24 Jun 2020

Note To Self: It's Time To Stop Glorifying Busyness


Here’s something I’ve not missed during lockdown: competitive busyness. The glorification of long office hours, insane commutes, rammed social lives. Everyone talking about how super busy their lives were. When did we turn busyness into a competition? When did busy start equalling important and worthy, and rest equal unimportant and dull?

It was nice when it stopped; a small perk to an otherwise shit situation. When we were all forced to stay at home, the playing field levelled out. None of us were busy. It was the NHS workers and the supermarket staff who kept the country afloat when a crisis hit, not the rest of us. Makes you wonder why we were flapping about like a bunch of pigeons, puffed up in our busyness. 

Here’s a question: how many times have you or someone you know said ‘busy?’ in a sarcastic manner when a person is doing something we do not put in the ‘busy’ category? Like, taking a proper lunch break or spending a Saturday pottering about the house or just simply lying horizontal in front of Netflix. Things that, when analysed separately, are not unreasonable things for a person to be doing. Whilst usually said as a harmless ‘joke’, in the way that people do, it is one laced with busy-shaming and disappointed expectations. It suggests that resting or taking breaks is an unacceptable pastime. 

To be busy, to be in action, is deemed a worthy state to be in. If you’re working long hours, the connotations are that you’re important and successful. Busy in your personal life: you have side-hustles to be hustling. Busy in your social life: you’re popular and in-demand. 

These connotations, by their very nature, suggest that if you are not busy in any of those departments, then the opposite is the case. Lazy, unimportant, unpopular. 

And it’s become competitive. Gosh, we all like to tell each other how busy we are. 

I am guilty of this. I’ve responded with ‘busy’ when asked ‘how are things’, when in fact I’ve probably had a very healthy mix of busyness and resting going on. But I wouldn’t answer ‘relaxing’ to that question for a subconscious fear of appearing lazy or unimportant. And I have certainly been guilty of cramming my diary, dismissing rest and time to myself (which I so desperately need to fill my energy bank) in favour of the busyness. Yet I wonder, why is cramming our lives with so much that we live in a semi-permanent state of exhaustion the thing that makes us superior? 

So here’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps if someone is working longer hours than they are paid for, they are either overworked or inefficient. Perhaps if someone is constantly busy in their personal life, they’re not prioritising the rest their body and mind literally need to function properly. 

And what happens to that someone when their desires and dreams are being side-lined because they are so damn busy being busy? 

Of course, there is no guarantee that this is the case, but the reality of a person’s busyness may be far less enviable. And we would do well to remember that. 

As normality begins to creep back in, I will be doing my best not to glorify busyness. I will not be sucked into competing with my busyness. My time will not be filled to the brim but used intentionally with plenty of free gaps in between. Because if lockdown has taught us anything, it's that it's the little things that matter. And I don't want to miss them because I'm too busy being... busy. 



17 Jun 2020

Home | Piecing Together A Living Room

Decorating a living room

I just looked around our living room and had a realisation that made me do a double take. There is nothing else I want to do or add to it. Does that mean it is finished?!

Well no, probably not. As it turn out, a house is never finished. Seriously, there is always something to tinker with. 

But for now, I’d say the living room is as good as done. We have pieced this room together agonisingly slowly over nearly a year. When we first moved in, we had no furniture for it and no real idea as to how to pull it together. It’s a dual aspect room on the first floor with a window at one end and double doors with a Juliet balcony at the other, plus double doors into the room, all of which makes it an awkward one to furnish.

The first and second floors of our house were carpeted in pale grey when we moved in, which we decided to keep as it was an inoffensive colour and in pretty decent condition. The living room was painted beige (compared to the luminous yellow and turquoise colours going on elsewhere, this felt pretty understated) and we knew we would eventually paint it a fresh white, along with the rest of the house (pink bathroom aside).

Sitting area

For the first two months after moving in, the only furniture we had was an old armchair and the TV unit which we’d pre-ordered before moving (priorities). Gary sat in an office chair during this period so you can imagine how high up on our list getting a sofa was. I had my heart set on a beautiful one from Loaf but unfortunately our stairs are freakin’ awkward which genuinely ruled out approximately 70% of sofas and made shopping for one take about three times longer than we intended, and then we had to wait seven weeks for them to arrive. It was all fun and games. Our final choice were these super soft velvet grey ones from Sofa Workshop; one sofa and one snuggler. We picked the small sofa (despite knowing the medium one would actually fit in the room) because of the stairs issue and they still had to take the arm off to get it up. But I’m very happy with them.

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room

We decided to go for a pink & grey theme, adding cushions, blanket and footstools in a velvet dusky pink. The footstools have removable lids, which can be flipped to turn them into side tables; I’m a big fan of multi-purpose. I wasn’t a fan of the empty space between the sofa and door so we added a ladder shelf. It adds a bit ‘something’ plus storage for the blanket basket and a few books and nick-nacks.

For the prints, we found these maps from Etsy and, as soon as we saw they came in a pink, we were in love. We have six of them for the places we have lived – Sheffield, Bath, St Albans, Kent, Newcastle and Dulwich, London.

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room


Reading Nook

At the other end of the room and the timeline, pretty much after everything else was done, we had the armchair reupholstered. This chair has been on a bit of a journey. It used to live in my grandparents’ house and was always the chair my Grandad sat in. Even after he died, we all continued to refer to it as ‘Grandad’s chair’ and it carries a lot of sentimental value. When my Grandma was downsizing a couple of years ago, I couldn’t bear to see the chair go so it was bundled into the back of my mum’s car, driven 200 miles down south and then wrapped up in their garage for a year. And then when we left the flat, it was driven across the country to finally be moved into its new home.

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room


My plan was always to reupholster it but I had no experience of this kind of thing whatsoever. I contacted a few different companies/people and the first quote I received nearly made me fall over. Reupholstering expensive. It had to wait a while (covered in a throw) whilst we dealt with more pressing issues in the house and saved the money up. I eventually found a local business to do the reupholstering and it was the right decision because I am so pleased with the final result. I picked grey velvet, similar to the sofas, for the material and asked for the seat cushion to be replaced as it was somewhat flat after so many years. Otherwise, it’s the same chair just with a big revamp and hopefully it will last for many more years to come.

Decorating a living room
Before & After
We created a reading nook around the chair, complete with little book case (Wayfair) and a big squishy rug (La Radoute). Colour wise, I wanted a deep green and gold for this end of the room and found the cushion, footstool and vase to match, plus the mirror and magazine rack in a plain gold.

I was also thrilled when I found the green ‘girl reading’ print; it felt like it was perfect for that spot. 

Decorating a living room

Decorating a living room

On both sides of the room, we have the simple gold lamps from Next, which are really cosy. The blind and curtains had to be made to measure because our windows are awkward sizes, and we had to search far and wide to find ones with a pattern that didn’t physically hurt our eyes. Biggest hurdle when decorating the house? Blinds. Who knew it was so damn hard to find ones we liked? 

We finished the room off with a big gallery wall, full of some of our favourite travel photos. Knowing I took all the photos in it always makes me happy and it’s a great reminder of our adventures. 

Decorating a living room