“I do have the habit of…whenever I’m done with something, I just drop it. I’m working on trying to drop it in a place it should be.” -Mr. Handsome
On my Ask Ellie 3.0 post, someone asked Mr. Handsome and me to reveal our bad habits. We had a good chuckle over the question and decided to share our answers. We hope this video provides some entertainment as you head into the weekend. And if you would like to share your bad habits, feel free to do so in the comments section.
Mr. Handsome couldn’t think of any of my bad habits on the spot, but I assure you that I do have plenty. One that he will agree wholeheartedly with is that I am terrible at being on time. I can make it to medical appointments and other extremely important things, but I’m usually about 10 minutes late to everything else. I’m working on it though! Can anyone else relate?
No I cannot relate at all. Being on time is one of the most important things to me. My mother taught me that being late is one of the rudest behaviors out there and that it is disrespectful to other people’s time. A lot of my friends are late all the time and it annoys me to no end. I’ve actually stopping making plans with some of them, because I’ve had it with their rude behavior. Also, in my profession, if you are late to work, you can get fired very easily.
Procrastinating on chores I hate. Too much netflix. Being lazy during summer: school system employee here. Not making and keeping to a chore list when off. Too much icecream!!!! Staying up too late during the summer. I just feel so free not sticking to a schedule. Being late is my pet peeve. I like to get to my appointments 15 min early. Work, also.
I struggle with some of those things as well, Benita–ice cream in particular. Both Mr. H and I love it!
Ellie
Doe he drop things wherever when he’s at work? Most dentists I know keep their tools very organized when working. They have to, to keep track of everything, and to make sure it all gets sterilized again afterwards and that needles don’t get reused. Did he get that bad habit from making his assistant clean up whatever he leaves behind?
That was funny you two!😊
Well my bad habit which I’m really trying to work on is to finish a crochet project before starting another. Just today, my friend sent a link to a five minute crochet flower project to put on homemade greeting cards though I’m currently working on a crocheted pot scrubby. And yes, I’m in the middle of crocheting flowers. 😁
How long have you been crocheting, Regina?
Ellie
I’ve been crocheting for about 25 years. I crochet mostly scarves and baby items. I want to try more advanced projects sometime. I attempted to crochet a doily but I just haven’t gotten the hang of using crochet thread and a steel hook. My friends suggested trying regular yarn and a regular hook to practice with.
The way to break yourself of that 10 minutes late habit is to tell yourself that you have to be ready before the actual time. Tell yourself 12:30 is the deadline to leave, if it’s really 1pm. Set your clock ahead if necessary. That gives you those extra 10 minutes to dawdle and then some. It also helps to lay out beforehand what you’re wearing (down to accessories and shoes) and what you’re taking with you, so you don’t lose time there. Put your purse, packed tote bag, and keys by the door so you can pick them up and skedaddle.
The only time I was ever late was when I was born, so I can’t offer much more help because it’s definitely not my problem. It’s a bad habit that bothers me in other people, though. Unless there’s a last-minute urgency or emergency of some sort, it’s disrespectful to be late.
1. Overeating sugar foods for pleasure.
2. Going through coffee drive thru to purchase.
3. Not going through bank drive thru to deposit.
4. Talking too much to people, while listening too little.
5. Pinnocio like boasting of what will do, not doing it.
6. Marathon YouTube watching as often as I can.
7. Buying stuff in thrift stores til my house is like one.
8. Engaging in negative thought patterns.
9. Not starting my projects see 5. & 6.
10. Officiously giving advice I don’t follow myself.
11. Not tracking spending.
12. Spending.
13. Too lazy to say my prayers and I need a prayer!
It sounds like you are in a rut, because I recognize many of your bad habits in myself when I am in a rut. What helped me is recognizing that the most important reason that I am in a rut is a lack of positive energy. I need my sleep, but also I need to do activities that give me good positive energy. Last weekend my husband and I tackled the garden. It felt really good to be active, to be outside, to work together with my hubby, and to see the end result. We have a week with lots of sunshine in the Netherlands right now, so we get to enjoy our garden. S. from Holland.
That sounds like a great activity. What are you growing in your garden?
Ellie
Unfortunately not that much yet. We have kept it very simple this year because we spend most of our time planning and celebrating our wedding. I would love to have a garden with a lawn, lots of flowers and a vegetable patch.
Congratulations on your marriage! 🙂
I have many bad habits. Two that I’m working on are eating to many sweets and misplacing my keys. Thank you Ellie and Mr. H for another cute post.
You’re definitely not alone with those 2 habits, especially eating too many sweets. I’d wager to say that that’s a daily struggle for most of us (it definitely is for me!). 🙂
I use a carabiner to clip my keys to a D-ring on my purse. As long as I know where my purse is, my keys are there. The house key is on a pull-out device so I can keep my purse over my shoulder and still pull my key to the doorknob. The key retracts automatically when I’m done. Our other keys have labeled dishes by the door, and when you come in, you drop the key in the right dish.
Very smart! Sounds like a handy system!
It is sort of defining to say one indulges in their bad habit. Answering this is like being careful answering a job interview question, a person can masks themselves look better not terrible. Hence one says, for example, I put a fresh set of clothes on daily, without checking to see if yesterdays things are still clean enough to wear again. Silly (but very cleanly dressed)me, my environmental footprint could potentially be a bit smaller. But today this is an interesting questionhere, to hear the answers to. I bet peoples ears perk up to hear those answers. Mine did, munch more interesting than salad recipies.
Your house is in such a peaceful setting. I was distracted by all the trees in the background and all the birds I could hear on the video.
It seems you are not in the heart of Nashville City proper.
Have a good weekend. Eileen
Thank you, Eileen. We aren’t right in the city, but the nice thing about Nashville is that you don’t have to go far at all to get into the countryside. It’s a quick drive to the city, which is nice.
Ellie
The bad habits you two talk about on the vlog seem so minor I forgot to mention anything about them! Lol. I am working on letting my husband complete household tasks I am used to doing myself my way, his way. Now that he has retired, he wants to help more around the house and cooking and after decades of perfecting my own systems, it is sometimes hard to watch his attempts! You two and Buddy live in a beautiful location. Quite idyllic. Eileen
I also struggle with having a specific way that I want to run the household, Eileen. It’s not easy. 🙂
Ellie
Are those beautiful trees belong to you, Ellie?
Yep some of them do. 🙂
“Are you working on them?….” A habit takes time to be ingrained in a persons brain to the point they automatically do the repeated behavior habitually. So it can seem like a person is not working on breaking their bad habits while they really are. You find yourself caught in the grip of the learned routine, often unwilling to stop the auto pilote because it is taking you straight to some pleasant gratification. But there are consequences and one can’t have both their cake and eat it too, so get a grip and steer your ship before you ship wreck your soul and your life lies in ruins.
Boys, men like to keep on discovering, learning and moving forward. Housekeeping is humiliating monotony of cyclic routines, being back in the same spot over and over and over, for ever. One is always just doing the same lowly work all over again. A person knows they are working continually, but getting no where and making no progress. Even falling behind and becoming indebted as they work. Just dropping things is extreme alienation of oneself from any form of monotonous, repetitive, unpaid
maintenance routines. Life is exciting, until one has to see the mess they have left behind, or look at the annoyance on the faces of people they subjected to doing all their housekeeping jobs. One has acted out being only above in continual, uninterrupted glory, while another has to serve them.
In other words Mr H’s mom was good at doing the boy’s chores, but not so good at making them do their own chores. Now Ellie can be at least as good as his mom, but it would be better for Ellie if she manages to be better than his mom….and get him to do his chores.
Bad habits can be gratifing over/above right choice.
Knowing deep within the vague mist of ones pea sized weak intelligence, that one has made a right choice, is the only reward of doing right. It has no instant gratification, (a good feeling in the mass of flesh that is only a fleeting delightful pleasure).
I giggled when y’all talked about the scrubs not going into the laundry basket. When my husband and I were first married 15+ years ago we lived in an 850 square foot home. I had a laundry basket in the corner of our tiny bedroom and he still managed to NEVER get his dirty laundry in the basket- I don’t know how because the basket was about 1/2 the size of the bedroom itself (not really, but you get the point that our room was tiny!) One day I got the tape measure out and measured the distance from the dirty laundry on the floor to the laundry basket— 8 inches!! I jokingly yelled “EIGHT INCHES!! Can you not put just a little more effort into reaching EIGHT INCHES further?!?” We had a good laugh, and still do about that day; but he gets his clothes into the basket now… most of the time!
Haha! That’s quite hilarious. Maybe if you put a basketball hoop over the laundry basket he would have tried harder to make it. 😉 That’s a suggestion I’ve heard for teenage boys.
Ellie
I think a lot about the lateness thing, because I consider myself pretty considerate and diligent about life in general, but lateness is an issue for me. Morning lateness is almost entirely due to me never wanting to get out of bed. I snooze repeatedly and I’m just plain tired! Kids make you late, too, almost no matter how well you plan. I can get up a half hour early and still end up late because it’s like my kids have a sixth sense about it and pick that particular day to do every possible thing to make us late–drag their feet, refuse their breakfast, pick a fight, whatever–but back in the day it was usually an ill-timed poop or spit-up 🙂 For me in particular, I think my main issue is an obsession with efficiency. I tend to not want to waste time (in this case, it would be waiting at my destination) and always try to maximize whatever I’m doing prior–fit in one more project, combine another errand on the same trip that inevitably goes long, etc.–and if that last to-do takes too long, then I’m late. I don’t like the thought of leaving that last thing undone and having to leave it on my list for later if I could squeeze it in now. I guess it’s also a problem to be optimistic that I CAN get it done in the allocated amount of time 🙂 For all the people who say being late is inconsiderate, I get it–but at the same time I know that mine is certainly not done on purpose. My intentions are good, but I just bite off more than I can chew, I guess. I also think that judgment is rude to people who have legitimate excuses, like kid issues–particularly with special needs kids or things like that. Stuff just happens that is out of our control. We can do everything in our power to overcome it, and it still might not work. If nothing else it has given me a little more leniency for people who are late to see me–because I presume something came up, not that they’re being rude!
That idea of maximizing time and wanting to get everything done, seems like setting oneself up for the straw that breaks the camels back. It can be a form of self-centered pride. A way to break that is a person imagines their perfect day and then just deliberately skip some points of their idea of perfection and force themself, in humility, to live with the different but simpler picture. Or just as go along, axe off chunks of ideas and live with it. Like not a change of clothes, not cleaning out the car, not certain foods at meals, or so on. It might save a big regret if it prevents an accident that happened from being too stressed out. Example, rushing around in the car and skip looking carefully before backing up and then hitting something coming.
I have a bad habit of starting a project, then getting excited about something else and moving on, leaving project one half finished. Consequently, I have many, many half-finished projects stuck away that will probably never get finished. That’s not my only bad habit, of course, but it’s one of my worst.
Barb see my comment as I can relate to that. I don’t know if your projects involve crafts( crochet, knitting, quilting etc) but I have half completed crochet projects in my closet. Mind you they are small ones but still they are sitting there. So, I’ve decided this summer I’m going to complete them. I’m working on a nine patch granny square blanket ( just learned how to granny square!) And my goal is to finish by the time my next craft meeting gets together in a couple of weeks.
Good to hear from you Regina.
I took up knitting, and, unless it was a gift, I would get part way done and get excited about a new project and never finish the older one. I haven’t knitted for a couple years but would like to pick it up again. Heaven knows I have enough yarn. I probably need lessons all over again.
Years ago when I did needlepoint, we had a Needlepoint group that met once a month. It really kept us on point (no pun intended). We like to see the progress each person was making then it was particularly fun to finally see each person’s finished project. It would help me to have that with knitting, but most of our knit shops have closed.
Do you like crochet better than knitting?
Oh I like crocheting better. I’m not very good at knitting.
Some of these responses are too existential for me to grasp!
I’d really appreciate it if someone could give a clear explanation of the meaning of that word existential.
Hi there! I just wanted to give a tip on the socks since you mentioned them…when you’re taking them off, pinch a hold of the toe part with one hand and your other hand is on top of the sock at the rim in the back with a couple fingers inserted. Just guide your sock off around your heel with those fingers as you’re pulling with your other fingers at the toe. Bingo! It’ll come off the right way without having to turn them right side out. You’ve probably figured this out already. Thought I’d mention it for the readers. Socks are very easy if ya aren’t lazy and employ both hands to do it.😊 My ultra bad habit is not taking my vitamins every time I should! I forget and forget then get so mad at myself then take them whenever I think of it. I wanted to ask if anyone would know of a solution to this? Do you have a system down pat to help remind you? I’m so bad in this area probably because I do not relish swallowing pills.
That’s a great idea, Candi. I agree that it can be hard to remember to take vitamins. Each morning, I put the vitamins for that day in a small Ziploc baggie (I’m going to start using a prescription pill container with a child-proof lock since Little Buddy is starting to get into things), and then I put it somewhere near the kitchen table where it’s out of reach of children. That way, I can take a couple vitamins at lunch and a couple at dinner. When I know I’ll be going out for the whole day, I stick the bag in my purse.
If anyone has any other suggestions, please do share. 🙂
Ellie
Great idea! Thanks!
Oh, and the struggle for sleeping past the time I should be getting up is SO REAL ! Ha. Does anyone have this annoying pest/bad habit for in your life?
I’ll bet that most of us can relate to that one! 😉
Ellie
please, please watch a tutorial about how to put eye shadow on. I notice it on every video
Oh I agree. Ellie’s eyes are beautiful!😊
Thank you, Regina! You are very sweet.
Hope you’re having a lovely day.
Ellie