The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In case you couldn’t tell from the previous two posts, I am feeling a little frustrated about what I didn’t accomplish last year. If I don’t manage to cross off some of my goals for the house this year, I think I will start to feel a little insane–order in my environment means order in my mind for me.

Fortunately, I have all of you being super supportive and offering lots of great suggestions about how I can do a better job of accomplishing my plans. Thank you all so, so much for all of the encouragement and advice you’ve offered this week. It really means a lot to me to go back to all of your comments and to know you’re all out there reading along and cheering me on.

To avoid repeating the insanity of last year, I’ve decided that I need to do more than just post about my goals. Like many of you advised, I need to have a bit of a plan for how I’m actually going to do some of them. And notice I said some of them. I am trying to be realistic and give myself a bit of a break. I don’t have to do everything. But I need to do something to feel better about my house and myself.

An aside: My grandmother always had calendars from the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, and now I order one every year too. They’re filled with beautiful artwork, and it’s a great cause to support.

A few months ago I found Ruth’s 10 Tips for Getting More Done Every Single Day. I really liked her advice for setting priorities, using a timer and regrouping. But it was her tip about setting weekly goals in specific categories that really resonated with me. This great idea originally came from Ashley Ann at Under the Sycamore.

I’m going to try to focus on one project (my “category”) each month (although some may take longer at my pace). Within the month, I will break down the project into smaller steps (as many of you suggested), write down the steps, prioritize and organize what I have to do and put time frames around each stage. Last week Jen at I Heart Organizing posted a really helpful breakdown for how she sets goals for projects that I’m looking forward to trying. I’m hoping that itemizing each step will help me get started and avoid dragging projects out for so long.

I’m also going to look at one project at a time. For example, I will focus just on painting the main floor and not worry about the laundry room right now.

I love to-do lists, but I’ve been loathe to do a master list of everything I want to do at the farm. It’s just too overwhelming for me to see that big of a “big picture.” However, I think the opposite is happening when it comes to the individual projects. By not writing things down, I’m overwhelmed by the whole project and can’t motivate myself to get started. I’m hoping that a list of every single little step will help me realize that the only way to eat the elephant is one bite at a time.

First a saying about insanity and now one about elephants. Look at me just rolling in the wisdom today.

The other thing I’m going to try to do, I think, is share more of the in progress here on the blog. Honestly, this is something I’ve been hesitant to do because projects seem to take me so freakin’ long. If I’d posted about the mudroom when I first started working on it, you would have had the same number of posts but spread here and there over the year. It’s a more accurate portrayal of my life, but I worry that waiting a full year for the before and after is bit frustrating for you as readers. I’d love your feedback on this.

Plus, I’m not sure how interesting the process is for you. I mentioned the words “solar panels” at the beginning of this week. However, I don’t have much to say about this project yet. I mean, I can tell you about our first application, how the government put the program on hold and as a result our application was dead, how the program restarted and we resubmitted our application… and then resubmitted it three more times for clerical technicalities. We’ve been working at this for more than six months now with not much to show. I promise I’ll share all of the details, but right now I don’t feel like there’s enough for a post.

I also hesitate about sharing some of my goals at all. I mean, I don’t have a great track record with accomplishing them in a timely manner… or at all. How interesting is it to read about someone’s plans that never come true? It’s for this reason that I was really hesitant about posting the picture of my dream vegetable garden in my 2014 goals post. That garden is something that I really, really, really want. I don’t know how to explain it, but putting the picture out there… and knowing that the way I work I might not get the garden in this year… or next, if I’m being realistic… makes the dream almost seem less attainable, rather than more.

I don’t want to sound like a complete downer here. In many ways, Matt and I are already living our dream. We’ve found the perfect farm. We love being here. We find it rewarding to work on the house and the property to make them what we want. We’re prepared to take it slowly and do projects as we’re able. I just feel like I need a bit extra motivation to go with my abilities.

So here’s my plan for how I’m going to tackle Home Goals 2014:

1. Focus on one project at a time. When it comes to the bigger projects, this is something we’re already pretty good at, I think.
2. Break down projects into their individual steps. Each small to-do counts.
3. Share the steps here on the blog. A good way to hold myself accountable.
4. Put timelines around each of the steps. Try to be realistic about these… as Matt will tell you I’m often overly optimistic about what I can accomplish.
5. Share more of the in-progress as we move through the steps. And celebrate the small accomplishments as we go.
6. Enjoy the results of our labours. This one’s an easy one.

I am also going to try to give myself a break and be flexible. Maybe an opportunity comes along that moves another project up the list. I’m sure there will still be weekends where I start off with a big to-do list and very little gets crossed off by the end. I’m going to try to be okay with that. I just want to feel a bit more progress than I felt last year.

How do you prioritize your projects? Do you have any tips to share on how to stay motivated? Are you up for more “in-progress” posts?

The subtitle for this post is “On goals, to-do lists, excuses, guilt and mojo.”

A year ago, I was the annoying perky pixie brightly declaring the projects I was going to accomplish over the coming 12 months. Today, I’m the dour, scowling troll who depressingly growls that I’ve done nothing. I suuuuuuuuuck.

I had four goals for 2013:

1. Landscaping
2. Painting
3. Living room fireplace
4. Laundry room

I can cross not a single item off the list.

On landscaping, I can say that I did something. I built a new garden around the well, weeded one of the front gardens and planted a new border of grass, leveled the old fire pit at the top of the driveway, established a new fire pit behind the driveshed, graded the turnaround, laid a brick pathway across it and planted a few flowers. It was somewhere in the massive tear drop shaped expanse of dirt that is the turnaround that my work ethic abandoned me.

The garden was just too big. There weren’t enough plants in the world to fill it. We had just gotten a dog, and I’d rather spend my time with him. I have a week’s vacation, but we’re having record high temperatures, and I can’t really be expected to be outside gardening.

By mid-summer the weeds were taller than me and so thick that Matt–aka “he who does not garden”–took matters into his own hands and waded in with a shovel. It was clear that I had given up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that last we saw of my mojo. People ask us often what we’re working on around the house. They usually find it funny when my response is, “Not much. I’ve lost my mojo.”

But it isn’t funny. Sure I was relaxed in the air conditioned comfort of my freshly renovated basement. Yes, I was bonding with my dog. But I was wracked with guilt.

When we hosted our annual month-before-Christmas party at the end of November, I realized that the walls upstairs looked exactly the same as they had a year previously–right down to the drywall patches. Ummmm, yes, welcome to my home. Can’t you just see what pride of ownership I take in it?

And now, a month and a half later, the walls are still not painted. In fact, I’ve added a few more drywall patches. I’ve sanded all of the walls (which previously were somehow the texture of sandpaper). I’ve mopped the ceiling (yes, mopped) and bought fresh white paint. I’ve slapped up a few colour samples. If anything, the walls are looking worse than they were before.

And what about the fireplace? Well, we got a quote. And then I threw up. Then I fainted. I said, “There’s no way.” Then we talked ourselves into it because “we’re going to have to do it sometime.” Then our solar panels application regenerated (I’ll share more soon), and we realized we needed every single penny, nickle, dime, quarter and dollar we possessed and then some. So all other projects, especially expensive projects like fireplaces, were put on hold. Although a warm roaring fire would have come in really handy during the ice storm.

And then there’s the last holdout from the basement reno, the laundry room. This one I’ll pin on Matt. See, the first thing that needs to happen is to fix the leaky foundation. Matt kind of fixed it by putting a piece of plywood against the wall to funnel water away from the house. We hadn’t had a leak in the house since then, up until this weekend when a mid-winter thaw resulted in a puddle on the laundry room floor. The wall really needs to be dug out and waterproofed. This task was on Matt’s honey-do list for the summer, but he was so burnt out by the time summer started that I delayed giving him the list until we were well into August. By that point, his mojo was in no better shape than mine, so outside the wall still sits with its plywood water guard and inside the laundry room is still in its original ugly state.

So that is the saga of my very unproductive 2013. I did say last year that my plan was to avoid any other massive all-consuming projects and spend slightly more time enjoying rather than working the farm. I guess I was successful at those two goals. I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.

However, it is a new year, and you can be assured that my lack of success last year is not going to stop me from setting more goals for 2014. Stay tuned for that next.

What about you? Did you set any goals for 2013? How did you do at accomplishing things around the house?