Summary: I’m just like you – juggling everything that comes into my life, most times succeeding, sometimes just coping. Renovations, on the other hand, are a completely different matter! We’ve done a lot of renovating. Five years of it in fact, with three separate projects – the outside of our home, the inside of our home (excluding the bathrooms and laundry) and then, inevitably, the bathrooms and laundry. We started the renovations when our now-Mr 6 was less than a year old (that was our first renovation – the outside of the house), then the inside (reno #2) and bathroom and laundry (reno #3) from when our son was 2 to about 5 years of age. Oh, and then we sold the house and moved out! That was a crazy five years of our life! So how did we manage it all, and still stay sane? There’s no way to describe it other than to say it was difficult. Now, there’s difficult like driving a car with a broken little finger. Or difficult like giving birth (high up there on the difficulty scale!). Or difficult like having a stubborn wisdom tooth removed. But living in a house constantly being renovated with a young family is DIFF-I-CULT. Why am I harping on about this? In our Clutter Rescue 2012 Organising Survey a lovely lady asked us for tips on how to get organised at home when dealing with renovations. So just letting you know that I’ve been there – and I feel her pain! Renovating is tough. Regardless of whether you’re living in the property while it is being renovated or offsite there is so much going on that it can be extremely hard to get – and stay – organised. Let’s face it – living day-to-day is busy enough as it is let alone throwing renovations into the mix! So how did we stay on top of our organising game when we were renovating? 1. We had a project folder which held all of the renovation information. This included quotes from suppliers, invoices from products we had bought, images of products we liked and wanted to include with the renovations. 2. We had a schedule outlining the length of time the renovations would take, the amount of money going out at any given time (to pay tradespeople or to buy products) and the contact details of each person related to the renovations. 3. We reduced our stuff. At one stage we were living out of two bedrooms, one bathroom and the laundry which doubled as our kitchen. All of our unnecessary belongings from the kitchen, office and spare room were packed away and only opened once the renovations were complete. 4. We cut down on our extra-curricular activities. Some of this related to our budget but mostly it related to our time. We knew we would be spending extra hours focussing on the renovations, cleaning the liveable spaces in our home so that we weren’t covered in dust, and working – and didn’t need to be running all over the place, spending more time and energy on things that weren’t that important. (This isn’t to say you should cancel all the fun stuff you do – we just needed to cut down so as to cope during the renovation period.) 5. We shopped online. The thought of a truck pulling up with my groceries gave me shivers of delight! I hate grocery shopping at the best of times – and during the renovation it gave me a sense of relief that there was one less job I had to do. 6. We factored in “doing” time. Time to drive around and look at four tile shops to find the tiles we wanted. Time to phone the bank and deal with their processes. Time to fit in a trip to the tap shop before picking up our son from childcare. 7. We gave ourselves a break. This means we focused on the important stuff – like keeping the liveable space clean and making decisions we had to make straight away (not in two week’s time). If we fell of the wagon because we forgot to do something (like order groceries and had to eat takeaway for two days) then we were fine wi[...]
