The Modified House Move Strategy

I have previously outlined my strategy for unpacking after a house move:

1. Try to ensure the heavy furniture ends up in the right rooms. This makes the rest much easier.
   
2. Pick a room, and start going through things. If you find something for this room, put it away immediately. If you find something for a room that hasn't yet been unpacked, take it and put it anywhere in that room.
   
3. Once the previous room is done (and only once that room is done), move to the next room. This time, if you find something for the new room, put it away at once; if you find something for a room that hasn't been done yet, take it and put it anywhere in the room; if you find something for a room that has already been done, take it and put it away in that room.
   
4. Repeat until all the rooms are done.

That's a nice, systematic process that gets all the rooms done efficiently, without leaving you overwhelmed trying to do everything all at once - you're only ever working with one room at a time. (It can be difficult if you're trying to move furniture around in a room that's still full of boxes. For that reason, I would recommend - if possible - that you nominate one room as a dumping ground for lots of boxes, even if they don't go in that room. That then allows the other rooms to remain manageable, and allows you to move your furniture round. Unpack the "dumping ground" room last.)

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because my new strategy for dealing with the to-do list follows a modified house move strategy:

1. The list of tasks is organised by room.
   
2. Each week, I plan to identify the single highest-priority task and do that, whatever it is and wherever it is in the house or garden.
   
3. Each week, I also plan to identify a single room, and attempt to tackle all the tasks associated with that room.
   
4. In addition, if a new task crops up in a room that has already been dealt with, that new task will jump to the top of the queue - it's more important that rooms stay 'done' than that new rooms get 'done'. (There's an obvious danger there, so the intent is also to strongly resist adding new tasks to the to-do list until the existing ones are dealt with.

Last weekend turned out to be a highly productive weekend, taking the list of 'done' rooms to four. This week, the single highest-priority task is to pack up the BBQ for the weekend. The room that is nominated for being cleared is the nursery, which has three associated tasks (none of them huge).