unfortunately after we brought the power back on only 1 of the 3 outlets I replaced actually worked. ARGH! We have idea what’s wrong with one (see “weird existing wiring”) which should be annoying, but fixable and I’m hoping the other one is just a randomly defective outlet, otherwise I’ve got nothing.
At least they LOOK way better, right? We’ll fix them, but at the moment I’m still swearing at them so it’s probably better to take a break. I also think I’m going to need to do some drywall patching around the switch/outlet pair since the reason they were all wibbly-wobbly was that the hole for the electrical box was cut too big so the tabs on the top of the outlets aren’t able to brace themselves against the wall.
By the time we were done fighting with the outlets I was all “I hate electrical!” and “Screw the curtains!” but I did touch up the cabinet paint (it suffered from a couple small drips when we painted the walls), remove the splashes of over-spray from the floor (from when I spray painted the radiator), and did a solid cleaning so I’m calling it a successful weekend.
My flowers from last weekend are still going strong (go carnations!) so I’m going to wait to buy more until this bunch needs to be tossed. Maybe I’ll buy a new potted plant though? Menards has some nice looking spider plants and Phyllis (my cut-leaf philodendron) is looking all hella sad.
Whomp whomp.
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