When I set my goals for May I thought I might be taking it easy on myself.  Ha…NO!  I just can’t seem to stay on track, but I’m determined to catch up in June (mostly because I have a friend coming to visit from Australia and I don’t want to look like a slouch).

Goal:  Get some home maintenance done.

Result:  Even though professionals did the painting and carpeting, this ended up being soooo much more work than I expected.  I guess the carpeting wasn’t too bad, but I had to move stuff around for the painters every single day.  I hadn’t expected it to be so daunting, but I’d work all day and then come home each night to move things around so that they could proceed the next day.  And, they had quoted a three day job, but ended up taking six days.

Needless to say the painting and carpeting is done, but all of my stuff is not back where it belongs.  This is partly due to me not understanding how much effort it would be and partly due to adding on a couple of things.  First, I decided that before anything goes back each room would be deep cleaned.  Easy…right?…NO!  Just hand scrubbing all the hardwood and baseboard trim is taking forever.  It’s complicated by the fact that the painters got tiny splatters everywhere.  I also decided that I should get rid of all my drapes and change to blinds.  It took a couple of weeks to decide on the type of blinds, another couple of weeks to get them, and then a few days in between receiving them and getting them hung (hanging them went much better than I expected…it only took five dedicated hours).  Because of this I practically lived in a fishbowl for most of the months since I got rid of the drapes right away and didn’t have the blinds until the end of the month.

Goal:  Prepare for and participate in our community garage sale.

Result:  I rocked this one.  Since the painters were still hanging around, I didn’t have as much time to prepare as I had hoped.  I thought it would be a disaster, but one of my friends helped man the garage sale and I just kept adding things as the day proceeded.  The garage sale lasted for two days and I made around $800.  This was the main catalyst for me decided to spend the extra money and get new blinds.

Note:  The garage sale wasn’t scheduled to start until 9:00 am, but the first person showed up shortly after 7:00 am and I had sold $26 before it was scheduled to start.

As soon as the garage sale was over, I loaded a lot of the remaining items up and donated them to Goodwill.  I did keep a few items hoping that I’ll be able to sell them online.

It’s such a relief to have successfully navigated our community garage sale this year.

Goal:  Get through chapter 2 of Matador U Travel Writing course.

Result:  Huge failure.  I didn’t even make it through reading the entire chapter.  I need to get a handle on this one or I’ll never finish the course.

Goal:  Catch up on my weekly decluttering goal that I set in January.

Result:  Ummm…another failure…this one not quite as huge.  The saving grace for this goal is that I was already ahead a bit.

June

I don’t even know where to start for June.  There is so much I need/want to do.  I’m just going to list a bunch of stuff and do my best to get it done.

• I really, really need to weed and thin my garden. I’ve been so focused on the house that this has gotten a bit out of control.
• Get my house put back together. No excuses here. I absolutely need to get everything back in its place especially since I have company coming mid-July.
• Get through chapter 2 of Matador U Travel Writing course. Good grief…if I don’t do it this month I’ll probably never get it done. In fact, I really should try to get through chapter 3 too.
• Catch up on my weekly decluttering goal that I set in January. Even though I was ahead, I will be falling behind if I don’t get moving this month.
• Finalize plans for my trip to Croatia and Slovenia. There isn’t a lot to do for this one, but a few things remain:
  • Confirmation of house/dog sitting.
  • Book hotels for extra nights.
  • Plan side trip to Budapest.
• Mail package to my parents. Geez…it’s pretty bad that I have to make this a goal, but I have a bunch of random things I’ve been meaning to send to my parents. But, gathering the items and getting them in a box has been nearly impossible.
• Average at least 7,000 steps a day. I’d actually like to make it 10,000 but I don’t want to set myself up for failure.
• Lose three pounds. I’d love to lose more, but I need to be kind to myself in this area.

Ok…that’s more than enough.  Who knows…maybe I’ll make it through everything and add some things mid-month.  Or, probably not.