Last weekend, I held my first Unpack-a-thon moving into my new home. My results were good, but there’s still a long way to go.
So, for Memorial Day Weekend, I’m going to do Unpack-a-thon #2. And maybe make this place look more like a home and less like a warehouse.
Mind you, I would much rather do a Read-a-thon or a Blog-a-thon. But if I get a lot done on the Unpack-a-thon, that can be my reward.
The Unpack-a-thon starts tomorrow, Friday, since that’s my day off this weekend. My optimistic plan (It’s okay if I don’t reach it.) is this:
Friday: 8 hours
Saturday (after work): 2 hours
Sunday: 3 hours
Monday (Memorial Day): 7 hours
I managed 9 hours total last week, so it would be great if I could hit 20 this week, with the extra day in there.
Last time, I ended up rotating between rooms, always starting with the kitchen. You know what the hard part is? It’s finding a place for things. I have less storage in my new home than I did before, so the hard part is figuring out where I can fit things or if I can do without things.
So, this time, each hour I’ll start again with a box in the kitchen. Then I’ll rotate to other rooms, but in each other room, I’ll empty one book box and one other box. The book boxes are much much easier — because I made sure all my books fit on bookcases before I moved, and all the boxes are labeled with which bookcase they came from. A lot of these boxes sitting around are book boxes, so I want to let myself tackle the easy ones this time.
Another thing: After 4 hours unpacking, I’m allowed to spend the next half-hour cleaning, and count it as part of the unpack-a-thon. I have so many boxes in the way, I haven’t done much cleaning since I moved in — and it’s getting where it needs to happen! So if I hit 20 hours of unpacking, that would end up including 2 hours of cleaning, which should get things in much better shape.
I don’t have as many other things calling me away this weekend (at least not yet), so maybe I’ll hit the 20 hour goal. If I do, I may treat myself to one of the cool board games we unpacked with my son Tim, who’s home from college.
And if I get enough done, the following weekend, I was going to have my own personal 48-Hour Book Challenge.
However, I discovered today that this year it’s going to be hosted by Ms Yingling, and it’s actually scheduled for the following weekend — a weekend when I’m working both Friday and Saturday. So, I think the only solution is to do a Book Challenge both weekends, don’t you? I’ll do one on the weekend of June 7th following their rules, and I’ll do one the weekend of the 30th making up my own. For example, I’m going to allow myself to count time reading picture books, because I’ve got a big pile of picture books I want to review but never quite get around to. I also want to spend lots of time posting reviews I’d written earlier. So maybe my personal Book Challenge weekend would be a good weekend to do those things. I will be working out a plan this week….
Anyway, meanwhile, let the Unpack-a-thon begin!