If you too are staring down the daunting path of home building or renovating, you’ve come to the right place to feel better about your life choices.

When I say we looked everywhere in our area for our forever home I mean we spent three and a half years in a rental waiting and hoping this real estate market would cooperate. We are not people who are willing to go house poor or pretend we make a lot more money than we do in reality. We started our journey with a wish list and must-have list a mile long. It seemed every few months that went by we would cut both of those lists down until we had it whittled to nothing that we really wanted. We were sacrificing all our wants and truly a few needs to make the VERY top end of our budget work. My husband and I both were very unwilling to go over budget especially for a home that didn’t check any boxes for our family. We stumbled upon someone selling land in the perfect location and decided we were going to go for it and build. In order to build with our budget we decided to stay in our rental for another 18 months and pay every extra dime toward the land so it would not be a part of our mortgage. (How we scrimped and saved during that time is a whole other story but we made it and it feels so darn good to be on the other side of it!)

We then had to come to terms with the fact that the decision to build would mean doing A LOT of work ourselves including but not limited to tree removal, digging, driveway, paint, trim, hardware, electric, finishes, shopping around and comparing prices and timelines for contracted work etc. This is a huge undertaking and can be very overwhelming. If you are building or considering it then likely you are in the same mindset I started in…Where the F***k do I even begin?

I like to gather as much information as I can before I jump into a project of any kind so my first step was to ask around to people I know who have built homes before. I am lucky enough to have an amazing dad who in addition to being the handiest guy and electrician i know, has built two houses before. I also talked to future neighbors who built, friends etc. From there I compiled this excel spreadsheet that doubled as a “To do” list as well as the start of a budget.

Full disclosure here I cheated when making my initial rough budget and used Chatgpt to come up with average costs for each individual category giving specific factors like taxes, location, dimensions etc. This gave me a starting point for which to build upon and while that foundation was shaky, it quelled the ADHD urge to curl up with a blanket and a book and forget the whole project doom spiral.

Another amazing tool I use when I start to get overwhelmed with a project (or truly just life in general) is the daily planner from Passionate penny pincher.

This is the one I use which can be found on their website below. (This is not an affiliate link- I do not receive any commission on this product, I just love and recommend the hell out of it!)

It is the best planner I have found because it includes a small amount of daily household items and chores to help me stay on top of current life management which is a huge problem for me when I get invested in a project! It also has several areas for write in to-dos, monthly goals from financial to personal and professional. I seriously cannot praise it enough for helping me keep my crazy life on track! Also, if you’re a little neurodivergent too and need the perfect no bleed fine tip markers for all those fine lines and bullets, these can be found on Amazon!

https://amzn.to/3NYTmvE

(I may earn commission on this link at no added cost to you!)

All this to say these are the two things that I recommend to anyone starting a new build or renovation to help get organized. If you aren’t organized before starting you are setting yourself up for failure- trust me, I let our current house get overrun with chores and backed up laundry and it put a screeching halt on any successes, productivity and all sanity! Get it together sister, if I can do it, you can too!