How to Prioritize Projects at Home for a Productive Year
Ready to make your house a home this year? In today's post, you'll learn how to prioritize your projects at home to be the most productive all year and accomplish big dreams by this time next year.
Whether you are owning a home or renting, there is always a laundry list of things you want to do to improve the place you spend the most time – especially now.
Wouldn't it be nice to free your mind, stay focused, and know exactly which projects to do and the exact order to do them?
Sounds pretty good to me. Let me share the exact method I use to prioritize my home projects. This made all the difference for me and I know it will for you too! Here we go…
Table of contents
Why is prioritizing important?
I'm like that kid in the movies who's always like, “Why? But, why? Why's that?”
So let's start with why you should care.
Be ultra productive
First of all, if you don't have some method of capturing your ideas and then organizing them, you'll never be as productive as you could be.
How many years have you been shutting the door on that one hideous room that you know you really should tackle? How many times are you going to get frustrated by a dysfunctional closet or drawer before enough is enough?
Taking the little time it takes to get it out of your head and into a system will make you feel lighter than air.
Before I figured out the system I'm going to share with you, I would come home from a long day at work, sit down on the couch, and start looking around at all the stuff I should be doing – the mountain of things to be fixed, changed, or made better.
It was horrible. I felt guilty I hadn't finished these projects and stressed for the same reason. I couldn't relax.
Every now and again, I would get ambitious and write a long to-do list. It was great until I lost the list or when I found it, felt completely overwhelmed by how much was on it.
Then I started to dream…
What if I could trust my plan and stress much less about everything I needed to do?
What if I could actually relax knowing everything I needed to do was written down and was already written in order of importance?
What if the week before hosting a party or overnight guests I could sit and have a glass of wine knowing I already did and/or scheduled everything I had to do to prepare?
Gosh, wouldn't that be nice?
Stop wasting money on stuff you don't need.
Have you ever gone shopping for something to decorate your living room and ended up leaving with something for a bedroom or kitchen?
I have done this too many times to count.
The problem with this is if you're not focused you ended up buying things you think you need that, let's be honest, you probably don't. Yet, you don't end up buying things you do need.
When you are not focused on a particular room, impulse buys become more and more frequent.
Some impulse buys are great, but more times than not, you get it home and realize it is not going to work, so you have to return it.
…which leads us to the next reason you should prioritize your home projects…
Actually stick to a budget.
Prioritizing your projects will help you actually stick to a budget, too.
Once you know which room or area you are in and what your budget is, you can determine much more easily if it's worth it to spend the extra few bucks on the focal piece or if you want to save more of the budget for something else in that space.
Having a detailed list of the type of items you are searching for (and the other things found on the pre-shopping checklist) helps narrow your eye when scanning through the big stores, like Home Goods.
The lesson I learned time and time again is to take the extra few minutes to make the to-do list and prioritize it ahead of time, so you can avoid any unnecessary trips and money spent.
Finish a project… like for real.
How nice would it be to spend a certain amount of time focused on a project and actually finish it?
Before organizing my home projects, I was a scatter-brain decorator. I'd be in the living room one minute, then talking about the dining room the next.
I would set out to buy for a specific room only to come home with all kinds of stuff that maybe fit my nonexistent vision or was for a completely different room altogether.
I would always be left with a choice to return it or reevaluate my vision.
In all of the reasons above, I mentioned lack of focus. I am a natural scatter-brain and totally hate it lol.
Without a direction or a prime reason/vision for why you are buying or doing something, it is very difficult to finish a project in a timely manner, if at all.
Actually sitting down to get an idea of what kinds of things you need and also the things you want for a particular room really helps get an overall picture of what fits you and your family’s personalities and daily life.
Creating a focused vision and list of to-do’s in an organized fashion helps ensure you are working towards a goal and not just for working for the sake of working.
Finally get that cohesive home you've dreamed of
Have you ever browsed through a home magazine and gawked at the beauty of the rooms inside? Or been in someone’s home that flowed amazingly from one room to the next?
If you answered yes, then you know what I mean by a cohesive home.
It is incredible how much homier a home feels when the idea flows from one room to the next either in color, theme, or style.
This type of consistency is hard to achieve if every room you decorate is done independently of the rooms around it.
Creating a vision of what you want each room to look like as a sum of all the parts together is key to decorating your home to the fullest and creating the flow you want in your home.
This starts by working through your vision for each room before even starting a room.
As I inch closer to completing all the rooms in my home, I’m finally starting to see my vision come to life.
I really believe this is because I stepped back and considered what I needed to get done first, second, etc.
It's been awesome because I have been able to spend more wisely, prioritize successfully, and free my mind enough to actually complete the projects I started.
(Psst.. here are some easy home improvement project ideas to refresh your home.)
If you are searching for a cozy, homier home, you must organize your entire home to-do list now and for good.
So now that I convinced you it's important, here's how to do it.
How do you actually prioritize all the home projects?
Whether you're a digital diva or a pen-and-paper lover, there are certain steps you should take to do this the right way.
I have tried pen-and-paper with lists before and nothing works quite as well as my favorite program, Trello.
Now that's not to say you can't do everything I'm talking about sans digital, but believe me, it's much easier and more accessible via digital means.
I am not affiliated with Trello in any way, but I have been using their program for about 4 years now and it's awesome.
Not only is it accessible everywhere I go via the app, but it allows me to drag and move notes, write descriptions, make checklists, add due dates, and so much more.
I use it as my digital sticky note system. I basically never forget anything when I'm out shopping or wonder what room I should be focusing on.
Everything I need to know, including my measurements, color schemes, and my room vision, are all accessible at the push of a button on my phone or computer.
Here's how I use it to prioritize my home projects.
Empty your mind completely.
I start each year by doing a home walk-through with my Trello open. I empty my mind completely, room by room.
If you're going to prioritize successfully, you'll need everything out of your head. I make the rooms or tasks my cards on Trello.
Get clear on your vision & take before photos.
Once I have everything written down that I think I want to do, I pause and determine what the vision is that I have for my home and each of these rooms.
And my favorite part, don't forget to take before photos.
Organize & prioritize your projects.
Now for the fun part. I have a whole color-coded tagging system I use in Trello to help me get serious on what is important this year and what isn't.
Labeling your rooms by the importance in your family's life is key.
The best part of using Trello for this is that you can drag and drop the tasks in any order you want.
By the time I'm done using my system (click the box below to gain access), I am ready to focus on exactly what needs to be done. Being prepared, focused, and productive never felt so good!
This is your year! It's time to prioritize your home projects and accomplish some home goals!
This is such great advice! I have so many projects that need to be done, and then I end up getting distracted and doing something that wasn’t even on my list!