Category: Lifestyle

This is a collaborative post

It’s no secret that wood flooring adds value to your home, and it’s easy to see why. It brings warmth and sophistication and plenty of character! Like anything worth having, it does require some maintenance and upkeep. Despite your beautiful wooden floors being very durable, over time damage can occur and the protective coat begins to wear away. 

If your flooring is properly finished and all maintenance measures taken, then it can last a lifetime. However, it might be that you’ve moved into a new house with existing wood floors, or it really has been that long since you changed or refinished it. It will be obvious when your flooring needs some TLC, such as the obvious need for a sweep or a good mop. Here are some signs that it’s asking for a makeover…

Water 

If you’re familiar with the pros and cons of wood floors, then you’ll know that water is one of the main things that can cause damage. We all have it in our household and no matter what room you chose to lay your flooring in, it’s likely that some spillages will occur. 

Of course, the best way to avoid this is to reduce the amount of water exposure it has and clear up anything as soon as possible. It can certainly cope with small amounts, but large spillages can cause irreversible damage.

In worst cases, the wood maybe be buckling or warping which unfortunately means it needs to be replaced. This is why it is beneficial to keep a few planks after you install your flooring, so if the damage is restricted to a few planks then you can just swap them over. 

However, in best cases water damage can sometimes just cause a stain, this can be eradicated with sanding it down. If your floors are water damaged however, make sure you get the bottom of the source of the water otherwise you’ll be fixing your floors over and over!

Scratches and dents

Unfortunately, scratches are inevitable on hardwood floors, especially in busy households. However, there are a few pointers that will tell you if it’s time to refinish. 

If you have a lot of scratches spread over a wide area, it’s probably worth refinishing your whole floor, as opposed to swapping a few planks around.

Some scratches can penetrate beyond the protective surface and into the wood. Sometimes, these types of scratches mean that the only thing to do is to replace your flooring. 

Discolouration

This is always an easy way to see if it’s time for a change. Over time, the protective finish will wear off, thus water damage, stains and scratches are more likely to occur, even just small spillages can start to become a danger where they wouldn’t have been before. When wood absorbs water, it oxidises and turns grey so as soon as you see grey floors, it’s time to do something about it! If you catch it quickly, then in most cases refinishing will do the job, however if left then the colouration can get worse and you’ll have no choice but to replace your floors. 

Lots of natural light is something all homeowners want; the problem is that sun exposure can discolour your hardwood floors. Again, the only way to remove this is to refinish or replace your floors.

Recovery after birth is really important and I feel mothers sometimes feel a little bit neglected, overwhelmed and that they don’t have time to look after themselves. When all the adrenaline is out of the system you’re often left feeling all the hormones, increased so when your milk comes in and I feel if you’ve had a bit a traumatic experience during birth, a bit of guilt too. The phrase ‘to mother the mother’ often used by postnatal doula’s could not be more accurate to what a mother needs.

I can not dismiss that after birth recovery is vital and important, however, I only have experience of recovering from a c-section delivery and therefore that is where my ‘expertise’ lie. I’ve had two sections, neither were planned and one was a lot more complicated than the other. I want to talk about some of the ways you can best assist your recovery after a c-section birth.

If you know you’re going to have a c-section then a lot of these things can be prepared ahead of time, but if you are planning a vaginal birth but end up being induced, or having an unplanned or emergency (rare) c-section then some of these things might not have been considered so I’ll try and think of both scenarios for this post.

Time Off Together

2 weeks is not enough post c-section, try for 4 weeks with annual leave, or even better extend to six weeks with (unpaid) parental leave.

Encourage the dad or your patner to take some time off work. I strongly advise considering an extended amount of time off if this is possible. The first thing you want to look into is paternity leave which does have some stipulations and can either be one or two weeks. This can start from a selected date or the day you give birth and needs to be, I believe, within 52 days of the birth. Then I would really look into taking a week or two annual leave after the paternity leave. Having a period of four weeks off to adapt to your new baby will take a lot of the pressure off mum to bounce back after having major abdominal surgery. It’s also really important for dad/the other parent to find their feet and place too without the pressure of getting back to work quickly.

It is also worth looking into parental leave. It is unpaid but government backed therefore you can not be penalised for taking this time off. Parents are entitled to 18 weeks parental leave for each child (including adopted children) and you can take 4 weeks leave per child, per year. You must take it in week blocks and usually have to give around a month’s notice. It is unpaid so it is worth considering this if your funds are stretched or saving up during pregnancy to cover the amount of time off.

Adam only actually ended up getting around 10 days off work because I was in hospital from Thursday – Sunday. He was starting a new job and University so the pressure to ‘bounce back’ was well and truly on me and it caused some severe anxiety attacks which really affected my self confidence and recovery. You can’t drive straight after a c-section, you’re barely sleeping and you’re adjusting to a newborn. If you have other children, like I did, I couldn’t even manage the school run once in a day and needed the next day to recover let alone doing it twice in a day. If Adam had had that extra time off work, I probably would have recovered faster because I wouldn’t have been so stressed.

If you can’t take additional time off or unpaid parental leave

1. Ask other family/friends for help with other children, school pick ups or looking after for an hour or two.
2. If someone comes over ask them for help if you need something done or ask them to bring you food.
3. Get a slow cooker and add lots of one handed, nutritious and filling snacks to your grocery shopping – and do it online to make it easier
4. Do not feel you have to leave the house, ask friends and family to come to you.
5. Consider hiring a cleaner in the late stages of pregnancy so they can help in those early newborn days.
6. Just focus on you and baby. Your partner can deal with the housework before and after work and put a dinner in the slow cooker whilst you recover.

Consider some hired help – this can come in many forms

Hiring some help whilst you recover from a c-section is a priveledged thing to do and not everyone will have the chance to but if you can spare the cash then it can do your recovery wonders. Hiring a cleaner just to take care of some of the bigger jobs can really make a difference to keeping the home together whilst you focus on you and baby.

You could look into a postnatal doula who are there to mother the mother. They are the advocates for postnatal self care. The postnatal fairy godmother if you will. Postnatal doula’s are self employed individuals and offer a variety of different options to help your recovery. They are experts in this field. They will be there to help look after baby so you can get that shower, some can help with baby wearing and breastfeeding. Many will offer to bring a homecooked meal and some offer to do some light cleaning to take a load off. They are also amazing emotional support and a fountain of knowledge. A postnatal doula will be a pro at helping a mother recover from a c-section.

Recovery after a c-section usually takes around 6 weeks for the outer stitching to heal and 12 weeks for the inner stitching to heal. It is a long process. The most important thing is looking after you and your baby. The general advice is not to lift anything heavier than your baby and as your baby grows and gains, as will your strength. You do not owe it to anyone to bounce back.

I love a good planner and often have a fair few on the go. I’ve already got mine for 2020 alongside a notebook which I use to help plan my content for my blogs and social media. I also find writing things down on paper a good way to deal with my overwhelm when I have a lot of things buzzing around in my brain.

I’m giving my readers the chance to win a rose gold 2020 planner because I love all things rose gold, I love planners and I want to give something to a winner this month. The clever fox budget planner is the sort of thing I would be looking to use in my day to day life because I am focusing on creating an effective household budget, clearing debt and need a place to track my expenses. It’s full of trackers for saving, clearing debt, expenses, a Christmas tracker and a place to jot down a few ideas too. Affiliate links for the prize are below if you can’t wait until 31st December when the competition ends and want to get started on your budget for next year right now.

To be in with a chance of winning you can use the Gleam widget below which has a variety of options to win. Entrants agree to be contacted by email to orgainise delivery. This is open to UK residents only aged 18+ and is not affiliated with Clever Fox or Amazon. There is no alternatives or cash exchanges available.

If you would like to enter more competitions I am currently hosting please head to my giveaways and competitions page for more!

Planner

In an evergrowing digital age language matters more than ever. I have absolutely made my mistakes in the past with language and what I’ve said. I’ve said silly things, things that have been taken completely out of context and sometimes I’ve said things which have made me rethink and actually check my priviledge. I do have to acknowledge that I am in a priviledged position as well as part of some marginalised groups.

My Priveledge and Marginalisation

My priveledge comes from being white and cis-gendered, the marginalisation comes from being a woman, being fat, being working class (at one point having lived in a hostel) and being a mother. Four groups of people that are frequently judged, oppressed, not taken seriously and questioned all of the time. What I do absolutely realise though is compared to other marginalised voices mine aren’t as vital because I already have that underline priveledge. Over time it’s something I’ve had to kind of push to one side, being in a position of priveledge is not really an attack of character and can be used to pull other more marginalised voices through. We need to open the conversation.

Always Period Products

Recently, Always decided to remove the venus symbol from their packaging to make it a little bit more appropriate for all menstruators. There seems to have been a real issue across the internet for this where people are frustrated that only ‘females’ have periods and these are products are only bought by women. There are even certain voices saying how Trans rights are being taken more seriously than women’s rights. It frustrates me because Feminism and equality is all inclusive of gender, and it includes all marginalised voices that have had to deal with inequality due to their gender. This means it includes women, dodging toxic masclunity and alpha male culture and anyone that identifies within then LGTBQ+ community. Menstruators are not just women. Menstruators are bleeders as some are intersex, some only have some of the female reproductive genetalia which causes periods, some are trans people who still need and deserve the same amount of dignity and healthcare when bleeding.

Why should we use all inclusive language for people that have periods?

When I first heard the term menstruators instead of women that have periods was an occasion I needed to check my priveledge. I’m also not a consumer of Always products opting for resuable cloth pads and currently looking for the right menstrual cup for my cycle and body. I think this move is a good thing. I think people are quick to jump ahead and say something is inclusive for women and get angry because it comes from a place of priveledge from never having dealt with gender dysphoria. The anger is coming from people that do not identify as intersex, trans or LGTBQ+. It’s mostly coming from cis women and a few men who feel they need to be the shining hero (feminisim has no place for shining cis white male heroes, it needs allies and cis men to pull marginalised voices through)

Why pronouns matter and why we should start paying attention

How would you like it if you were continously called the wrong name or associated as the wrong gender? If you were consistently reffered to as a gender that you actually didn’t feel a part of? I know I wouldn’t like it. I am very happy to be identified as she/her because I very much identify as female. But this isn’t about me. I accept that I am cis gendered but I am very much an ally for all and any that identify as a different gender and embrace being non-binary. I accept that gender is a spectrum and I want to see more LGTBQ+ voices pulled through because the more we see it the less sensationalised it is. All of these voices matter.

In the past I have brushed this off and said “oh it’s too hard” but actually it really isn’t. It’s not hard to ask what someone prefers to be called, we are just changing the question a little bit. Have we really got so stuck in our ways that changing the question is just too much effort? Refusing to accept that others may identify differently to what you have been brought up to believe is lazy. Radical even. So unthinkable. It’s only going to be unthinkable to people that don’t have a clue what it’s like to be in that marginalised group though isn’t it? Because thats what priveledge is, never having to be in a position where you are oppressed or judged because of a part of you that is just you. When we refuse to call someone by their preffered pronouns, or accept that they identify differently and prefer they/them (or others) we are refusing to accept and acknowlege who they are.

Why language is more important than ever

The way we speak to people is really important and it’s not about being a snowflake generation or being too politically correct. It’s just about being a decent person. It’s about accepting and acknowledging that people are different. We are quick to say to our own children that being unique and different is not something to be worried about, that everyone is different and no one is the same but it’s incredibly contradictory to then put a boundary on how different someone is allowed to be before it’s deemed socially unacceptable. I don’t think this is fair.

Cis gendered people need to learn and accept that gender is spectrum based and many people identify differently. We need to be allies and we need to raise allies. This is why I think the improvement to include LGTBQ+ families and identities into relationship and sex education is vital. Big changes start with teaching children different social constructs so this is absolutely vital to breaking down barriers, smashing the patriarchy and creating all inclusive allies.