Tag: clean-up

The 2016 100

The 2016 100 — or — How to Build a Better Casey

Last updated on April 5th, 2021 at 10:39 pm

I can’t even lie, guys—coming up with a list of 100 goals for the fourth year in a row was hard — ridiculously so. I’m a very different me than I was when The 2013 100 came out, back when free time was still an abundant commodity I didn’t even know I was taking for granted, trying to fill it with countless things that’d keep life interesting.

A problem I most definitely don’t have in 2016!

As I work at surviving the upcoming year—especially with our second child’s imminent arrival—I needed to make the list a lot more realistic; I’m all too skilled at chasing ambitions that exceed my lifestyle’s capacity, and I’ll need to keep wary of that in 2016 if I want to see myself make it out the other side!

So without further ado, The 2016 100. It took a couple of days to polish off after recovering from the gauntlet that was 2015, but I feel like it’s a list that will really make waves in this life o’ mine should I see it finished!

But hey—that’s what I say every year 😂

Thanks for reading!

1) Write an amazing series for Black History Month
2) Win a vacation for my dry cleaner
3) Watch Creed; Mad Max: Fury Road; The Martian; Ant-Man
4) Take Eric to a sporting event so he can stop complaining about getting left from sporting events
5) Phase my old 3.5″ hard drive out
6) Get rid of my old electronics
7) Stop biting my nails
8) Get rid of the wedding thank you cards I never sent
9) Clean out the basement crawl space
10) Build shelves into the crawl space
11) Give my FWD Powershot 2 to my old manager the hockey coach
12) Do the CN Tower Edgewalk
13) Sort out my old TD employee RSP
14) Consolidate everything down to a single notepad

Though a chiropractor I started seeing late into 2015 told me I’d developed some mild sciatica in my back, I didn’t need him to tell me I carry too much STUFF. In a digital age where we can pack mountains of information into a single device, there’s really NO NEED for me to carry all the draft posts and note that I do—save the fact that working from hard copy’s the way my brain’s WIRED.

In 2016, I need a little more focus to keep all my ideas stored in one place so I’m not constantly carrying EVERYTHING in my house made of paper, knowing that I probably scribbled SOMETHING on ALL of ’em.

15) Sort out the Internet situation at home so I can stop relying on tethering to LTE data
16) Learn enough Spanish to understand my sister-in-law’s Mexican wedding in May
17) Find time for date nights, which will involve finding someone who wants to babysit two kids… how about we just find more awesome things to do at home, just in case?
18) Try Uncle Tetsu’s cheesecake
19) Get to 0 drafts on CaseyPalmer.com by converting everything into live posts
20) Install the growth chart for my kids that we got at my office baby shower
21) Update all the old content on CaseyPalmer.com
22) Upgrade the site infrastructure to better support contest traffic
23) Redesign the heck out of the blog (Twenty Sixteen, what up)
24) Find the time to pack more lunches for work
25) Clean up and optimize my Pinterest account (I still have that copy of Pinterest Savvy lying around somewhere)
26) Shave more regularly
27) Hand out my remaining business “cep” cards so I can put in a new order (wait—do we still do business cards?)
28) Clear out the bookshelves to prepare for Baby #2
29) Replace the lost key to our 2011 Ford Edge
30) Figure out what I ACTUALLY need to run my site and invest in THAT.
31) Replace our bathroom sink
32) Meet with the people who I never seemed to schedule in through 2015 (Aaron, Emma, Ria, Adrienne, Dianna)
33) Get a Brookhaven Computer Cabinet

The 1% of the Casa de Palmer workspace I use to do all the things isn’t the best—in fact, it’s falling apart. As I get older and start formalizing my #BloggerLife, Sarah and I agree that my workspace should evolve to show that. It’ll take some saving to make it happen, but it’d be a nice addition to the home.

CONTINUE READING: That’s just a THIRD of the list. Click here for the REST! “The 2016 100”

Tradition, Tailoring and Tilling My Land

Last updated on April 5th, 2021 at 12:44 am

What’s struck me so far as I write these year-end wrap-ups is that I’m dealing with the list of a maniac. At 100 items, that’s 3.65 days to get each item done, or 8,760 hours.

But if I sleep 6 hours a night, that’s suddenly 6,570 hours.

And with a 40-hour work week (not including my 3 weeks of vacation), that brings us down to 4,610.

Put in a couple of hours per day to eat, shower and other essentials and you’re suddenly down to 3,880 hours, or a mere 161 days worth of time (or perhaps, a mere 8 hours per weekday, with the hope that the weekends don’t find themselves suddenly overloaded) to do 100 things. And that’s, of course, on top of going out with friends, being a good family man, and perhaps finding time to do things that were never on the list in the first place.

Unless you’ve somehow bought yourself the luxury of unlimited time, a list of 100 goals is best achieved when attainable. You can’t be everywhere at once or do everything at once—sometimes we need humility and a reminder that there’s simply only one of us!

It’s what we do with that one that makes all the difference.

So let’s chalk this up to a learning experience. Let’s figure out what really matters, what’d be nice to do, and what’d be inane to expect with a wife and kid at home, needing me to play my role as a father.

Once more unto the breach!

READ MORE: The 2013 100, Items 51-60: Tradition, Tailoring and Tilling My Land “Tradition, Tailoring and Tilling My Land”

Clutter: The Final Frontier

Last updated on February 21st, 2021 at 11:30 pm

You can’t live in a sty forever.

With more than 80% of the year done and over with, most of the stuff that kept me busy earlier in the year went right with it. The days aren’t as busy, yet in ways, they feel just as hectic.

The likely culprit? My environment.

This isn’t the first time I’m making this observation, but it is the first time I’ve had a solid plan to do anything about it!

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

My office is filled with books, magazine clippings and other things that I’ve read and loved, or still intend to read. But the more you accumulate, the less you actually know what any of the mess is! I tried to take a few sheets and plot them out in mind maps and checklists, but it was too little progress and taking too long.

It would take months, but a Plan B would eventually come to the surface.

One reason why we fail to start is that we’re intimidated by how immense the projects of our dreams are. To start a side business of our own. Or to travel the world. To build something spectacular with our very own hands.

The solution? Finding the balance between our visionary schemes and all the itty-bitty details that can turn them into reality!

So I took another look at all those magazine clippings of mine and started sorting them out in piles according to their purpose. I started looking at my art supplies, wondering which of them I’d actually use again. In short, I took another look at my possessions. and wondered which of them were actually worth possessing.

Unless you’ve got some rare stuff in your home that you care to part with, all that clutter you have isn’t worth as much as you think it is. And the sad thing is that we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s too hard to get rid of it all—we’d drop it off at a donation centre, but we don’t have a car to get it there. We’d put it up online on craigslist or freecycle, but it’s too much effort.

I thought so too until I looked into Clothesline, the Canadian Diabetes Association home pickup service for electronics! (Sometimes it pays to read the ads on the subway!)

It might sound like they only accept clothes, but they do far more than that! All those books I purged from my library? Yup, they’ll take those. Old MP3 players and electronics that we don’t use anymore? They’ll take those too! Pretty much any household item that you no longer have a need for, they’ll find someone who does.

More people need to take advantage of programs like this wherever they’re available—we’ve gotten used to living in small spaces; why make them feel any smaller?

For more information, drop the Canadian Diabetes Association’s Clothesline program a line!

As for me, I have a lot of random stuff to pack away!

312/365

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