Starting my big renovation project!

After full eight years of living in the same house - which is so far a high record level as I never ever, even as a little kid stayed in the same house for more than maximum 3-4 years, maximum - little was it done to the original structure of the house. I haven't done nothing at all, except buying a big bad and doing some small adjustments after my lovely son was born.

People usually do have different reactions when they are coming to my house, but definitely, everyone agrees that I should do more to make this little corner of Berlin more for transforming it into my home instead of just using it as a stop and working office in-between my many trips. As the birth of my son changed dramatically my lifestyle - which means that I do not travel less, but I have a different kind of agenda meaning more focused on creating a warm and friendly home for the baby.

At the end of Pesach, looking for some new projects to share and create, I suddenly decided to start a very ambitious and frightening new project: completely renovating my house, on my own. I have no previous experience in this respect, and although more than once in the last hours I was thinking that what about deciding to move out of this house in less than a year, I realized that the novelty of the project is appealing enough to want to keep it straight and doing it despite all odds. I am sure I will gain enough experience and will have a lot of fun. 

My kind of life right now...Source: Pinterest

I am doing my project will being full time mom and also working on different writing and blogging projects at the same time. My time, as usual, is very limited, therefore I have to schedule the activities for each day. In the case of painting days, I should keep in mind that me and the baby we will shortly go out after the work is done, in order to avoid the smell of the paint. My plan is to finish everything within one month, with a relatively limited - but not small - budget and with serious time constraints. I will not work on Saturdays and on Fridays I am trying to finish everything as soon as possible.

Step-by-step

Here are my first steps for actually beginning

the process

Day 1

- Having a look at each room in order to realize what it doesn't work and what I don't like about the setting. I only have two rooms, a kitchen and the bathroom to fix, with the child's room with minimal investments as I already did some furniture decluttering already. I only need to fix small things, like changing the jalousies or painting the radiators.

- Assign for each space a color or a special style. For instance, I want my living room to be very cozy, I want my bathroom to have variations of silver and black.

- Set up the available budget for your investment. Start doing a little market research to more than 2 shops. Yesterday, I went to both Bauhaus and Poco for seaching for the best deals, and I've found good deals for different products. I took pictures and made a list of the things I need and where the price is better.

- Create a schedule of to-do-list for each room. For instance, I would love to start cleaning seriously every corner but if I have to paint first, I better start with paiting and leave the cleaning after that as there is a high probability that I might need to do some extra cleaning after anyway.

- See the limits of your technical abilities. For example, changing the taps and the lamp is obviously more than I can know via YouTube and Google. I want to do this last anyway, but until then I should also search for a technical expert that will help me. It saves nerves and money in case I may damage seriously the entire electricity system.

- Ask for advice. As my neighbour just finished her own DIY painting project last summer, I visited her yesterday and was lucky enough to leave with some brushes and recommendations. For instance, to always use some plastic cover when I paint to avoid damaging the carpets or the floor. 

- Last but not least, take measurements. As I will need wall tattoos and tapet and some new bed coverings and jalousies and so on and so forth, knowing the dimensions is a very important stage of the project. I carefully measured everything that I needed and right now I am more focused on what I can find for advancing my plans.

That's all for now. I promise to write more and more updates in the next days. For today, I already have a little plan and I am looking forward to it!

Smart housekeeping made easy

Books and consultancy services for decluttering or wisely organising the homes are becoming a new special category in the bookstores or job classifications, but how and why we have to do it is rarely going beyond the stereotypical level.

Yes, we need to have an organised house - who loves to look for hours after the keys or the last phone bill and found it only one month later when it is already too late - and yes, we are obsessed with gathering unuseful things, lured by the consumerist passion for collecting what's new not necessarily what's useful for the daily housekeeping.

Smart Housekeeping by Anne L. Watson is a realistic approach of a very popular topic. It is honest too, as it doesn't promise than from tomorrow on your house look like a feature in a glossy magazine. The basic assumption of the author: 'An organised house doesn't mean an empty house'. Thus, the reader and potential decluttering candidate is advice to have what he or she really need not what other people advice to have or not, on TV or elsewhere. Another aspect outline is that decluttering is not the cure for our obsessions, failures or even depressions. 'Where I differ with some is that I don't think possession are mostly to blame when I feel stressed'. And even more importantly: 'Reducing clutter and organizing your life can free you for more worthwhile pursuits. But you don't get a spiritual life just from discarding possessions, any more than from owning them. If spiritual fulfillment is what you're looking for, you need to find it elsewhere'. It is an approach I really appreciated and liked it, encouraging me to skip further to the practical ideas and steps. 

The step-by-step organisation of the house should be done by the person, based on what is needed or not for the daily chores or activities. Sometimes, finding the space for objects might be easier than just throwing them up. 

This book is for independent people, able to use their own mind and set their priorities, but in need of a good advice about how to improve the house management, step-by-step, one corner at a time. Smart Housekeeping is the intelligent answer tailored to a lot of practical approaches and I strongly recommend it to anyone whose NYE resolutions are to have a friendlier and clutter-free house.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review