Each week, I’m sharing a quick star rating and one-sentence progress report for how I’m doing on each of the seven goals I’ve set to change my life over the next seven months, and then tell you a bit more about one of the seven goals.
This week looked a bit different, because I was away having an adventure! I was volunteering at Latitude music festival with Oxfam. How it works (I think) is that the festival production company pays Oxfam the amount of money they would have to pay for stewards if they were employed normally; that’s then sent as a contribution to the charity, enabled by volunteers doing the stewarding work in exchange for a free ticket. There’s a better explanation on the Oxfam website, but in short: I got to stand 5 rows from the front for the Kaiser Chiefs set and scream out the words to I Predict A Riot and Never Miss A Beat in a way that made my inner teenager incredibly, incredibly happy.
Training for the half-marathon: ⭐️⭐️
Because of camping in a field, I haven’t run since Tuesday. Back to it this week!Master’s dissertation: ⭐️
I’m making progress. Less than I would have if I hadn’t spent most of the week in a field, but still some progress.Look after the space I live in: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This looked a bit different this week due to being… in a tent.
I am in love with my new camping sleep setup though: Thermarest Z-lite mat*, Alpkit Radiant mat, Alpkit Cloud Nine sleeping bag, Rumpl blanket, and Vango memory foam pillow*. (Ad - Links with asterisks are commissioned links)
One thing I did differently for this trip than I have for previous festival camping was carried some of my things in a plastic crate on a folding handcart thing. I was worried that having the crate in the tent would be really inconvenient but it was an absolute game changer to have a space to corral all the random bits-and-bobs that would normally end up spilling out of my backpack.
On the Vinted front, although my account was on holiday mode, six sales from previous weeks concluded, totalling just under £80 and getting me closer to my first £250 goal for this three-month period.Screen time below 3 hours: ⭐️
Going completely in the wrong direction here - last week’s screen time was 3 hours and 36 minutes. ‘Nuff said.Read the books I have: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Two Kindle books finished this week and no books bought. Pretty good - though both of those books had been bought only this summer so not particularly helping with the to-be-read backlog…Draft 1 of the Unhinged Fiction Project: ⭐️⭐️
I spent a very productive few hours with Katytastic’s ‘27 block outline’ method on Saturday - so although I didn’t get new words on the page, I do feel like I’m further forwardKnitting progress: ⭐️⭐️
Continued to truck along with the blanket for Baby G last week; nothing in particular to report there though.
Weekly Focus: Look After The Space I Live In
I’m messy. I’m really messy. Whether it’s due to combination of untreated (and until this summer, undiagnosed) ADHD, living alone, or just having too much stuff, my flat is a mess. The chaos stresses me out, but doing anything about it always feels overwhelming - and add that to the fact that I’m never really sure what to do.
I was recently recommended The Organised Mum cleaning content. As you can tell from the branding, it’s designed for parents (mostly mums) with a houseful of people to look after, but for my purposes I really like that she breaks down what (for example) ‘cleaning the bathroom’ actually means, and says that what’s important is doing a reasonable chunk each day, rather than trying to get it ‘perfect’. If I can do 30 minutes of cleaning a few days a week (working up to the five days a week she prescribes), that will gradually raise the cleanliness and tidiness level of my home to the point where a) I can think about moving without it filling me with panic and b) I’m not ashamed to invite people over. And I do need to move at some point in the next year - my rent is too high to pay for as a PhD student.
Tied in with this is Vinted. Part of my ADHD is that I spend money much too easily, no matter what safeguards I have in place, and I have more clothes than I can wear, more Lego sets than I can build, and more books than I could read in a decade (at the pace I have been reading books I actually own, vs library books or new acquisitions). Added to that are the changing relationships I have with dressing my body (and its size), and I have far more things than I need or want to own - which makes getting dressed and keeping my flat tidy even more difficult. So by selling things on Vinted (and regularly taking bags of donations to my local charity shop) I can make a dent in the overwhelming amount of possessions I have, while making some extra cash. Over the three months between March and May I made about £500 from Vinted, so I’m continuing the rhythm of regularly posting things that I don’t wear, books I’ve finished reading, and other things that would serve someone else’s home better than mine. You can check out what I have listed here.
Some people on the internet whose cleaning and tidying content I really enjoy are KC Davis of Struggle Care/ How To Keep House While Drowning* and Cas from Clutterbug. They both have ADHD and have struggled the same way I do; so I find it really reassuring to know that there is a life after mess. Naturally tidy people… I’m not sure I’d find them so inspiring for me.
Best
Lily