On my quest to ultra domesticity, I must eventually have a perfectly decorated house. Right? Right. Although I wish that could have happened the week after we moved in, it is going to be a long process for us. Mainly because we didn’t have any furniture to start out with, and we’re not rolling in money. But at this point only a couple of rooms are actually presentable, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves.

So! I’ve come up with a realistic list of things I think we can accomplish on the house this year. Here they are.

1. Fix the back door lock.

Remember this?

Well, it’s still there. I’m ready to use our back door again, and I have an idea for a super cheap way to fix this. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

2. Speaking of locks, cut down on the number of keys we have.

There are four doors to our house, and each one has a separate key. Not only is that quite annoying, but I think it might be a fire hazard. I want them to all open with one key, and I don’t want to have to use a key to open the doors from the inside.

3. Finish up the living room.

I want to get a rug to pull this space together. Who knew rugs could be so expensive?

I want to add a couple of cute, comfortable, and functional bar stools to this space.

4. Set up an actual dining room.

This needs to be the next room we work on, because right now we can only have a few people over for meals. We have a lot to do here, as it looks like this right now:

Really terrible. I kind of block this room out of my memory for the most part. Fixing up this room will mean procuring some sort of table and chairs (for cheap – I can just use a table cloth until we can afford something nice), changing up that chandelier, getting rid of those awful window treatments, possibly hanging some shelving, and of course painting. I can’t handle the red.

5. Finish painting all the rooms in the house.

While we’re on the subject of painting, it’s a fairly cheap way to make a big difference in appearance. I’d like to finish painting the entire house this year. In the front part of our house, the trim has all been converted to white, which I love. But in the back, it is all a creamy off-white, which I think looks dirty.

This is our back hall. Yes we left one of our dresser drawers open, and I didn’t close it before taking this picture. Yes it is bothering me. Yes I am too lazy to retake the picture. But isn’t Cleo cute poking her head out like that? Let’s focus on that.

6. Start on the “office.”

One of my 101 goals is to build a pretty and well-organized home office. This goal probably won’t get completed in 2010, but I need to at least start. I am embarrassed to show you what that room looks like right now, but I’m going to anyway.

There’s a pile of balled up newspaper on the ground because I unpacked a box of breakables about a month ago. Eddie likes to use it as a doggy bed, so I haven’t picked it up yet. Actually, it just isn’t a priority and that makes a convenient excuse.

7. Get the carpet cleaned.

We’ve only been here a year and already the dogs have ruined our carpet, at least in a few places. Why is it that when they feel the need to puke, they can’t do it on the tile or the hardwood? But before we jump to getting new carpet, we want to at least give cleaning it a shot.

So that’s my list for the year. If you are willing to lend me some time and muscle strength we have a LOT of painting to do, and in exchange I will feed you. Isn’t that a tempting offer? I thought so.

Tips? Thoughts? Suggestions? Love notes? Send them my way!