Advice no one asked for, the sequel

1. My grandma had a button box (an old tea canister I think) and as a kid I loved to tip them out onto the carpet, creating little families of buttons – orphans, identical twins, triplets, siblings, distant cousins and so on. Since then I’ve kept all my spare buttons but struggled to find the right place to store them, which gets me onto my point. Buttons must inherit their box. You can’t buy a box to put your buttons in.

2. The best thing to do with cold spaghetti, or any pasta for that matter, is mix it with beaten egg and fry it like a tortilla.

3. It’s generally always better to be honest about why you don’t want to do something. When you’re not it lays the ground for being asked to do it again and scrabbling for a different reason. Most people are ok with being told no, that includes me.

4. Try to resist switching from an app to WhatsApp when messaging potential dates if you can, otherwise you’ll be like me, i.e. with a graveyard of failed connections in your WhatsApp when they could be tidily stored elsewhere.

5. I struggle to maintain skincare routines and one of the things that gets in the way of me being a classic double-cleanse girlie is how much I hate water running down my wrists and getting onto my PJ sleeves when I’m washing my face. So in the summer I bought a pair of those cheap fluffy cuff things from Superdrug and now I am slightly better at washing my face and my PJ sleeves stay dry.

6. Brands I think are underpriced on Vinted: 90s Donna Karan, Nicole Fahri, and Katherine Hamnet, 80s Escada, 00s Chloe and Marc Jacobs. Brands that are overpriced: Reformation (everything I’ve bought from them has had a quality issue – fraying seams, unravelling hems and when I look at listings for them there are often faults specified so I’m clearly not alone).

7. As I write it’s coming to the end of the year, and the temptation is to place the year into a category of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘unexceptional’. This year has felt bad, it’s been deeply uncomfortable, with painful failures in writing, in relationships and hugely challenging changes to my body. These things crowd out the many joyful experiences of the year, the things I’m proud of and they shouldn’t! So I really want to change that. I’m having to face things I have long resisted and it feels incredibly scary. Difficulty can be transformative and transformation is necessarily difficult.

8. We have a family Christmas pot that we all pay into and then my mum distributes it equally, ordering presents up to the limit which is usually somewhere around £150. My Christmas present list is a long assortment of cheap second-hand things on eBay, Etsy and Vinted. This approach gives opening my presents the thrill of being in a fantasy charity shop where I want to buy – and can afford – everything.

9. Don’t chicken out on painting the walls of your room/s the colour you’re drawn to.

10. Read Helen Garner’s How to End a Story.

11. You don’t really need to wash wool. Hang your jumpers and cardigans outside on a fine day for a few hours instead or whack them in the freezer for a bit.

12. Things I don’t think you can have too many of: cute little dipping / serving bowls (I use mine variously for cat treats, a little snack of haribo or dried mango, my daily pills/supplements), cotton or linen drawstring bags for shoes, storing cables and chargers etc, packing cubes and assorted jars of chilli crisp.

13. My Spotify unwrapped this year did not reflect what I loved the most it reflected how lazy my listening was. I’ve been a bit disconnected from music this year and so I want to get back into making myself playlists instead of simply topping up my ‘Liked songs’ and letting that run. One thing I love about playlists is how they create little time capsules of your life, a sonic diary of your emotional weather.

14. I think my first experience of therapy (on the NHS) was quite damaging. If I could go back in time I would have spoken up that the therapist was not right for me and fought to work with someone else. You’re allowed to do that.

15. I steal this from my friend Rebecca, but lemon will lift any dish.

16. A question to ask yourself is, what are my friends avoiding talking to me about because they worry it will upset me. And then try to summon the courage to talk to them about it yourself.

17. Try to take your own advice – my windows really do need cleaning.