Do you have an anxiety checklist?

For a long time, I referred to my anxiety checklist as a “to-do list,” but I started recognizing patterns that made me reconsider its name. The stuff that I legitimately needed to finish in a timely manner would disappear pretty quickly from the list, while other items (like buying plane tickets or expense reports, for example) would stay on the list for weeks or months. Then, on a random afternoon, I would start feeling like a piece of shit for keeping these items on my checklist and would start completing as many of them as possible. Once it’s time to start addressing the anxiety checklist, that’s all I focus on.

And that is how the anxiety checklist was born. Usually I feel compelled to revisit my checklist before travel or other stressful triggers (I do legitimately enjoy travel now, but it can be undeniably stressful). I found myself thinking about work and other personal commitments coming up this past Friday afternoon. My brother will still be visiting me this summer (yay!), but now that we won’t be going to the Foo Fighters show, he might be visiting a little earlier than August. The house still looks like a goblin lair – no cohesive design choices, pictures begging to be hung on walls, sad neglected hardwood floors waiting to be refinished.

ANXIETY CHECKLIST TO THE RESCUE!

FIRST STEP – getting a quote for refinishing the hardwood floors upstairs and downstairs. I called a local firm that specializes in hardwood floor restoration and made an appointment for Saturday. Refinishing the floors sounds like it will be a massive task – we have to move all our furniture out, we can’t walk on the floors after they are refinished for 24 hours, etc. I do wish we had done this before we moved in, but we had neither the time or money to get it done. I have a feeling we won’t be able to do everything at once since it will be too expensive (we haven’t received the quote yet), but the priorities are the living/dining rooms and the guest room (now known as the red room, due to the carpet color). I haven’t been able to convince Husband that we should swap the carpet in our bedroom for hardwood floors, but that is part of the long-term plan. The good news is both the spare bedrooms have hardwood floors directly underneath the carpet (the previous owners thought at least one of the rooms had a subfloor), so that will make this task a little easier.

SECOND STEP – Several weeks ago, we’d purchased paint samples to try in the living and dining rooms, since we realized we should probably paint before we restore the hardwood floors. Most of the home is painted an off-white color, but you can tell it’s been years since it’s been painted – there are discolorations where paintings hung, ashy hand prints disturbingly on the stairwell walls, etc. Last night I dug out the samples and we started swatching. We’ve been leaning towards green hues. I am not sure if I like what we’ve swatched yet, so we are going to select more samples today to try.

Yours truly was involved in an unfortunate incident when swatching Ocean’s Abysss in the stairwell. The paint sponge popped off the roller, falling directly on the carpet. You can probably track the progression of said disaster in the photo below. Note that even after multiple rounds of Resolve on the carpet, it still looks like Lucky Charms vomited all over it.

Whew, see those high ceilings? How on earth are we supposed to paint the stairwell? Probably something I should have considered before swatching it. Oh well! Time to add to the anxiety checklist and I can address it three months from now.