Activities of Daily Living

One of the main buzzwords that gets thrown around, studied, and discussed here in OT school are Activities of Daily Living or "ADL's". ADLs refer to basic self-care activities that people do every day, like being able to dress ourselves, bathe, groom, go to work, take care of our living area, and engage in leisure activities. Normally when we're talking about ADLs in class, we are talking about how we can help someone with a disability be able to do all of these things as independently as possible.

This week though, my schedule was quite chaotic! By Wednesday I was drowning in laundry and barely had time to eat breakfast. On Thursday I had class, office hours, and TA responsibilities that kept me occupied until I was able to rush home and change clothes for my date. I may or may not have eaten only pop-tarts for lunch on Friday due to lack of groceries. All three days combined involved less than 13 hours of sleep total. Clearly, my own ADLs were not being taken care of.

So, the first part of my weekend was officially dedicated to getting my life together. When I finally left cadaver lab on Friday afternoon, the first thing I did was grocery shop. I picked up a movie and went to bed super early. Saturday morning was for doing dishes, vacuuming for the first time since I returned here in January, completing homework assignments, and studying for an upcoming hellish week of exams. I even cleaned out two junk drawers and re-folded the entire content of clothing in my dresser, and caught up completely on the episodes of Walking Dead that I missed. Today after church I went skating at Millenium Park -- yay for checking things off my Chicago bucket list left and right! There are still a few things left on my to-do list for this weekend, but I feel so much more relaxed now that my apartment is somewhat in order, I've eaten real meals and had time to just sleep and do absolutely nothing. Usually lounging around too much on the weekends makes me feel lazy and bad about myself, but this down time was so needed! I hope you all are having relaxing and productive weekends too!