Useful Stuff: Waking Up with ADHD, Usable Soap from Tiny Pieces, and Cast Iron Pan Storage
I actually LIKE writing about little projects I do at home and little objects I’ve found that make life easier. I usually post about them on Facebook, but that’s so ephemeral and hard to find later, that I’m going to start doing a weekly roundup of these things as well. :)
Waking Up with ADHD: So I’ve been having a LOT of trouble getting up in the morning for weeks/months now and only just realized it might be related to my #ADHD. This linked article helped me pinpoint the issue and the solution.
So i’ve been putting my ADHD meds and some water by my bed for the last few nights and now take my pill (Concerta/methylphenidate) the moment i /first/ wake up. Then when i ACTUALLY want to wake up, i can! And it doesn’t feel like an impossible force is keeping me in bed! I feel so much more useful and adult-ish now! :)
Usable Soap from Tiny Bits: You know those tiny little bits of bar soap you end up collecting that are super useless on their own but you feel guilty about throwing them out? Turns out it’s actually pretty easy to combine them all together to make usable soap again!
Basically, gather all the tiny bits together in a pot you don’t care that much about. I have one i got for cheap at Target a while back that’s specifically designated for craft projects and sterilization type activities; things you don’t want to do in the pots you cook food in, ya know? Add some water (I filled the pot about half full, which was honestly probably too much) and then turn it on high heat. The goal isn’t to have the mixture boil, but to melt the soap in it. Because of the soap surfactant molecules, you have to keep a close eye on the pot for bubbles and foam building up, but I found that just taking the pot off the heat briefly calmed down the bubbles enough that I could get it back together.
Tiny soap bits in my crafting pot!
The not very pretty mixture cooling n a greased bowl.
The final result in a little soap dish! (Yes, I use mini souvenir plates as soap dishes - this one commemorates the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday). #Anglophile :D
Once the soap is all melted, pour it over a sink into a strainer, and then dump it in a pre-greased small bowl or container of some sort. Once it cools, voila! Usable soap! It’s not the prettiest (although I’m sure someone with more patience could probably form the soap into a more regular shape while it was still slightly warm), but it works perfectly for non-guest bathrooms like the one I prepare the cats’ food in (I mix in salmon oil and probiotics, as i mentioned in this post, and use the door to keep them from hassling me while I’m doing it).
Cast Iron Pan Storage: We have a ton of cast iron and steel pans that John requested on our wedding registry without thinking about where we’d store them in our tiny kitchen. They’ve either been living on the stove or piled up in a corner, making a huge visual clutter and generally driving me crazy, ever since. I was inspired though, by the spic and span kitchen of one of my rover clients, to get our own act together, and bought a shelf designed to hold heavy cast iron pans. And LOOK, it’s so much prettier now and it’s so much easier to take them out and put them away.