Easy self-care and organisation thread

[ibuiltahomeforyou]

I'm struggling with depression and low energy at the moment, and I thought it would be helpful to share some of the things I have been trying in case they help anyone else.

• showering and grooming

I set the alarm on my phone for eight minutes when I'm feeling low, and in that time I have challenge myself to dash into the shower, dry, dress, comb my hair and put on some lipstick. Eight minutes means I can just put the radio on full blast and it's over quickly

• breakfast

I bought some protein shake and just make myself one in the mornings for when I'm too tired to eat. It then stops me snacking on biscuits later 😳😳😳

• lunch

I boil some eggs at the start of the week, buy a bag of salad and some dressing, then those are my lunches for a few days at a time with little effort

• at work

I break my day into 45 minute long chunks, and do my best then have a 10-15 minute break so I don't get overwhelmed

• dinners

I keep things like frozen bags of paella in the freezer so dinner can be done in 10 minutes

I'd love any of your tips!

I do have Inattentive ADHD (recently diagnosed) As well as depression and anxiety (diagnosed over a decade ago and been on meds for the whole time).

• I bought a Tile for my door keys. I can ring them from my phone or iPad. Makes mornings way easier.

• When I’m folding laundry I make piles of “outfits” that then go in my drawers. Rather than putting tops in one, jeans in another etc. Same for toddlers clothes, big DC do their own.

• I buy in bulk every 3/4 months. Toilet roll, tinned food, freezer food and shampoo etc from LUSH in the big packages.

• I put music on and see how much I can get done in one song.

This is a great thread, thanks OP!

I do the breaking down into chunks of time thing and also find decluttering helps.

ThatFalse - those are great tips. Thank you!

The way I try to get some things done- when I can be bothered!- is to do small things at a time. It means the tasks aren't always finished but I feel I've achieved some of it IYSWIM. My husband is the opposite as he will do a task until it's finished.

For example, I'll iron in front of the TV catching up on stuff I want to see. When the iron needs refilling with water, will move onto something else, e.g. fill or empty dishwasher. Then maybe take ironed clothes up stairs and put away. Then will go back to ironing. Then something else etc.

Doesn't suit everyone but feel I've achieved something!
Also, the rest of the house can be a mess but I do like a tidy kitchen and living room.

The other things that drives me mad are trying to sort out all the mail, insurance etc. If I make one phonecall about something that's an achievement too!

The other thing I have is frozen precut veg in the freezer like onions, peppers,mushrooms etc. Can easily be added to dishes like casseroles etc.

As well as having pre-cut veg in the freezer you could try having pre-cut meat too - bag it in individual portions and then you can just grab it and add some of the veg. If I have to think about sorting something out when I'm that sort of mood I'll just end up eating crap but if I'd only got to pull something out of the freezer and whack it in the oven in a casserole dish I might manage a decent healthy meal and that in itself would be a mental boost.
I also recommend having mini pizzas in the freezer!

Eating as healthily as you can I think is really important.

What helps me on this is having a weekly planning session with DH and DD and writing a weekly meal plan together then ordering food online.

This takes away the need to think what to eat on any individual day and the right ingredients are always there. It also saves money and we waste so much less food too.

As someone mentioned earlier, doing tasks during the ad breaks is a great way to get things done, and you don't feel overwhelmed as you know you have a limited amount of time. It's surprising what you can accomplish in two minutes! Sometimes I'll get the vacuum out before a programme begins and do a bit in each ad break.

Doing anything is better than doing nothing. Even if you just make a messy pile of stuff into a neater pile of stuff it can look better!

Thanks for starting this thread - don;t think I have got many good ideas - but I'm taking note of others with interest.
i am so low at the moment I struggle to get out of bed at all. When i get up I sit huddled in an armchair with a hot water bottle doing bugger all (or fiddling on the computer)

Protein shakes are a good idea (I'm supposed to be on a high protein diet atm (non healing wound) but struggle with the effort of thinking of something for every meal.

I think I need some kind of small goal to get me going again - It's like I have totally seized up and can't think beyond the immediate.
House is a mess - I find it oppressively full of stuff but can't manage to even begin to sort things.

Really at a bit of a loss here, I am so mentally exhausted I've stopped functioning. (yet of course I manage to plaster on a smile and convince others I am fine - although I am mostly avoiding other people)

Kurri can you get someone to help you plan your meals? Do you live alone?

The one thing that ever worked for me was when I did something I called Fill the Freezer.

Basically, I am really obsessed by something or totally disinterested. If I'm disinterested then it feels like mission impossible to even be able to make a meal... let alone think of it, get ingredients, cook and then clear up. Pre kids, I never are because that just seemed really stressful for no good reason.

So Fill the Freezer kind of tapped into the obsessive side of me. I work term time only, so twice I managed to spend a couple of days filling the Freezer. Went to lots of super markets, batch cooked, wrote down what I had in freezer. Managed to do it for two half terms and it really had such a big impact.

I had to do it in one big frenzy, because if I tried to add batch cooking as a weekly habit that would just do my head in.

I should do it again really. The big thing is writing down all the meals that I could easily prepare. Doesn't always have to be freezer stuff. Being able to read it jump starts me from my state of indecision and inaction.

To clarify, I spent a couple of days of my holidays filling the Freezer for the upcoming half term.

@ifeellikeanidiot I really like your post. We're constantly told that developing long term habits is the way forward. I'm in my fifties and stillnot managed to form good habits. Maybe some brains just don;t. Instead of feleing useless about it, it's much better to just accept the all-or-nothing state our minds tend towards and make the most of it when it's in 'all' mode. I'm going to try your fill the freezer technique.

Today I had absolute work overload (end of term uni marking piling up with so many admin forms to fill in for each student, which is what I really struggle with. Form blindness.) I sat down to work this morning, heart hammering with stress, then just stopped before I started and made a long list of everything I have to do this week and another list of everything I want to do this week. Then put a day beside them for completion. Today's overwhelm suddenly became a handful of jobs and I've just finished the biggest one (the marking pile) and know the next biggest (the admin pile) isn't due till tomorrow when I've finished teaching.

Really made life easier to write a to-do list for the whole week, not just today. If I'd done one for today I would have put too much on it and stayed stressed.

Sorry - I meant to return earlier tot hread. thank you Snog. I live with my adult DD, she is fairly good at seeing when I am getting overwhelmed and yesterday made a list of meal suggestions - simple stuff - jacket potatoes, spaghetti and sauce etc. so I just follow that.
I'm going to try some freezing of food, so that if I feel overwhelmed i can at least know there is a meal I just need to thaw (obviously DD helps with cooking too).
I'm feeling a bit calmer today - we did a bit of clearing - just the hallway, with DD going through stuff with me and saying 'keep or sling' so that's looking a bit better too.

I think my problem with lists is as a PP mentioned - i put far too much to do on them and then feel I have failed when i can;t do everything, or (more often) the list looks so huge I don't even get started on it and give up before I start.

I have bought some Lakeland soup and sauce bags and when I make big meals, like lentil curry or corned beef hash, I put half in one in the freezer then on a day it's all too much I can just defrost something quickly.

My quick dinners are:

Beans on toast
Sweet potato fries with fried egg
Salad and felafel

I'm not exactly going to win masterchef but they can all be made with absolutely minimal effort!

and sweet potato fries are so delicious, DC even love them when I lose track of time and burn them.

@ibuiltahomeforyou do you make the falafel or buy them?

I thank myself. Out loud. Sometimes I hug myself if I'm feeling really crap and say soothing things, out loud.

I'm well on the way to being the old lady who mutters to herself in public! But it does help me. (Well done Bucking you've been really honest and brave to share that )

Fabulous thread with many excellent ideas. Thank you OP.

I love this thread. I didn't realise how much I was just getting by and struggling until i read these strategies. I do most of them and have learned some new ones today.

-timer for lots of things, just makes things more manageable
-admitting i can't cook every night, ready meals and "easy teas"
-bare minimum cleaning, hate doing it but good for my MH
-sometimes when i'm really struggling i look at a room and choose just one thing to put away and i say to myself i just have to put this one thing away, then i move on to one more thing, so I am not seeing a huge list of demands- just one thing at a time.
-pay the kids to do chores- i know they should just do them but they dont, at least this way things get done
-agree about having a movable to to do list. i have wunderlist on my phone and pc and put all the things in there by date. in the morning or the night before i look over the days list and if there re things that don't NEED done that day I move them to the next day. yes things dont get done or take ages to be done, but at least the essentials dont feel so overwhelming

• put self care on the list too, read a chapter of a book, watch a film, have a nap, lie down etc

Totally tidy up in ad breaks.

And when waiting for a screen to load!

I'm so glad a few people have mentioned easy teas - I've been having quite a few beans on toast/scrambled/poached egg on toast type meals recently, and I end up castigating myself for not making a 'proper meal'. But thinking logically, egg on toast, a raw carrot during the day, I usually eat a couple of oranges a day and a bag of salad I can pop in a sandwich, and I'm probably doing OK nutritionally. I think we (I) get to fixated on having to spend time preparing a meal and making something fancy - I tend to set myself up to fail because I set stupid standards that really aren;t necessary.

I like the idea of praising and saying nice things to yourself (I am already an old lady who mutters to herself - so no one will notice any different )

So far today I have managed to send away for a birthday gift for my DDIL's 40th - and actually well doen to me, because I;d got stuck in a terrible rut of indecision about what to get her and not being able to choose etc etc.
Now on to flowers for my Mum for mothers day, and I'll feel I've achieved two things (albeit small things)
And for tea - DD and i are going to make a large quiche (ready rolled pastry, bag of prewashed spinach) cut it into slices eat a couple tonight and freeze a good the rest for quick dinners.

As for lists - I keep finding notebooks ,- I must have gone through some sort of notebook buying crisis ! (I think I was thinking about list making a while back) because I've bought about 15 with no recollection of buying any of them. Now to think of what to write in them !

Enjoy your notebooks! (I've got a few too....)

Thanks to reading this thread I remembered I had a portion of mince and veg in the freezer. I've been very demotivated about cooking lately - a lot of the time I'm only preparing meals for myself as my husband gets in late. End up cheering myself up with a walk to the shops for chocolate etc which is NOT helpful! Tomato-ey mince is going down very nicely just now thank you.

I have a big pot of stock on the stove at the moment - really need to make some of it into vegetable soup as that does save a lot of hassle.

Kurri notebooks are so therapeutic. One for boring To Do lists. One for "T Dah' lists (stuff you did get done, even if it wasn;t the stuff on your To Do list. That's a good notebook to keep as it reminds you that you are actually accomplishing stuff day in day out, just most of it (laundry, food prep etc) is invisible. A notebook for stuff you want to do one day - like a bucket list. I have hoards of them.

I'm going to try to do some batch cooking this weekend to get ahead for next week.

Also, minor achievement, but I put on some beautiful bright lippy this morning and washed my hair, which meant I felt able to face the day!

I craved sugar at lunchtime and bought some jelly babies, but I had a few then left them in the work kitchen so I didn't finish them all, too.