Disability is generally associated with a lack of function, however, in my experience, it’s also my superpower. Because of my disability, I need to tackle everyday tasks in a slightly different way and that has led me to some strategies that can also be effective for non-disabled folks as well.
Today’s everyday task… caring for my collection of indoor plants.
Energy conservation is not laziness
Accessibility consultant, Julie Sawchuk describes accessibility as a three-legged stool where the legs are safety, independence and dignity. The underlying goal of achieving this balance is to ensure that folks with disabilities aren’t expending undue amounts of energy doing basic tasks.
Stefan and I rent an apartment that hasn’t been adapted for wheelchair accessibility, which means that I have to be creative to function. For instance, when I’m filling up the watering can in our kitchen sink, I use this velociraptor backscratcher. We got it years ago as a gag souvenir from the Royal Tyrell Museum—Alberta’s premiere destination for dinosaur lovers—and now it’s my go-to for turning on the faucet. I’ve even wrapped the tips of the claws in elastic bands to make them slightly more grippy than they would be otherwise.
Now, I can pull myself up to stand on the footsteps of my wheelchair to reach the handle as well and I’ll sometimes do this when washing dishes in the sink. Pulling myself up this way, however, is more dangerous and it requires far greater physical effort.
Some might see me using this tool as being lazy, but it is me choosing how I want to make use of my limited energy reserves.
Do I want to use that energy to turn on the tap or do I want to use it for actually watering the plants?
Likewise, I have a hand-held reacher commonly used by folks in wheelchairs for picking up items off the floor. I use it mostly for picking up dog toys from underfoot and wheel. I can climb in and out of the chair to pick up these toys or I can use that same energy for playing tug with Lucy.
I know which one Lucy would prefer.
While non-disabled folks might have larger energy reserves than I do, those reserves are still finite. You can use that energy far more effectively if you are making conscious decisions about how it is being utilized.
Use technology to offload your brain wherever possible
Much of anxiety is rooted in the notion that “if I’m not thinking about this thing then something bad is going to happen.” This likely stems from old ancestral wiring from our days living as prey on the savanna. Back then if you weren’t constantly keeping your eye on the lion he’s likely going to jump out and eat you.
Now imagine that you’ve got an automated sensor that’s constantly tracking the location of that lion for you. It allows you to relax a bit while you forage for berries, safe in the knowledge that when the lion needs to be dealt with or fled from then that technology will provide that alert.
The modern world has way too many things that need to be kept track of at any given time, so it is no great surprise that many folks struggle with a persistent sense of anxiety and overwhelm. You may not be dealing with actual lions in your day-to-day anymore, but your nervous system doesn’t really know how to make that distinction.
This is why a great strategy is to identify those areas of your life where you are expending a lot of vigilance and attention and then use technology to take on that mental load.
For instance, I currently have 18 individual plants that I care for in our apartment and that number becomes bigger or smaller depending on the time of year. These plants include herbs, tropicals and succulents, so they have wildly different watering needs. My little orchid in the bathroom needs to be soaked in the sink every other day while my spiky haworthia only needs to be watered every couple weeks.
Rather than attempt to keep in my head when a plant got watered last or check the soil dryness of each plant every day, I use an app called Blossom.
Blossom gives me a list of plants each day that need to be watered based on the days between watering estimates that I have previously set. I can then water that plant and check it off or, if I can see it doesn’t need to be watered yet, I can snooze the reminder for however many days I’d like. If I get behind on my watering, Blossom will also tell me how many days I’m overdue on a particular plant, which allows me to triage which plants need to be watered the most urgently. This can be especially important on those days when I’m dealing with pain or low energy and can’t through all my watering.
I pay $26.49/yr for the app and, in my opinion, it’s worth every penny.
Some other free apps built into my iPhone that I use regularly include:
Medications (under the Health app) - When you’re not operating at 100% due to pain or low energy, tracking what medications you’ve taken and when is of vital importance to ensure you aren’t potentially under-dosing or overdosing. It also provides an opportunity to track medication use over time—eg. are you slowly becoming more reliant on a painkiller due to a chronic issue?
Reminders - There are many task-tracker apps out there, but I stick with the one that’s built into the phone because it syncs seamlessly with the same Reminders app on my desktop. This is my master to-do list and every morning I will go in to adjust my planned tasks for the day. Importantly this is not a cudgel to beat up myself, but a way to set realistic expectations of the most important things that need to get done and bumping out lower priority items if need be. I make note of everything from emails that need follow-up to pieces of much larger projects. There’s also nothing quite like the dopamine hit of getting to cross something off.
Calendar - Where Reminders is all about tracking the turtle step tasks, my Calendar is about getting a bird’s eye view for activities weeks or months in advance. People are generally accustomed to using the Calendar app to record appointments or meetings, but I like to use it for more important headline-grabbing reminders like a deadline for a final report or booking my disability ride-share five days in advance of the trip. I set these as colour-coded “all-day” events so I can track them at a glance when I’m zoomed out to my weekly or monthly view.
Final tip: For these technology solutions to work, it’s important to either make use of notifications or to regularly check the app when you need to. With Blossom, I only open the app when I need to find out which plants I’m watering today. For other apps, however, I will make use of notifications to remind me about taking medications or when tasks are overdue.
I strongly recommend taking some time to turn off all unnecessary notifications, (see instructions for iPhone), to reduce the alert clutter. It is obviously much more important to be reminded about taking a medication as opposed to being notified that someone commented on your latest Instagram post—and probably better for your mental health too!
Set reasonable expectations based on “want to do” instead of “should do”
Until we moved into our current place, I’d only ever lived in apartments with poor, north-facing light and thus a very limited ability to grow plants. This place, however, is south-facing with plentiful light and I immediately got excited about all the plants I could have there.
With so much sun, we should be growing our own food!
I began to fixate on the idea of bountiful harvests of grape tomatoes to replace the weekly plastic package we bought at the grocery store.
I quickly learned that growing tomatoes was much more work than I bargained for. I sprouted eight leggy tomato plants and discovered that they all needed to be watered daily. Since I couldn’t hose them down as I would if they were in a big outdoor garden, I had to hand water each of them with a watering can.
Even with all this individualized care, I didn’t get enough ripe grape tomatoes to fill a single plastic package for the entire summer—a package that would probably cost me $5 at the grocery store.
It wasn’t the money, however, that was the important piece of the equation for me—it was the time. For me to do that amount of daily watering, particularly by hand using a small watering can that was physically light enough for me to handle with my limited strength, required way too much time.
Like energy, time is also a finite resource and it needs to be valued accordingly.
The trap I had fallen into was when I got caught in that first “should”. We have all this sunlight in our apartment so we should grow our own food.
But did I want to? Was it worth my valuable time to grow these tomatoes?
No.
Today I am still just as excited about our sunny apartment and get a great deal of pleasure from my plants. I am also conscious of keeping their numbers under strict control and this ensures that I can give them all the time and energy they need to be happy and successful.
I particularly like the green onions that I keep in water in an old pasta jar. I top up the water once a week and we always have freshly snipped green onions to add to our meals.
Time for value equation? Priceless.
Athena Cooper splits her time between being a fine art painter and creativity coach with Tilted Windmills. If you’re interested in finding a better balance in your every day, check out Creative Life Coaching where Athena brings together traditional life coaching with the fun and insight-generation power of art-making.
Book a free 30-minute consultation to learn more.
So true, all that you said above. Plants are something that I love to nurture and grow - could I be better? probably. However, it is a balance - I do what I can when I can. If some fail, then I start over and do things different the next time. Trial and error, that is what it is all about.