Spring Time To-Do List...

So I put together my spring time to-do list today. Most of it is centered around cleaning, as most people's spring to-do lists probably are.

Here's just a quick rundown.

1. I want to finally finish painting the big bedroom and get it cleaned out. I also would like to clean out the office in the basement. To go along with that, I would also like to finally get the living room cleaned up. The old computer has been sitting in there for a while and there are a bunch of dolls that need to be categorized and taken care of. While we're on working inside the house, I also need to finally get around to putting up the new heater/fan that we have to go in the bathroom.

2. I want to clean the shed and the garage out. I need to get some of the stuff that's in the shed out of the shed and gone, permanently. There is an old push lawn mower in there that doesn't work, a weed whacker, a hedge trimmer, and what appears to be some kind of power washer. Those items need to be thrown away, given away, or something. After I get those things out of the shed, I can get started on getting some stuff that's in the garage moved into the shed. Things like my motorcycle stands would be better off in the shed, and all of the gardening equipment that's in the garage would definitely be better off in the shed. There are some nice shelves in the shed that would work perfectly for all of the gardening type stuff. After I get those things out of the garage and into the shed, I can then get to work on getting my tools that are in the garage up on the shelves that are in the garage. That will free up some floor space in the garage, and make it look quite a bit tidier.

3. This is probably my most significant project. We have a small circle garden in the back yard that is overgrown with weeds. Cathy's mom used to use it as a garden...but neither of us are into that so our plan for now is to basically just level it. After that we're going to put down some of the weed guard stuff and then put a nice thick layer of wood chips over it. Once we've got that down and on the ground, we'll go about getting ourselves one of those nice outdoor fireplace type of things and have that right in the center of the area. We'll then add a couple of nice chairs to it and have a nice place to sit and have a fire at night if we want to. The last part of this project that I want to do...which will probably be the most difficult...is getting three 8 foot lengths of some kind of privacy fence up behind the area. The reason for this is because the bushes that are about 5 feet away from this area of the back yard is a place that wasps really like to make nests in. The last thing that I want is to be out trying to enjoy a nice fire only to get attacked by angry wasps. So we'll have to either buy a few 8 foot sections of fencing, or make them ourselves. I would LIKE to make some out of bamboo, but I don't think that's going to be very feasible as far as the cost goes. What more than likely will happen is we'll just find whatever 8 foot section of fencing is the least expensive and then go with that.

So, I know that doesn't look like an awful long but it seems like an awful lot of work to me. I know that I can get the shed and garage cleaned up in one afternoon. That won't be hard at all. I can also get the circle garden taken care of in probably a single day. Hopefully I can find a place that will deliver a truck full of mulch to the house instead of me having to buy like 100 bags from the store. If I have to buy it from the store that will probably end up taking a whole day all by itself.

The hard part is going to be the stuff inside the house. It seems like the four rooms that really need to be cleaned up are literally just full of stuff that needs to be dealt with. Whether we end up having a garage sale or just throwing things away left and right will be something that we need to discuss. I'm kind of guessing that each room would really only take about a day or two to get done completely...but with it being four rooms that's a good several days worth of work.

The nice thing about all of this, however, is that they are things that once I finally just get around to doing them, they won't need to be done at all again. Sure, I may need to add some extra mulch to the circle garden every spring, or move some tools around in the garage, but for the most part they are do-it-and-forget-it projects that won't need any regular care.

So, I'm going to TRY to get around to doing at least one of these things on my next days off. I will probably start with the shed and the garage. The weather is nice for that right now. It would also be nice enough weather to work on the circle garden, but I haven't seen the mulch and things like that available at the store I shop at yet. Of course, it might be there and I just haven't really looked. Either way, right now I'm leaning towards working on the shed and garage first. It is one of the easier projects, and maybe getting one of the easier ones done will jump start me on working towards getting some of the not-so-easy ones out of the way.