Sixteen Days: The Order of Business

I have been so excited about my Sixteen Days plan to bring order back to my house.  After I wrote the post yesterday, I was outside spending time with the wood splitter (we heat our house with wood so many summer days are spent cutting and splitting birch logs) and my mind was absolutely full of ideas for how best to organize these Sixteen Days of cleaning/organizing/restructuring into a reasonable plan that will work over the next few weeks.

I know you are like me in that I never, absolutely never, have sixteen days in a row that are unplanned, unscripted, unscheduled.  In a family, scheduling time to clean and organize the house comes after penciling in all the sports practices and events, church commitments, Fireman's hunting schedule (although this HUGELY works in my favor the next few weeks...mwaahaahaa!), orthodontic appointments, school activities, and my furniture painting days on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My goal is to make the Sixteen Days a priority over the next month and hopefully complete them by September.

When I finally sat down this morning (in a cushy armchair in the waiting room of the orthodontist), I made a list of all the spaces and projects in our home that would be tackled during the sixteen days.  My list turned out to be quite long...longer than sixteen!  So I went back through my list and tried to team a few big projects with smaller ones I didn't think would take as long.  Finally, I had everything broken down into sixteen days.

Next, I tried to prioritize each space or project based on immediate needs or our family's schedule.  This helped when I sat down to transfer all the "days" to my calendar.  I used a pencil for calendaring and am so glad I did as I ended up tweaking and changing days around as I went.  When finished, each week was assigned approximately 2-3 "days" to move forward with my plan, except for my kitchen days which will be, hopefully, four consecutive.

Here is the order I will be following over the next few weeks:

Sixteen Days to Bring Cleanliness, 

Order, and Peace to Our Home

Day #1 ~ Closets/Clothes (placed first in order to determine school shopping lists)
Day #2 ~ Kids' Systems (more on this later~ important to have plans in place before school starts)
Day #3 ~ Studio (transition of downstairs theatre room into photo/show room for furniture)
Day #4 ~ Linens/Floors (how many towels does one family need?)
Day #5 ~ Office Part 1 (cleaning out files, going through paperwork)
Day #6 ~ Office Part 2 (revisiting will, investments, insurances, health plans)
Day #7 ~ Books/Paint Stairs (tons of homeschool books to sort, exciting stair plan!)
Days #8 - 11 ~ Kitchen (SO excited!  Will paint cabinetry while Fireman is hunting with boys)
Day #12 ~ Food Storage (extra fun with my newly painted cabinets)
Day #13 ~ Light Fixtures/Light Switches/Doorways/Baseboards (detail time)
Day #14 ~ Family Room (to be newly set up as theatre room for kids)
Day #15 ~ Bathrooms (go through all cupboards and clean thoroughly)
Day #16 ~ Boys Rooms (finish last 10% of decorating ~ vacuum under beds! hang full mirrors)


I hope to share my journey as I work through each space, offer more details, and to report on my progress.  I'm already feeling more peace knowing I have each of these things scheduled (Day #16 falls on Sept. 4th, right before Labor Day weekend), so today I don't feel the burden of each of the projects weighing on me.  Putting my Sixteen Days' plan on paper feels liberating, inspiring, and DO-able.  I'm so looking forward to it.