Not too long ago, a seemingly-random walk through the Internet took me to some home repair forum on Reddit.
The spousal unit and I live in a fixer-upper, which is a way of saying we physically inhabit an infinite to-do list. We could spend all of our time, and all of our money, working on the stuff that needs to be done, just to wake up to a still-infinite list of things that need doing.
Such is life.
Sometimes, this life-consuming approach is indeed necessary. When you happen upon a large project running up against a true deadline (e.g., realizing the giant, wooden window frame that makes up one wall of the living room is rotting a month before winter sets in), or something that will damage the structure if not dealt with immediately and thoroughly (hello, water ingress in all your various forms!), there’s nothing for it but to suck it up and deal with the problem until it is solved, or at least stable enough to wait for better weather.
That’s not the kind of project I’m writing about today.
This bit of stollen brilliance is for the infinite list of “honey-do” type projects that don’t affect the structure and aren’t health and safety concerns, but still need to get dealt with: The light fixture that’s gone wonky but still sort of works, the bathroom fan that’s on its last legs, the dead tree that needs to come down, installing gutter guards, painting a room, organizing the garage, and so on (and so on). Entropy guarantees that this list will never be finished, no matter how hard you work or how much you do.
The bit of brilliant advice: The Reddit poster1 mentioned that they picked one weekend each month and one project they wanted done. Then, they dedicated that weekend to doing that project.
As with much great advice, it is blindingly obvious as soon as you hear it. And also, it is a deceptively powerful approach.
If it is a project weekend, it’s time to work on the designated project. If it isn’t the project weekend, go do something else. The infinite list will keep. You don’t need to think about it. You don’t need to do anything about it. The rest of your evenings and weekends are free (at least from house stuff) to do with as you please.
As with any new experiment, we only have preliminary results, but they are quite promising.
January’s project was getting the wine-making stuff2 out of the guest room and into the closet downstairs. It’s been a point of frustration for over a year, and it only took a few hours to deal with. When we finished with that, we decided February’s home-project weekend will be “minor electrical stuff.” I pulled out the box of accumulated outlets and switches we want to swap out, made a list of what we want to get done (speaking of dying light fixtures …), and then left it on a shelf to be safely ignored until its scheduled time.
A week or so later, he asked when we were going to get started with the electrical project. I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “It’s still January.” He nodded, relieved, and went off to do something much more fun.
Alas, because of the nature of this stroll through the Internet, I cannot recall whom to thank for this stroke of brilliance. Such is the problem with the random-walk approach to information gathering. If you know where I got this, please tell me in the comments!
The spousal unit makes me wine and roasts my coffee. He’s a keeper.
Love this! I'm always trying to do organizing projects "two hours every Saturday". Guess what never happens. I wonder how my brain/energy would prefer Monthy Organizing Project with one designated weekend... I might try this! I also love how you took care of future you with the list and gathering the parts! Brilliant!
Brilliant advice.