Next up is the 2015 mid-year review home.

My first Beauty review was body, then presence, a detour past wealth and now back to beauty with home.

My goal for our home was to create a comfortable, happy, cheerful, welcoming and calm home that reflects who DB and I are right now. I highlighted my multiple home decorating personalities

• the pre-dialysis one who didn’t now she was sick (footloose, travelling and having fun)
• the sick one with limited options on dialysis (surviving, wanting a soft comfortable bolt hole)
• the post-transplant really well one (wanting to live deeply in a home that is vibrant and alive)

And I used these paintings to demonstrate the difference in those personalities, and show how your authentic self leaks out when you are trying to conceal it (and I still love emu man – he’s got some moves!)

I argued that our messy cluttered homes do not support us, just reflect our internal chaos back to us.

As evidenced by photographs of happy spontaneous moments taking place against a backdrop of life’s flotsam.

And I still don’t want the future to see me that way…

So, to deal with this, I:

• compiled a list of “unfinished business” and started work on finishing it
• started finding homes for things and actually putting them away
• started reviewing (to keep or discard) my photo, book, CD and DVD collections
• continued discarding objects that don’t make sense any more (decluttering)
• resolved to really clean my house (not just the surface) regularly
• decided to remodel my bathroom as a luxurious spa!

As to progress…

• it seems that for every task that comes off the list, two go on. I have crossed off 39 things, and the remaining currently stands at 58 – I’m not sure what the starting number was, but I have 60% to go.
• I am generally much better at putting things away, though it just takes one thing left out and all of a sudden there’s a landslide and all the house needs is an upended shopping trolley to make it look like a dosshouse. I don’t need to think too much about this one any more, so I’m calling it complete and moving it to business as usual.
• poor DB was so distraught by my reviews and discards I have had to step back on this one. We reached a compromise – things I don’t want get put in his cupboard until he is ready to let go of them. But I think enough has been done on this one that we can call it done and move it into business as usual.
• the house gets a quick clean most weeks and a periodic deeper one. I’ve got a kind of daily tidy and clean for an hour in a kind of weekly schedule. It doesn’t always get done (after all, there is always next week), but it kind of balances out. Into business as usual as well.
• the bathroom is not going to happen this year, we have other priorities right now.

For someone who is forgoing a bathroom renovation I am quite cheerful about my progress in this area. Though I really want one of those wet wipe swivelly mops so I can wash the floor without having to fill and carry a bucket of water. My 15 year old self is dying of shame and wants to move out.

Rating: 🙂

So moving forward, there’s the ever expanding unfinished business, and maintaining a business as usual approach. On that basis it’s tempting to say I don’t need to develop any further excellence in this area, but I think I need to hold myself accountable a little longer. And as I mentioned in Wibbly Wobbly Family Timey Wimey, you need to schedule periodic renovations, keep up to date with technology and keep your house neat enough to entertain unexpected visiting royalty.

How have you fared in the household department?

Next time, we’ll look at beauty in the garden.

Photo of my mostly tidy library by ME!

You can find my monthly reports and other planning related information on the Life Worth Living page.

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Edited 2024: In the meantime, I’ve written a book on minimally viable housekeeping, which, as the title suggests, is about using effective and efficient practices to take care of your home.

For more interesting and useful infomation, check out my housekeeping page.

Minimally Viable Housekeeping

When you’re busy, taking care of your home takes too much time and energy, leaving you tired and discontented at the end of the day.

Minimally Viable Housekeeping translates business effectiveness and efficiency techniques for the home. So you can spend more time doing the things that make life worth living.

Discover how to minimise the time and effort you spend on housekeeping. Buy now:

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