The Five-Minute Fix

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The Five-Minute Fix

Solving Month Long Problems in 5 Minutes

My garage has been a wreck for years. We bought our house nearly a decade ago, and I’m not sure the garage ever recovered from the move-in. The ceiling had drywall on it and was taped, but not mudded or finished, and the walls were just the studs. In this type of environment, I felt it was hard to keep the garage clean and to keep my projects out of the way. Frequently, when jobs came up, they just piled on my workbench, and the workbench became a storage place for unfinished jobs from years ago.

Over the past two years, we have been working on an insurance claim for our house from several significant hail storms. We got a new roof, gutters, all new windows, and our hardboard siding got a new paint job. This allowed us to change the color scheme and feel of the house and also inspired my wife to do some electrical and lighting changes to the exterior of the house through our garage's electrical box. Cue a garage remodel.

Once we got the wiring through the garage and spread out amongst the house, we had the garage insulated, drywall finished, and everything painted. We then went ahead and put in all new shelving, racks, and storage to complete the job and make the garage a brand new place. The cherry on top was adding a heater to keep it warm over the winter months.

We have enjoyed the garage so much more, and I find it’s extremely easy to keep clean now because everything is clean. When I finish up a job or have a project for the future, it now gets put away or gets put into a special bin to keep the workbench clean and tidy. Cleaning up the garage used to be a weekend task. Now, cleaning up the garage means putting away the last thing I had in my hand, and it takes 30 seconds.

Farm Books

I’ve gotten a little behind on my bookwork. The cash flow hadn’t been done since the start of the calendar year, which meant that I didn’t have a number of updated expenses or changes to income, and my bookkeeping was all out of whack. I had several spreadsheets that needed to be done and just couldn’t bring myself to do the job because of the overwhelming nature of being so far behind.

Two weeks ago, I finally did it. I spent a good chunk of the day getting all my books balanced and spreadsheets updated so that I can move forward and get that project in the rearview mirror. I nudge and encourage people all the time to keep their cash flow up to date, and I wasn’t doing it myself.

I definitely need to take a lesson from my garage project. My office space needs to be kept clean. If I only have one task sitting there for me to do, it’s easy to wrap it up in five minutes at the end of the day, filed away, and out of my mind. If I can keep my books up to date when bills come in, it becomes a five-minute job, not an all-day job.

Summary

I can’t keep letting myself get behind on these things. I need to prioritize end-of-day cleanup of projects so that the bills don’t stack up and my cash flow isn’t months too late. I know the importance of keeping better books, and I’m going to work hard on these daily five-minute fixes to keep my pile of papers clean, my spreadsheets up to date, and the garage clean.

Make it a great day.

Grant