I know it is more important to have the inside cleaned up (attitude, character, faith, etc.), but sometimes, cleaning the outside helps with keeping the inside stuff in sync.  Lately, balancing the work-family life schedule has been challenging, so the housework has fallen by the wayside.  At last, yesterday, I had a free Saturday–no items on the agenda.  So I cleaned a good portion of the house.  Ah . . .  I feel so much better waking up to a clean house.  I hope to keep up with the tidying enough this week that I can keep feeling better about life.

Now that I am feeling a little better about the basic maintenance cleaning items, I making a list of small projects to tackle in the coming month.  Here it is:

1.  Change out the chandelier in living room with a ceiling fan.  Here’s one I like:

2.  Change out the light in the den from a very dim pendulum-style chandalier that my 14-year-old bumps into all the time to a brighter light fixture that is flush with the ceiling.  I’m thinking of something like this:

3.  Come up with a plan for repairing the water-damaged plaster in the den and, at long-last, remove all the “Laura Ashley” wall paper and replace it with something else.  (Yes.  Paint is my preference.  But plaster walls are particularly challenging to paint after removing wall paper.  A friend suggested a white bead board or paneling.  New wall paper might also work.  We’ll see.)

4.  Find the time to tackle these relatively minor projects.