Welcome 2010

I have never been a huge fan of resolutions. I am not really sure why, but I don’t really remember ever making “New Year’s Resolutions” even as a kid. Maybe it’s because if I labeled it such, it was bound to fail simply because of the failure rate of resolutions.

A few years ago thanks to a suggestion from a friend, I embarked on a new concept. Goals.

Goals strike me as a much more forgiving concept. You can strive for your goals hard, and never quite make them, but the important thing is you tried, right? See so much more forgiving than resolving to do something!

2010 brings the return of the goals since I dropped them off big time in 2009 while we packed up our house and moved.

As usual, my goals are going to be home based. I realize I could make goals that have nothing to do with the house, but this year more than others I need the home based goals.

We bought our new house this past year and life kept moving along. Life didn’t seem to want to stop and give me a chance to unpack, set up, settle in or simply to make my new house a home.

Sure, it’s our home. But as I look around I don’t find that homey home home feel. It needs stuff, it needs attention, it needs paint, it needs organization. And I wonder routinely (and a touch concerned-like) if I will ever get a house to a point where I don’t feel like I am working on it all weekend, every weekend. I eventually want days where I can just cook and do laundry and sit around my perfectly decorated, exactly how I want it home. I need to work to get it to that point.

A new year seems to me to scream organization. It’s cold outside, so naturally I look inward. Straight in to the guts of the house. And if my house has guts, they are located in the Master Closet and Master Bath Linen Closet #2.

(Yeah, I had to get that in there… my previous entire house had only one linen closet and now I have TWO in the Master bath!)

I had grand intentions when we moved into the new house of not letting my Master Closet plummet to the depths. But plummet it has. There are clothes on the floor, a few boxes that haven’t been unpacked and clothes hanging up that I will never, ever, ever wear again.

We have a Goodwill pick up arranged for January 15th where we are getting rid of a few very large items and I would like a few boxes of clothes in there as well.

My closet IS January Goal #1.

The closet must be cleaned out, clothes and shoes sorted through and boxed up for surrender to the needy. Have you noticed me wearing old clothes the past two days? If so, I will tell you why… because I am going with that 6 month rule! If I haven’t worn it in 6 months it is moving on! And well, there are a few things in there that I don’t want to have to place the ax to, so I wore them this past weekend. But that’s our secret, right?

Once the closet is cleaned out and clothes and shoes organized there are a few things I will need to buy. I bought a key hanger from Target and used it for belts at the other house and now I want it. And since I am not going to go and ring the doorbell at the old house with a screwdriver in hand, it will require instead a trip to Target. Same for the hooks that I hung purses on. I need a place to hang my purses.

The biggest problem with BOTH of these plans is where to put the hooks and belt hangers? See our Master Closet has LOTS of shelves and built in things. Great, right? Yeah, but someone forgot about the purses and belts! This is something that will have to be figured out.

January Goal #2 is my linen closet. I never really emptied and organized anything. When we moved out of the old house I just took the organizer bins that held everything and put them in a box. Then I took them out at the new house and haven’t done anything with them. The linen closet needs purged and organized.

Neither of these tasks are large or time consuming, but both are things that NEED to be done and will contribute to my peaceful calmness I attain from having organized bits in my house. I can do these things while the kids bathe, and it isn’t going to impact my weekends or our budget (that is recovering from a holiday trip) adversely.

I have vague thoughts on the coming months… but of course AB wants buy in on anything very large or major. Organizing the closets brings only a sigh of relief from him that I am not going to be waving paint chips around or barking orders.

-We want to transform our wine closet from being a non-descript closet with cases of wine on the floor into a welcoming walk in closet with a wine rack and other miscellaneous things. Cost estimated at about $300 and two solid days of work.

-Pull outs-ville. Love my pull outs in a few of the kitchen cabinets. Love my big (recently organized) pantry. Cannot for the life of me figure out what to do with our spices. And we have LOADS of spices. We had in mind what we wanted – those hidden cute little pull outs nestled in next to the stove – but since we aren’t redoing our entire kitchen for spice racks, I had to go back to square one. Or at least to Google. And I found these:

Ready to be installed pull outs that hold spice bottles! And that will fit PERFECTLY in the current spice jamboree cabinet that is 10” wide and each pull out is 3” wide. In theory, we can fit three in the cabinet side by side by side. Cost estimated at about $400 for hardware and two days of my husband’s time whining and moaning. But a large payoff is anticipated.

-Dining room. Have the table, have the buffet/china cabinet. Must paint. Must, must, must get rid of the swirly 90’s stenciling done over the doorway and the maroon curtains and light fixture. Cost anticipated at about $500 including color consultation with a friend who has been newly annointed with the label interior decorator. I will have a nicely painted, color coordinated front of my house. I will.

-Play Room. Oh my. This is a big one. AB wants to rip out the carpet and put in bamboo flooring. The carpet is awful and AB has a deep seated need to put in a floor. It is a very square room and will be a great place to start. The needs for this room though are endless. An organizing unit for toys, a TV/entertainment center, a sofa or other seating… we would use this room more as a family if it were more organized/user friendly. This goal has so many layers to it.

-Outdoor area. We have been talking about what we need as far as an outdoor living area and are working on reaching consensus. It will be a big one, but one that I know we will enjoy and use based off of the success of our pergola/patio at the other house. We need this outdoor living area in this house and presently we have nothing that works for this. I expect this will be a multi-month project this spring.

-Master Bedroom. Our Master Bedrooms have never been anything to get excited about. We need paint and storage space and something nice to sit in. And frankly, I just need all the boxes lined up under the window unpacked. Of course then I need somewhere to put the stuff, which means some type of storage thing. I am thinking about a long bench for under the window with storage underneath. I could use two of them – one for the library too – anyone seen anything like this?