I guess it's a common experience that "a stitch in time saves nine". My dad used to call it "preventive maintenance". If some little thing goes wrong, doing something about it quickly will usually preclude other problems later. Yeah.
I live alone. I have a helper. She's my housecleaner-become-friend. I'm not sure how I got so lucky to have found her, but she has been a tremendous help to me...not just with cleaning. We've been working together for probably three years now, and she's a godsend.
I am also disabled. Trying to do anything that requires standing or stamina is an issue for me. I can still drive like a champ, but I can scarcely walk. (Thankful that I live in a small house. I'm never far from things I can hold onto while moving room-to-room.)
That said, often little things don't get done, or if they do--and something else goes awry--it might not get fixed for months. Then the little things become bigger things, and so it goes.
My computer is on a hutch in the living room. The top of the hutch has become a catch-all for "stuff". When my gal was here today to clean, I asked her to clear off the "stuff". Then she asked about the piano lamp on top. Did I want it to stay? Well, yes. I use it...or did...until the bulb burned out. It uses a tube-shaped bulb, so I needed to buy one. With my gal doing all of the legwork, we tested it out. Put in a new bulb. Still didn't work. Lamp must be faulty. We trashed it. She brought out an adjustable desk lamp from my bedroom to see if that was a good substitute. I thought it was a stroke of genius. I know she pretty much had to stand on her head to get it unplugged but was sure it would be perfect. Ha! Wouldn't turn on. Changed the bulb. Still no go, so hmmmm.... Maybe the problem is with the power strip way back in the dark knee-hole of the computer desk? Bingo! For reasons known only to God, the slot my computer was plugged into worked. The rest did not.
My gal (who knows more about where things are in my house than I do) appeared with a new power strip out of my closet. She unplugged the old and plugged in the new, then tested it with the desk lamp. Worked! Then she fished the piano lamp out of the trash and tested it. Voila! It worked, too. Problem solved, but at what price? She returned both lamps to their original places. She was up and down off the floor, reaching, testing, doing, and undoing. These were things I could not have done and/or had no patience to do. What a blessing! It's such a little thing, but just having something that little turn into something that problematic...then resolved...brings enormous relief to me.
There is no end to the little things. A silly example: dishes in the sink. Need to get them in the dishwasher, but the dishwasher is full (and clean). Can't wash the dirty dishes until the dishwasher is emptied. How hard is it? Such a little thing, but failing to do it prevents other things from being done.
And what about doing the laundry? Sort it, wash it, dry it, fold/hang it, put it away. So why do I have tons of it undone? And how much better do I feel when I actually do all of that! Little things...but having no clean clothes means not going anywhere, and not going anywhere means deliberate isolation.
Little things make a huge difference! I keep trying!
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