Moving along with mini challenges

For many of us, every day lately feels a little like Groundhog Day and spring can’t come soon enough. During the past month, I’ve read great tips from list-makers who are challenging themselves with varying tasks to get through the week, so they have something to celebrate on Friday.

I’m not sure if it’s about approaching the age of 50 or the stagnation of COVID-19 lockdowns, but I love the idea of weekly mini challenges, tasks and inspired ideas to help us grow our way out of this pandemic. That and a bucketful of humour.

For my family, our lists are presently unending as we opted to shake up our lives mid-COVID-19. By shake, I mean space-shuttle-re-entering-Earth’s-atmosphere-type shake.

With our three teens, dog, two cats and lizards, we decided to buy and sell last year — downsizing one home and purchasing a fixer-upper in the city and a tiny cottage that we call The Bothy.

This relocation meant finding rental accommodation for our large family to get us through an asbestos abatement and knob-and-tube removal. This adventure was a little bigger than a fixerupper.

I’m excited to share we’re coming to the end of our rental and our eight-month transitional relocation is almost completed. When the time arrived for showing our apartment and breaking our lease agreement, rallying the troops to get onboard with more viewings and pristine rooms was a challenge.

Reliving Groundhog Day over and over makes cleaning lose its charm.

Our first apartment viewing was a disaster. The rental office emailed us on a Friday afternoon after we’d left town for a weekend at The Bothy. With the standard 24-hours notice, they informed us there’d be a viewing the next day.

The problem? We were not returning until the day after and I hadn’t yet begun to prep the apartment for viewings.

I could see the colour drain from my daughter’s face as she visualized personal items left sprawled across her bedroom and bathroom floors. In my son’s room, where we rarely saw flooring, there was an unmade bed, empty glasses and two unkempt lizard cages.

Had we cleaned the shower and put the toilet seat down?

What scale of odour would the kitty litter be tomorrow?

Cue the horror film soundtrack in my mind.

Surprisingly, our apartment rented after that very first viewing. I credit Halifax’s insanely competitive rental market for this small win. I decided to not tell my teenagers the apartment was now rented. As far as they know, we have three viewings a week, every week, until we move. Our place has never looked better.

As far as judgment goes, there is none here.