The Cost of Independence

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Well, a couple of days ago, I bought the smaller vacuum cleaner, with the aim of being able to vacuum for myself.

Today, I tried to use it quickly through the house.  It's a small house, so that's only about 10 to 15 minutes' work.  (Especially as I didn't try to do areas where I can't see the floor, so didn't go near the kids' rooms.)

The result? Well, for a while, my carpets are slightly cleaner. And my left shoulder and my back are killing me.

It's going to be a couple of hours with the hot water bottle, and perhaps the tens machine, before I'm able to even consider doing anything more.

Doing things like this for myself is very costly in terms of the pain as a result. Unfortunately, I can no longer afford to hire someone else to do this for me.

So now, the challenge is to work out how much I can do at a time, and how much recovery time I need, and to plan around that.