Big Goal Part 2 – (Finally) Decorating Our Home

In my post last week, I described the first piece of a goal that has lived on my goal list for many, many years. The goal is: 

My home is completely decluttered, decorated, organized and always company ready. 

For the remainder of May, I am going to break this goal down into each of the four pieces and the exact way I plan to track it. I started last week with decluttering. Now this week, I am going to review how I plan to accomplish the second part of my goal with is to have my home fully decorated.

The second piece of this goal is “decorated”.  We have lived in our home now for six years and I can honestly say it still looks like we haven’t fully moved in or made it “home”. We had our home built for us and have lived in it without it every feeling fully “us”. How did we even get to this point?

Why I’m Here

Over 10 years ago, we moved back to my hometown after I had spent almost 15 years away getting my college degree, meeting my husband, and starting our little family. 

During the first four years of living back in my hometown, we moved five times. FIVE TIMES. After the initial move, we stayed in furnished homes until we moved into our final place. This meant that most of our furniture we either sold or shoved into a storage unit. When we finally moved into our own home, we had purged most of our furniture and decorations. 

Now, we have arrived at the “why” behind this goal. We purchased the must-have big furniture, such as couches, a dining table, and island chairs. However, we have been dragging our feet on other unnecessary items, including furniture for our master bedroom (we are still using our son’s dresser from his baby room!) and any decorations. 

I have really difficult time making decisions. This means, if I don’t absolutely need something (such as new master bedroom furniture), then I will avoid making that decision. Ugh. 

What Have I Tried?

Now that I’ve described the back story, what have I tried?  I have of course added tasks to my to do list to “Research master bedroom furniture” or “Use Pinterest to get ideas to decorate living room”. Nothing sticks. I still put the tasks off because I have so many other tasks that MUST be done. 

Many years ago, I read a fantastic book called “The Cozy Minimalist Home”. This book walked through steps to completely redo a room. First, you use a tool like Pinterest to know your vision. Then empty a room of almost everything and add the big furniture. Finally, step by step you add in the other items like rugs and décor. I loved the book and wanted to follow those steps in every room but could not get myself to do it. 

Again, if not necessary, I procrastinate to avoid any decision making. 

I cannot wait any longer to “pretty” this house. If I don’t get this done, we will be having my kids’ graduation parties far away from this undecorated and uninviting home. Ugh. 

Using Trello to Track My Goal

To track this piece of the project, I plan to also use Trello. As I described in my last post, Trello allows me to use “cards” for each task. Those cards can have checklists for sub-tasks. Then I can move those cards from list to list as I complete them.  

Here is my board with the decorating lists: 

With this list, I can keep a running tab of all of the furniture and décor items I want to add to the room. When I’m ready, I’ll move an item into the Buy list with a link to what I want to buy (if online). I will also use that Buy list for items that may help me organize, so not everything in the Buy will be decorations and furniture.  

When I have completed an item by purchasing it and/or adding it to the room, the card will move into the Done list. 

I Love Sub-Tasks

I also need to add a checklist to the items for each sub-task I plan to take. For now, the main sub-tasks I want to add for a piece of decoration or furniture is to Pinterest what I like and to Research where to find what I want to buy. That would look like this for each task: 

Now I can use this checklist template to add these two steps to any “card” I create. This allows me to track what I’ve completed for each task. 

This plan sounds very simple and straightforward. I am hoping that helps get me out of the “planning” phase and finally into the doing phase. 

For each room of my house, I’m going to create a card for each “area” I want to decorate. Also, I will create a card for each new piece of furniture I want to add. Then I will add the subtasks to allow me to track where I’m at with each of those tasks.

Decorating In Each Zone

Finally, my plan is to try to follow my home “Zones”. Every week I try to focus on a different “Zone” in my home and then I repeat every month. In the Zone of the week, I will focus my cleaning and my decluttering. In this case, I will also focus my decorating and furniture research on that Zone in that week. Hopefully this will help me to not bounce around to different rooms and to actually get some tasks done. 

Follow Along and Join Me!

As for accountability, I will post to this blog with updates of my progress. I really hope this helps give you an idea of how you might plan and track a big goal in your home. What are you currently working on? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.