Home on Mondays: Time to Review Targets!

Last January, I spent an entire week listing down what I wanted to do this year. Since it's already the second half of the year, I thought I'll spend some time this week to review the goals I listed for the year. Here's what I listed for home life -

1. Make it safe by getting all electrical, plumbing and structural issues fixed.

Done! Thanks to Architect Wansi and his team. Updates are on my Monday posts. 

2. Declutter and just keep what we need. I was really happy we were able to donate 14 boxes of stuff especially our pre-loved books. 

Halfway there. We can now actually see parts of the living room, haha. Scheduling part two of decluttering with our coach, Ally Canita, since we have set aside a number of boxes again for donation. 

3. Make the kitchen ready to cook and bake yummy stuff with Miggy. 

Just started cooking and baking again recently with Miggy! Made some cookies last week. I'm glad my oven is working properly and so far we've been able to experiment on other pasta recipes. 

Our now lived in kitchen. 

4. Have a proper living room where we can welcome friends and family. 

Far from it at the moment...

5. A "stable" dining table. We realized that the glass table isn't for us. We're selling it and hope to change it back to a smaller wooden table. 

We were not able to sell the table. Instead we changed the base of the table. Used the leftover fluted panels and it's now stable. Glad we did that because we were able to use it to entertain family. 

6. Maybe get some art that would fit our personalities. We have collected a lot of toys though, so maybe we won't need art. 

Decided not to get any art. Not for now at least. We'll focus on what we have first. The only thing we have placed is the framed art card a friend sent. It was perfect for my craft room powder room.

7. Make our garden more manageable. We'll likely change to turf grass since most of the grass died anyway. I want to have a section for veggies and ornamental plants. It's a bit challenging though, but doable.

This is one major item we've crossed out from our list! We have planted some seeds and hope we'll be able to harvest some veggies soon.  

8. Make the basement our family hub where we can enjoy working on our hobbies. We've so far designed it to be our "playroom" and I'm excited to work on the display cabinet. 

Yes, the basement has become our family room. The toys are now in the display cabinet. We just need to organize the room. One thing we still need to do is replace the flooring (huhu) since the tiles have been popping out (really bad work by the contractor who renovated the house). 

9. Use the maker room to produce things I love to make. Hope to be more productive this year. 

Yes! My maker (craft) room is more or less organized. I just need to finish sorting the rest of the stuff from the plastic boxes. I've also merged all my craft books together. It didn't fit my maker room anymore. It's just outside the door.

10. Fill the house with happy memories so it could be our true home.

This is what we've been focusing on since renovations finished. We've already gone on two family trips (Sipalay and Bohol!). And a big plus we've done is get our home blessed. 

Score: 7/10! 

Really made some headway on our home stuff because Sweetie and Miggy helped a lot to make things happen. Let's see if I get a good score for my other goals. 

#BeKind #StaySafe

Useful Home Budols

I'm not exactly sure where the term "budol" came from. As far as I remember it was a term used for a crime, mainly scamming. The first time I heard this term was in the 80s when the budol budol criminals were striking. When online purchasing became a norm during the pandemic, it became a term used for impulse buying. It progressed more because of the double digit date promos made by Lazada and Shopee. 

Since we're taking a lot of precaution by not going out, the things I need to purchase have been done online. It's not only SM that's "got it all for you", but you can practically buy anything online, even a house! To be honest, I was really wary about buying stuff online. I was forced into it when we had to purchase groceries during the circuit breaker in SG. 

Anyway, I've babbled long enough. Here are some of the budols from the past few weeks:

Walis tingting with bamboo holder

Magic hose and a hose organizer

Fabric to make a window curtain

Mail box, my neighbor said they'll stick it to the gate anyway.

Cordless vacuum, best buy ever.

Proper doorknobs, really hate those that nip you.

Birthday decor for Mom's birthday.

The air fryer (Sweetie's budol)

A nice faucet for the washing machine

Air freshener auto spray

Faucet extender

The cheese door stopper which was an indulgence

Sweetie was so surprised I only bought fabric to make a curtain. Told him I have a lot of fabric. Just need to unbox them. It's surprisingly hard to buy some home items like tabo and dustpan. I don't know why the shipping fees for basic home items are so expensive! I'm still hunting for a shop that doesn't charge so much to ship those. Or maybe it might be better for me to order through SM when I do my groceries. 

I'm still learning a lot about buying home & living items online. Any tips/recos will be welcome. 

#Home43 #NewG203 #Xmas9 #StayHome #BeKind  

First Week in Our New Home, the Merge and Learnings

Spent an hour last night washing flatware and cooking utensils. We'll have to wash everything before we use it since our stuff either spent time on a ship or was transferred from our old home. This is part of the process we need to do to consolidate our things and finally merge our homes. As we do this clean-up we'll get to assess what we will be using and we can give away the excess. Our goal is to be clutter-free and just keep what we will use. 

We've had a very busy week. The boys have been covering the activities that require muscle, carrying stuff and unboxing. They also take care of everything that's needed outside. I take care of thinking about what we need to find from the boxes and purchasing things we don't have. I also take care of finding who can help us where needed. I've been trying to water the plants, but usually cover only 70%. Miggy usually finishes the job. 

Unboxing is a Painful Task

Sweetie and Miggy have done a stellar job making a huge dent on unboxing our stuff. It is a painful task since the boxes were only labeled based on the room they came from. Our place in SG was small so rooms held things that may belong to another room, i.e. the dining room had books and kitchen stuff mixed together. The two were able to clear out the boxes from one side of the room and the Squeaky PH team was able to unbox 30 kitchen labeled boxes! 

Organizing is Hard When You Don't have Cabinets!

Organizing our things has been hard because the contractor isn't finished yet with our cabinets. They had to adjust the cabinets because of the stove, oven and rangehood. I also requested to customize the cabinets based on how I'll be using them. Hopefully they'll finish soon so we can finish organizing our kitchen. Save for our clothes everything else is still in boxes because we don't have cabinets yet haha. That's where my busmate, Peter, now a business owner will help us with. 

Condo Living vs. Living in a House

Living in a condo is much, much easier to manage. In a condo, you just mainly take care of what's within the four walls of your unit. In a house, you have to manage everything from the roof, down to the ground and within the perimeter of your property. I've been purchasing things we never needed before, i.e. a water hose for the pocket garden (our balcony farm has been upgraded). Just ordered a walis tingting which we need to keep the premises clean. I'm also looking for proper faucets to replace the garden faucet. We're lucky our contractor just lives a few houses away and the house is "under warranty" for six months. Hope we don't have to annoy her too much. 

The Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge we've been facing is insects! The house was left open when they did touch-ups. There was a lot of mosquitoes and ants (no roaches thank God!). The cleaning helped a lot. We can't really use pesticides because of my lungs, so I got a lot of citronella plants. The mosquito population is dwindling away now. 

We're now also taking care of the ants - red fire ants! They've been strangely going up to the roof! It's probably because of the trees and there may be debris on the roof that needs cleaning. Honestly, I have no idea how to get the roof cleaned (if needed) so will ask our contractor. For now we're trying different methods to get rid of the ants without pesticide.

Mom told me to take things slowly. She said no need to rush and things will just fall into place eventually. Told myself I could tackle things the same way I did to improve my breathing -- at least 1% better than yesterday. My immediate goal until Christmas is to get the kitchen functioning better and unpack my clothes. The other stuff will progress next year. 

Overall, our first week has been amazing. We're just happy to be living together in our dream home. The best day was celebrating Mom's birthday. We were able to eat lunch together with my Kuya and his family. The work we did to get things up and running in time for Mommy's birthday was worth it. <3

#Home37 #NewG209 #Xmas17 #StayHome #BeKind