Renovation Planning | 3 SIMPLE STEPS TO TACKLE YOUR HOME RENOVATION
you're going to find time to work on your house with everything else you have to do.
Are you feeling unmotivated and overwhelmed by your project? Let's stop that. Keep watching
for my super simple three step process to get your home renovation project back on track
and moving in the right direction. We are in the middle of our very own sympathetic
home renovation of our 1905 farmhouse.
We are learning so much about restoration and DIY along the way. So if you want to subscribe
and hit that bell, you will get notified every time we have something new to share with you.
Home renovation projects are by nature complicated. They just are. It's a huge cost, it's a huge
time investment, and it's a huge disruption to you and your life. This is especially challenging
when trying to balance the chaos of renovation with the chaos of every day life. But don't
worry, by the end of the this video, you will have a simple three step process to put you
back in control of your project instead of it controlling you.
While my husband and I are renovating this house, we both work full-time jobs. We don't
have an army of elves to help out. We're doing it pretty much all ourselves. We use this
process every single time we're feeling overwhelmed or just stuck and don't know what to do and
it gets us back on track every time. Let's jump right in. You have a project, or you're
thinking about having a project. Or you started a project and it's just sat there not getting
done for weeks and weeks and weeks. And now you're frustrated with it.
The very first step you want to take is to make a list. I love lists. I love them. All
of my list loving people out there would you please give me a shout out below in the comments.
List haters too. That's okay. I won't judge. I will just try to change your mind. I love
lists because they're basically a brain download. A way to free up your mental space. Once things
are on a list, they're not in your head anymore. So you don't have to think about them. Because
they're on your list.
The list can't forget it. So you can think about other things. Grab a piece of paper
and something to write with and go sit in front of your project, in front of that room,
or that wall, or that piece of furniture, sit at it and say what needs to be done. Write
down everything. Do you need to sweep the room? Write it down. Do you need to paint
the walls? Write it down. Do you need to gather all of your tools that you need for this project
and put them in one place? Write it down. Do you need to clear the room of furniture
so you can actually start on the project? Write it down.
This is your master to do list and it should be everything that you can reasonably know
at this point in the project. Don't worry about putting down things that you're not
sure about yet or you need to finish some steps before you can actually know those things.
We'll deal with those later. Right now this is everything that you can see right now that
needs to be done. Now you have your master to do list, it's time to get strategic about
how to use that list to make your life better.
The trouble with your master to do list is that it's going to have a lot of complicated
tasks on there that are probably going to take a little bit more time. Take a little
while to complete. And there is nothing more disheartening than staring at a list for the
nine thousandth time and seeing that task on there and still not being able to cross
it off. Instead let's move on to step number two. Break down your master to do list. Everything
that you ever do in life is a series of task that are linked together to create a specific
outcome. It's a bunch of little things strung together to make one big thing.
That's exactly what we're going to do with your master to do list. Break down all those
items into smaller tasks that can be accomplished in about 15 to 30 minutes. For example, let's
take the task of painting the dining room. Well, there's a lot that goes into painting
a dining room. First, you have to push all the furniture to the center, put that on your
list. Then you have to remove all the outlet covers, put that on your list. Then you have
to take down all the art, put that on your list.
Then you have to patch all those holes that the art left, put that on your list. Do you
see what I'm doing here. By the time we've broken down our master to do list into all
it's little subcomponents in smaller tasks, we don't have this one big hulking task. We
have a list of 20 or 30 tasks that can all be completed in under 30 minutes. And actually
by taking our big hairy master to do list and breaking it down into these smaller parts,
we've actually front loaded a ton of the thinking for your project.
Then when you actually have time to work on your house, you don't have to spend that precious
time thinking and deciding what needs to be done next. You already know. So you just do
it. That brings us to step number three. 30 minutes of house. Now this is a super straight
forward concept that you can implement as much or as little as your schedule allows.
Everyday or every Tuesday and Thursday. Or every other Friday or whatever frequency works
for you, you commit to doing 30 minutes of something productive on your house.
Just 30 minutes. Huh, I wonder what you can do in 30 minutes? Maybe one of those tasks
that you already broke down in step number two. You have a 30 minute task to do for your
house and you have a 30 minute block of time that you've already blocked off. It's a perfect
match. You know what you need to do and you have the time to do it. All that's left is
the work. And I know you can do that. The trick with this method is that starting work
is usually the hardest part of the entire process. Once you get going, it's pretty easy
to keep going. And if you get to the end of your 30 minutes, and you want to keep going,
that's great.
But also if you get to the end of your 30 minutes and you're tired and you just want
to go relax, that's perfectly fine too. You made a commitment to yourself and to your
house to work for 30 minutes. You worked for 30 minutes, that task is done, go kick your
feet up. The best part is that this will continue to move your project forward slowly and in
small steps. And that will keep up your motivation so that the next day you can see, huh, I wonder
how much can do today to keep moving this project forward?
It's really great for morale. One bonus tip for this method. What if you can't find 30
minutes for your house? What if you're trying to renovate between a new job or kid's soccer
practice or all the other craziness that life throws at us. No big deal. Commit to 15 minutes
of house. Commit to five minutes of house. Commit to one minute of house a day or a week
or a month or whatever you can do. And then make your broken down task list from step
two, just match the amount of time that you have. It's not about a specific amount of
time, it's about creating a system that works for you to keep your project moving forward.
Despite what TV shows and blogging channels will have us believe. Houses don't get renovated
in a day. They don't even get renovated in a week. They get renovated slowly and steadily
by continuous incremental progress over time. These lists that you're creating are not here
to win contest. There is no rule about how many tasks you have to have or how quickly
you should get them done. This is a tool for you to help get more done so you are in charge
of your home renovation project. When you're feeling overwhelmed, look at your project
and make a master to do list.
Break that to do list down into tiny bite-sized chunks and then complete those chunks one
at a time in your 30 minutes of house. I hope you guys found this video helpful. If you
did, I would love it if you would click the like button. Subscribe and share with all
of your friends who have their own home renovation projects and leave me a comment below to let
me know what the first thing you're going to do in your 30 or 15 or five minutes of
house. I have had so many questions asking us how we are planning this renovation, how
we budget it, how we stay on schedule. So I am actually creating a home renovation project
management course for you guys.
If you want to get all the updates on that, go ahead and sign up with your email. I'll
leave a link below. And you will get notified when we release that later this summer. As
I mentioned, my husband and I are renovating this 1905 farmhouse and sharing everything
that we're doing over on Instagram, @FARMHOUSEVERNACULAR. So if you want to see our daily updates, go
ahead and follow us over there.
Thank you so much for watching guys, I will see you next time. Bye.
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