The Winter List

A peek at our off season château to-do list

Often we distract ourselves in the busy summer months by talking about what we want to get done in the winter. We start to plan, push ideas back-and-forth, stand side-by-side looking at a space, hands on hips or arms folded, assessing what needs doing. This summer though, a silence has stretched between us where the renovation chat would usually be. There’s been an unwillingness to engage in the making of any kind of plan. Tim has actively avoided any conversation that has started “so this winter we could….” Meeting each attempt at discussion with a dismissive “no, not right now” and a swerve in another direction (sometimes physically) to avoid it. I’ve hesitated to bring it up, half-heartedly brooding over plans in my mind instead, not really coming to any conclusions. We’ve skirted and danced around the topic of the winter list for months, unable to bring ourselves around to the idea of more work. 

Now though, winter is fast approaching, the clocks are going back, the days are shortening fast and we’re already a month into our down season. Time is slipping through our fingers, and we really need to make a plan for some progress. As tempting as it might be to just sit and do nothing for a while, I know that we’d soon get bored and frustration, so for our sanity, I have begun the winter list. There’s lots on it, big tasks and small, finishing off jobs, niggling jobs that need to be done before something bigger can take place, jobs that have been shifted from winter-list-to-winter-list year-after-year. This winter though I’m determined to tick them off.

A note - this job list may or may not, have been sanctioned by Tim….