I am kind of a nerd. No secret there. Last night I made a spreadsheet planning out all the minor and major home repairs we would like to take care of in 2009. They range from patching nail holes we punched in the walls to carpeting bedrooms. I listed everything and then broke it down by month based on our budget and estimated costs.
GEEK!!!
It was so satisfying to see everything listed there. It seemed overwhelming when everything was just floating around in my head, but down on paper it was perfectly manageable. Everything is spaced out over the next year and we know how much money we need to have on hand every month to take care of this stuff.
For the month of January I have planned to patch nail holes, paint patches and scuffs throughout the house, and paint the bathroom. I figured I'd start off small. And cheap since we sort of lost our minds this Christmas. Plus it means that I get to go buy Paint Buddies which I'm really excited about.
I just realized that I forgot to put "install water softener" on the spreadsheet. Damn! That's a pricey one too. We were told that our water heater stopped working because it had huge deposits of calcium in it. The repair guy's jaw dropped when we told him that the water heater was less than a year old. He strongly suggested we get a water softener if we don't want to have our water heater breakdown every six months.
Oh yeah, I also forgot "get new thermostat" since ours only goes down, not up. The temperature in our house drops to 62 every night and we have no way of turning it up. (I would advice everyone not to buy a digital thermostat.) It sucks when I'm freezing at 2am, but I guess it's sort of nice when we get the gas bill during these winter months.
Isn't owning a house awesome?
True Sib Love Always
4 days ago
4 comments:
This is very inspirational -- we've been living in our house for almost 4 years and still have lots of undone projects. Perhaps I should make a spreadsheet.
Unfortunately, the spreadsheet won't do the work for me. :(
I love spreadsheets. I have one for everything. Whenever I'm feeling sad, I just make a spreadsheet outlining all the things I need to do to feel better!
Good Job on getting a good start to the year already!
Sad as in, a loosely used term for unorganized, not a lowered level of happiness, of course.
I'm not THAT weird.
Spreadsheets help calm me. I really like them. I always feel better after I've made one. I supposed that's a little weird... but I guess there are worse habits to have than spreadsheet making.
I just have to stick to the list. As Kelly pointed out, the spreadsheet isn't going to do the physical labor for us. That is going to depend on me and *cough* dad *cough* Matt's motivation to actually get stuff done.
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