I did not make my own bed for nearly six years. I, of course, pulled up the sheets and blankets and the morning and tidied the bed. But I didn’t really make a bed. I didn’t pull off and wash my sheets, stuff my own duvet in it’s cover, fluff and place pillows.
Now, on the boat, I make my own bed. It’s been an adjustment. You forget how to do an awful lot of simple tasks when you stop doing them regularly.
I have said this many times, I don’t expect anyone to feel bad for me. I do not think it is cute to be a 30 something woman who cannot fold a fitted sheet. But I think that doing things, really doing them, for myself has been healing.
I always knew it was important to do things for yourself. I have always done my own grocery shopping. No Instacart or Amazon Fresh. I insisted on it. “It’s important that I never become a woman who doesn’t know how to buy her own apples.” And I was correct, doing your own shopping is important, but it doesn’t solve the problem.
Right now, we’re having a moment where we talk about “nepo babies” and while I am not a nepo baby, I am in some ways a nepo adult.