Simple living in the country - back to basics

Cheery_Daff

Right, plan for the evening! And yes I am total ticking off stuff I've already done 😂

ALREADY DONE

✅ workout
✅ cancelled dentist appointment (can't fit the denture til I've had the tooth out at the hospital and no sign of appointment yet...)
✅ Spent half an hour on job prep
✅ Printed label to return shoes

7.30-8.15 TEA & TASKS

* ring dad - he rang earlier in the day which was odd, and I know he's had a hospital appointment 🙄
* parcel up shoes ready for post office
* eat and get food in the hay box for tomorrow

8.15-9 HOME

* flylady home blessing (going to skip changing the bedding this time so won't take quite as long)

9-10 TV & FINANCES

* reclaim my laptop 
* watch Call the Midwife
* bank shuffling 
* upload photos from phone to laptop - I don't think I've done this since November so it may take a while... 🙈

Going into the office tomorrow. I've got a meeting at 9, Mr Cheery has a meeting at 12, and we were going to head in after my meeting, but fortunately remembered there's a planned power outage 9-4 tomorrow so we'll have to go early. Hey ho. 

Right, on with the list!

LadyWithAPlan

I am absolutely sure you are getting this job - or the next level up on the amount of prep you are doing. Very impressed and enjoy it!

I am also an expensive headphones lady ... I have airpod pro - had them for 3 years and still great and i can change my music on them etc , plus some Beats and some sennheiser pro headphones...  makes such a difference when you travel 

redofromstart

My insurance hunting did not give any positive result, I hope you have more success!

Cheery_Daff

LadyWithAPlan said:

I am absolutely sure you are getting this job - or the next level up on the amount of prep you are doing. Very impressed and enjoy it!

Ha, thank you! I hope you're right (well, this job - it certainly won't be the level up at this stage!) 😂 Inevitably I still feel unprepared, but in trying to balance it with normal work and resting and everything else too.

redofromstart said:

My insurance hunting did not give any positive result, I hope you have more success!

Urgh, sorry to hear that 😕 I confess I'm going to ignore all of it until after the interview. I know it's not the ideal time, but I'll still have over a week for the house insurance, and almost 3 weeks for the car, so it'll have to do. Trying to use my limited mental energy carefully this week!

Cheery_Daff

didn't do everything, but got a fair bit done! 

 DONE

✅ workout
✅ cancelled dentist appointment (can't fit the denture til I've had the tooth out at the hospital and no sign of appointment yet...)
✅ Spent half an hour on job prep
✅ Printed label to return shoes

7.30-8.15 TEA & TASKS

✅ ring dad - apparently he rang me by accident, everything's fine
✅ parcel up shoes ready for post office
✅ eat and get food in the hay box for tomorrow - Black bean stew in the hay box, and also made that elderly frozen potato into a kind of hash mix which is currently in the fridge - I'll fry it up tomorrow night with some eggs i think. Miss having my own chickens - I've spent 5 years thinking of endless ways to eat eggs and now I'm having to wean myself off them. I do buy them, but sometimes we'd have 30 a week to use up and I'm not buying that many 😂 

8.15-9 HOME

✅ flylady home blessing (going to skip changing the bedding this time so won't take quite as long) - didn't mop the kitchen floor but everything else got done

9-10 TV & FINANCES

* reclaim my laptop 
✅ watch Call the Midwife
* bank shuffling 
* upload photos from phone to laptop - I don't think I've done this since November so it may take a while... 🙈

Good enough 😊

Tomorrow is in the office, probably won't be home til 7 ish. At least tea is already made! 

Feeling grateful for good routines today, and been thinking how many I do have, rather than berating myself for the ones I don't 🙄😂 I do actually have Flylady to thank for a fair bit of it! I ALWAYS make tomorrow's dinner the night before, and breakfast too, on the days I'm in the office, and pack my bag ready. Always. Mostly decide clothes, and curse myself vigorously when I don't- it makes such a difference to times. Can't remember the last time I bought dinner at work - not for a long time. I always get 'dressed to shoes' when I get up too - clothes, hair, face, shoes etc. Not saying I never sit round in my dressing gown at the weekend, but it's actually not that often.

I'm slowly getting into the habit of having a bit of a tidy round after tea and making sure the washing up is done before bed - that's taken much longer to sink in. And I'm getting into the habit of having a good whizz round the house once a week - hoover, dust, mop, sheets, bins etc. Probably sounds like second nature to some of you but it's been a lot more ad hoc for me! 

I have to thank Joe Wicks for doing the seemingly impossible and finally getting me to meal plan 😂😂 Not always perfect, but getting there, and doing a lot more batch cooking and freezer meals etc. Also helping with taking dinner to work - it's usually leftovers of a hot meal rather than sandwiches.

He's also slowly getting me to see a workout as a treat rather than a chore... Not there yet, but there was a live one on the app at 6pm today, and I did actually stop work to do it. Mr Cheery was out and I might otherwise have carried on working til stupid o clock but I didn't, and I enjoyed it 😊

Some of these things have taken me years 😂😂 But I'm trying to recognise that are all good things and I do many of them without thinking now, and feel slightly 'off' if I have to miss one for whatever reason.

Gives me hope that I might be able to get into other good habits in the future! 

(Possibly not putting my phone away and going to sleep earlier - not tonight at any rate... 🙄😂)

Elisheba

I think we very often are our own worse critics, rather than our own best friends. I'm very similar to you by sounds of it, in that none of the home organisation comes easy to me. I'm not quite as far along as you are in bedding in good routines but I'm getting there. Taking a bit of time to reflect on how far we've come and being proud of ourselves is also a good habit to get into I think 😁

scandimore

Think I need to take a leaf out of your book Cheery! When you summarise it like that you must be / should be really proud of yourself. I absolutely need but always reject routine, constant battle! 

EssexHebridean

The comments from Elisheba and Scandimore really resonate with me - I constantly strive for improving habits but struggle to make them stick - in spite of the fact that I do know frpom experience that the old thing about 28 days of consistency being sufficient to embed a habit. (And when I do that, I really DO end up with it sticking - weekday bedtimes are a good example here for me, it's extremely rare that I am in bed later than 11pm now, and that frequently now applies at weekends, too!)  

The idea of a quick whizz round for a tidy/clear etc after tea might be my next thing to aim for. Even if I just set a timer for 15 minutes - most evenings that's not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things is it! 

Cheery_Daff

15 mins isn't a lot, and it's fine once you get going, but sometimes it's just 'one more thing' that seems like too much! I'm constantly striving too, and definitely do NOT have good form with sensible bed times 🙄

Mind you, I went to bed at half 11 last night, woke before the alarm at 7am - and was still in bed at 10.30 reading a book on my phone 😱 Not exactly a productive start to a working from home day 😱

Still, I did NOT beat myself up. I got up, dressed to shoes, did my morning routine including wiping round the bathroom sink and swishing the loo 😂 and finally started work about 11.15 🙄 My sister was having a similarly ridiculous day, so we joined forces on Zoom for a couple of sessions of focused working for an hour then reporting back 😂 Had a couple of unproductive hours later, but made up for it by working til 9pm - NOT a good habit, but I did get everything urgent off my list.

Then I did the dishes, hung the washing up, friend up that hash from the ancient freezer potatoes - I was looking forward to having it with quorn sausage and gravy but could I find the gravy?! No! Sprinkled some cheese instead and it was dry and exceedingly dull, and I will probably never again put boiled potatoes in the freezer (what was I thinking?!)

Now trying to convince myself to get back off the sofa - it's bin day tomorrow. No wheelie bins here, so bin day means bin bags in a wheelbarrow up to the top of the drive, and it's a pretty long drive - proper get-togged-up-we're-going-for-a-walk distance 🙄 But we often neglect putting them out, and now there's rather a backlog which is not good, so I shall put on my wellies and feel extremely virtuous when I get back 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

Well, I have just timed myself, starting with putting coat and shoes on, getting the wheelbarrow, retrieving several bin bags of rubbish from round the back, combining them to make the maximum four bags, and then wheeled them to the top of the drive through the wind and rain, and came back, took my shoes and coat off - and do you know how long that took?!

11 mins 46 seconds 😂😂 

I remember i used to hate hanging the washing up in our old house (partly because I was annoyed we didn't have a garden and washing line). I timed it once, and it took less than 4 mins 😂😂I've never complained about it since and now do it quite cheerfully, even indoors. 

Highly recommend timing tedious household tasks 😂 12 mins for a bin trip isn't bad at all, and next week we will be back on top of the rubbish, so if we actually do it ever fortnight, there should be a max of 2 bags each time, if that, so it'll be easier and might not even require a wheelbarrow...