There's a list for that.

As I've mentioned before, I like lists. Scratch that, I love lists. They help me think things through, remember stuff, and stay on task. So in the earliest days of my relationship with our house, I made a lot of lists.

There were lists for projects, project supplies, small tasks, "someday" wish lists, things for which we needed professional assistance...I even considered making a list of lists so I wouldn't forget any of the lists.

When you come to the point where you're making lists of lists, you either spiral into a recursive hell or you step back and try to find a better way. I stepped back, took a few (thousand) deep breaths, and came up with a better system.

Behold!

This is my "better system." Each one of those index cards represents a room in our house.  The list on the left side of the card is stuff that needs a-doin' and the list on the right side is stuff that needs a-buyin'.

Over time, we've added to the lists, crossed stuff off when it's done or bought, and once or twice, we've scratched parts of lists out when our plans changed.

Take the workroom, for instance...I know, it's the example for almost everything...but it really has been a microcosm of the house as a whole.

So, please, take the workroom (formerly called "Utility Room"). The list used to be 3 items. Then the plan changed. We decided to gut the room, and redo it. So we added a fourth item:

That scratched-out word is "Gut." I made the mistake of writing "Gut & Re-do" as a list item. Looking back, I probably should have just written "redo," not just because it shouldn't have been hyphenated, but apparently DBF stopped reading at the first word.

So one Saturday in January, I'm sitting in the dining room, figuring out what projects to tackle today, and I hear very loud noises coming from the basement. When I went downstairs, this is what I found (DBF has been grayed out to protect his "innocence").

Does that hammer look familiar?

That's the ceiling on the floor, by the way. Fun!

Yes, I know the demo needed to be done, but I hadn't thought the whole project through. Which meant I hadn't made a list for it. And I had hoped...well...I had hoped to make a list for it.

One of the best things about DBF is that sometimes he saves me from myself.