Your workbook · tool 8

Keep / change / later list

Every item with a color, triaged: keep, change, later or undecided, with the reason, the cost and what each change depends on.

The list

Decision: keep means it stays and the palette is built around it; change means it is a candidate for the plan; later means it will change but depends on something not yet decided; undecided means you need an observation before you can say. The "resolves an unknown" column helps choose the first move: a change that settles a question (does the floor lead or support? what does the sofa look like under warm light?) is often worth more than one that settles nothing. Costs are your own rough estimates in your own currency.

How to use this sheet

Start from the inventory. Every item in the inventory gets a row here, including the ones that obviously stay. "Keep: fixed material" is a complete reason, and a floor that stays is the most important row on the sheet because every change is judged against it.
Write the reason, and add what the item does if you can. "Change: hate it" is an honest reason; liking and disliking count. "Change: reads purple beside the oak at 8 p.m." adds something someone else can check, and tells you what a replacement needs to do differently.
Fill the four judgment columns for every "change." Rough cost, effect (how much of the room it alters: large for walls, rugs and curtains; medium for bedding, a slipcover, a group of frames; small for cushions and objects), reversible (yes for anything that rolls up or unzips, partly for paint, no for anything that cannot be undone cheaply), and the unknown it resolves. Module 10 chooses the first move from these.
Name the dependency for every "later." "Depends on: the living-room wall sample at the evening hour" turns a wish into a plan. A "later" with nothing in the dependency column is a row to look at again: either it is a "change" or it is a "never."
Use "undecided" honestly, with the observation that would decide it. "Undecided: retest the curtains after the wall is painted" is a good row. Undecided rows are not failures; they are the sample tracker's and light log's to-do list.
Phase is a first guess. "Now" is the first move; "next" waits for one dependency; "later" waits for more; "never" is a decision too, and worth recording so the question does not reopen every month. The budget tool is where phases become a sequence with numbers.
Re-triage after each phase. When the first move is in and observed, several "later" rows will have their dependency resolved and move to "now"; some "undecided" rows will have become "keep." Keep the old reasons; add the new ones.

Fictional home

The example rows are Larkin Street: Dana and Priya's 1970s first home with honey oak floors, beige 1990s tile, a secondhand olive sofa and off-white trim, a budget under $1,000 for the year, and permission to paint. The costs in the examples are their own rough guesses for their own plan, and the reasons refer to observations made in earlier modules. Your rows will carry your items, your reasons and your estimates.

Limits

This sheet organizes your reasoning; it does not know your home. The "effect" and "reversible" columns are your judgments and the costs are your estimates, and none of them tell you how an item will look in your room, which only the item in the room at the hours you use it can show. A row marked "change" is a candidate, not a purchase; the course's advice never requires buying before observing and testing, and this sheet is where you write down what has to be observed first.