Resolutions 2013: Home

I think one of life’s biggest stressors for Bobby and me is our house. We actually love our house, but neither of us is all that domestically inclined, so we struggle to keep up with even the most basic household chores at times.

At the same time, both of us want our house to be more of a home, and we want to live in a home that we are proud of. We want to have time beyond the day-to-day chores to really make it us. So these are the things I’ve been thinking about as I’m trying to come up with resolutions for our home.

• Clean every day (even when I’m tired). We have a toddler. This is just not negotiable at this point, yet we stubbornly refuse to clean up some days. It really adds up and leads to less enjoyable weekends and stressful cleaning marathons when we have company coming over. Bobby and I have talked about this so many times: If we’d just do a little every day, it would make our lives so much easier. So this year, I (and hopefully Bobby) will commit to cleaning every day, pushing through this tough time in the beginning where it’s the most work and doesn’t come naturally. I have made more effort to pick up last night and tonight, and it feels a little overwhelming right now. Hopefully it’ll get much easier.
• Make a list of daily, weekly and monthly chores and stick to it. I think this will probably be most useful once we’ve gotten into a better routine of cleaning every day. It’ll take some of the guesswork out of keeping our house really clean.
• Paint our kitchen (finally). We’ve been planning to do this for quite a while. We’ve got colors picked out and everything.
• Plant herbs and veggies in planters for the front flower bed this spring. I’ve been wanting to do this since we moved in, so hopefully this time I’ve started thinking about it far enough in advance to actually make it happen! I actually planted some flowers a couple of years ago (seen in the photo at right), but I didn’t do a good job taking care of them. Plus our flower bed has a bunch of concrete (?!) mixed in with the soil, hence the need for planters.
• Repair/replace the living room floor. A couple of years ago, we pulled up all the carpet in our house to find hardwood floors, most of which are absolutely beautiful. However, the floors in the living room are terrible. They appear to have had tile glued to them, and there are a couple of spots where it’s just regular lumber, as if there was a partial wall that was removed at some point. We haven’t decided exactly what we will do, but I’m pulling for carpet.
• Invest in new blinds and curtains for our living room and kitchen. I would love to do this for every room in the house, but I feel like those things can add up quickly. I want to get some curtains that we love for these two rooms, and the blinds desperately need to be replaced.

Honestly, I’m not entirely certain we will be able to afford to replace the flooring and the curtains/blinds this year, but I think they are good goals and something I want to keep in mind. I think the other things on the list are doable but will take some discipline and hard work, both short- and long-term.

Tagged as: 2013 resolutions, cleaning, decorating, home, housekeeping, resolutions