The Juniper Solution

Every spring I have a landscaping company come out and freshen up my yard. New pine straw, new mulch, some clean up. This year, though, I had a project.

The side of my yard next to the driveway is juniper bushes. This swath of the stuff continues into the backyard, too.

I hate the things.

They end up full of weeds, which can't be sprayed by the company that comes to treat the lawn. That means I have to deal with that. Since there's no chance I'm climbing into the junipers, this means using a hedge clipper to cut the weeds down and walking into my neighbor's yard to reach the top half.

The backyard patch? I can't get the backyard patch at all because the fence prevents me from getting to the back side and even with the tree clippers, I can't reach.

Last year, my neighbors who also had the junipers had theirs removed and replaced with sod and my eyes lit up. I decided then and there to do the same thing and started saving money for the project.

That's what I had done.

(You can see from this picture how ugly the junipers are and how difficult it is to deal with them.)

You know there's a story, right?

First, I had to get the estimate. If it was more than I had budgeted, I wouldn't be able to do it. This ended up being right in line. Yea!

Second, HOA approval is required to make any changes. Have I mentioned how much I hate having an HOA? I wish I had a neighborhood without one. This took three weeks. Sigh.

Third, now I have to wait for the landscaper to schedule me. This took another month. They come the week where it rained every day. That meant they took everything out on Monday, but didn't come back until Thursday to put down the sod. I sweated bullets about getting written up by the HOA for having exposed dirt. I'm still not 100% sure that I won't get a letter, but I'm hopeful.

Fourth, they didn't have enough sod to finish the job and will have to do the patch in the backyard later. Okay, as long as the HOA patrol doesn't see it, I don't care.

Fifth, the readjusted sprinkler is hitting the side of my neighbor's house. Not cool. Landscaper came out to readjust and said they'd have to add another sprinkler head. That's fine. I do not want my neighbors complaining about the sprinkler.

Nothing was quick. Nothing was easy. And as I write this, we're still not 100% complete. 

Categories: Follow Up

One week into using categories in my planner and I like them. A lot.

The problems I mentioned in the previous post are still problems. Like needing to add an item later and not having space for it. I figured out a workaround. I do two columns, so I fill horizontally. That's working.

I've run into a few other issues.

First, I sometimes forget which category something belongs in. Is doing my nails self-care or is it life? I've put this item in both categories.

Second, the stencil is kind of annoying. Swiping the highlighter isn't too bad, but outlining the box with pen? The stencil is bendy and it doesn't keep the pen in line. Also, while this stencil is created for my planner, the traced box is smaller than the line in the planner and it doesn't leave me much room to write my category. Let's not even get into the way the pen skips and smears. I've heard I shouldn't use gel pens with stencils and will try with a different type.

Third, it's tedious to use the stencil. To swash the highlighter. To outline the box. Over and over and over again. I'm going to try using customized stickers. I've ordered them, but haven't received them yet. It feels silly to buy stickers when I could keep using the stencil, but the stencil is truly annoying me.

The pros, though, with this system?

Everything is not a jumbled list of things to do. I can look to a category and see what I have left to do. It actually feels so much more organized. The other big plus? I feel calmer when I look at my daily lists because it's organized. I didn't realize I was low-key overwhelmed with the massive list until I tried the categories.

I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with this, although one week isn't enough of a test drive to be 100% certain. It's the calming feeling that makes me think this is going to last, though.

Another pro? I think I chose the right category names. I did add a Misc for items that don't fit into any of the other boxes.

Final results: Two thumbs up 

Categories

I watched a planner video on YouTube the other day and she said to group items together rather than having a To-Do list jumbled up with all of your life categories.

Hmm, I thought, I'm not having any problems.

But I thought about it some more and decided it would interesting to test it out and see if I like separating them more than mixed up together.

First, I needed my categories. I decided on 1) Self-Care 2) Exercise 3) Life and 4) Career (as in writing).

Next, I went looking for my stencil collection. I started using this and just swashing a mild liner line and writing the category in there, but toward the end of the week, I decided to try outlining the swash with pen.

I prefer the outline. It seems to jump off the page more. I also started out with the same color I use to make my check boxes, but switched to purple because it blended too much in the beige.

It might be helpful on my busiest days, but I already messed up and didn't leave enough room under self-care for an item that belonged there. I ended up putting it under life because I forgot about it.

Which underlined the big drawback to this system: if something comes up later and I don't leave any extra space, then it's jumbled up at the bottom of the page because there's nowhere else to put it. But if I do leave extra space and don't need it, then that will look annoying. Shrug.

I'm going to try it out for a week and see what I think about it. If separated is easier than jumbled, then it might be worth taking my chances with the spacing. Or maybe a add a fifth category called Last-Minute Adds.

I like trying out new ideas for staying organized, so I'm going to keep an open mind and see where I end up with my version of her system.

Replacement Time

While I did miss out on the 10-year CO2 detectors because I didn't know what to buy if it wasn't listed online as compatible with the mounts I already had, I did buy the 10-year smoke detectors for the house because my brother said he could install them no matter what kind of mount there was.

Thrilled to at least have four of the seven detectors off the cycle of battery replacement, I went back to the home improvement store and bought a four pack, as well as four adapters.

Those adapters are really handy because it saved rewiring and made the replacement quick and easy. About half an hour to do the four smoke detectors and the two CO2 detectors that I didn't replace because ladder.

I can't even begin to tell you how much peace of mind I have knowing those smoke detectors are not going to chirp at me. I wish I'd gotten the 10-year CO2 detectors, too, for total peace of mind, but next time I replace them, I'll do that.

You'd think they would have come up with this 10-year battery thing decades ago. Is there anyone who doesn't hate the chirping?

When I bought the CO2 detectors because of the one was chirping, the woman checking me out said she and her husband couldn't get theirs off the mount when it was chirping and they used a baseball bat. That should have been a message a long time ago about how freaking annoying those things are.

At least my house is 57% done with battery issues. Wish it was 100%, but next time.

Handy Patti: Part Two

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It's now Sunday. I am at my computer writing. The same CO2 detector that chirped on Thursday and required new batteries starts chirping again.

This time I have batteries. I bought two different name brands for that fussy thing. I don't even check if someone can help. I climb the ladder and replace the batteries, remembering that the label is incorrect.

The damn thing continues to chirp.

I know the batteries are fresh. I know they are in correctly. I know that there shouldn't be any chirping.

And then I remember that the house is ten years old and these are the original detectors. I also remember that they only last ten years. I research how to remove a CO2 detector. It ended up being easier than I expected. I flipped the circuit breaker, disconnected it, and went to get ready to leave for the home improvement store.

Chirping. I'm like, don't tell me that the other detectors are chirping because I popped the circuit breaker. This is a longer segment, but to sum up: I forgot to take the batteries out of the one I took down and that's why it was chirping.

With the batteries removed and dressed for people to see me, which means not like I was dressed to write, I head to the store to buy a new CO2 detector.

Of course, there is literally no employee in the general vicinity to help me, so I pull out my phone and do a search for compatible models since my original has been discontinued. One of the models is a ten year, no battery changes option, but I can't find that on the shelves. Since I don't know anything about changing out the mount, it must be compatible so I can use the old mount.

I search for one of the other two options.

It took forever, but I finally located it on the top shelf. I buy three since I have three detectors, and if one is going, how long until the other two go? Then I spot the adapters. I don't know if I need them or not, but I buy three anyway, just in case.

When I get home, I put in the name-brand batteries, replacing the ones that came with the unit. (Now the +/- is imprinted in the plastic, which makes more sense.) I put one of the adapters in my pocket and go up the ladder.

Yes, I most definitely need the adapter. I do the attaching, all the while terrified because I'm three rungs up on a ladder and have a phobia about falling that I'm struggling with.

Next problem: Screwing the new detector into the existing mount.

This required multiple attempts and a lot more twisting than it took to get the old one off. I finally, finally got it attached. Flipped the circuit breaker back on.

Blessed silence.