Work on the house has been consuming a fair amount of my extra time as we get settled into the new house. Tasks are taking longer than they should, primarily due to a lack of organization. Before today, tools were in a number of different boxes in different parts of the house. Finding a screwdriver, hammer and some drywall anchors has taken me 20 minutes searching through different boxes in different rooms. I’ve never owned a house where there isn’t a constant flood of little projects, especially with three kids, two cats, and a dog to constantly break things.

A second problem I’ve had is that I’ve been using the garage as a home gym for the fitness startup. My wife has been using it on a daily basis as well. The garage had cabinets added at different times that don’t come close to matching, and it was difficult to organize anything with the hodgepodge of cabinets and space organization.

To address these issues, I’ve been renovating the garage. This has included ripping out all the mismatched storage, painting the walls, and putting in new organizational tools for both the fitness area of the garage as well as the tools area of the garage. This does a few things for me related to the fitness startup. First, it makes the area nicer for daily workouts. This is good for me as well as the wife as she’s been providing me a lot of valuable feedback. She likes the space much better now that it’s painted and organized. It also makes the pictures I’m taking for the fitness blog look better. It will also give me more time in the long run.

I’ve sacrificed about 20 hours that I could have spent working on writing, building, or digital marketing. I estimate that the new organization will save me 1-2 hours a week, so over a few months I will save as much time as I’ve put into it. After that I will be earning more time each week to put into the startup!

What are you doing to free up time to work on your startup?