Shelf

 I put up a shelf for the first time yesterday and I'm ridiculously proud of myself.

I've never been what you'd call a "handy" person, and I wasn't encouraged to be one either as anything to do with power tools and the like was considered "men's work" in my family. When I moved out, I always lived in rented accommodation and wanted to avoid making any permanent modifications to the property. While we're still renting right now, we've also lived in the same flat for almost a decade and the letting agency basically doesn't give a damn, so we figured we shouldn't let that prevent us from doing minor things like putting nails in the walls.

The inspiration for the shelf came from a plant that I brought over from Austria as a sapling in April this year and which has been growing like crazy here in England. I used to keep it on the windowsill, but it's just become so big that it was spilling everywhere.

A small shelf on the kitchen wall seemed like the best alternative placement to me, but I was also aware that I had zero experience with that kind of DIY work, and neither did my husband. (Yes, I somehow managed to marry someone just as inept with these things as me, if not more so.)

It was important enough for me to overcome my inhibitions though, and I ended up ordering both shelves and a drill from Amazon. Then I realised that while I'd made a point of doing research on what would be a good drill to get, I'd somehow managed to order one without any drill bits. So I had to order those separately.

Yesterday I decided to finally do something with my new tools, and I'm happy to say that I got everything right! I was worried that I might choose the wrong setting on the drill, the wrong size drill bits or whatever... but I actually got everything right the first time. Sometimes reading the manual does help! And I know it's not really a big deal, but to clumsy ol' me it really meant a lot.