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Healthier Habits – July 2022: Time Capsules

Healthier Habits – July 2022: Time Capsules

You’ve all heard of time capsules. They are usually quite big and buried at civic locations. This month we’re encouraging you to make a smaller version with members of your household or workplace. 

You can use a simple biscuit tin or plastic box with tight-fitting lid, or a special tin with packaging to protect the contents. Add in photos, newspaper cuttings or printouts. Tell the story of your time in the house and what was going on in your life at the time. Write a letter to yourself and include some life advice and reflections. 

If you’re planning to bury the time capsule outside in the garden, do your best to make it weatherproof. ‘Before’ and ‘After’ garden or home renovation pictures are also fun inclusions. It will be fun finding a wall cavity or space to leave it and write a letter to future occupants! The National Archives of Australia has a great article with advice on how to best preserve and store your capsule. 

There are great stories online about people doing renovations and discovering time capsules in houses from the 1890’s and early 20th century. The Sydney Morning Herald has an intriguing story about a time capsule from 1892 which was located under a historic mansion.

Another idea with time capsules is to make one for your workplace. With a workplace time capsule, you can simply put it in a filing cabinet or storage area, and make a date to open it, with your team, in 12 months’ time or maybe longer. It’s a meaningful time to make a capsule to look back on this very different period in our working lives. The capsule will create both welcome memories and maybe some unsettling reminders of this time too.

Ideas for your workplace time capsule –

  • A printout or record of the roster for the current week.
  • Take some photos of the current layout of your workplace.
  • Record some of your customer comments, or ask a favourite patron to write a comment on a sticky note.
  • Print out an email from a day in the week and put that in your capsule.
  • Add a photo of the team working on that day – what jobs were they doing?
  • Take a photo of the equipment you are currently using.
  • What did you all have for lunch? What meetings did you attend?
  • What were some posts on your social media at the time?

Once you’ve created your workplace time capsule, put it away somewhere for a year, and put an alert in your calendar to open it in 12 months’ time and have a look.

July Recommendations –

We are reading – A Week in September by Peter Rees 

Doug Heywood was a teenager when he discovered, in a shoebox hidden in a wardrobe, hundreds of letters, all written by his father, Scott Heywood. As a POW on the infamous Burma Railway, Scott wrote almost daily to his young wife, Margery, on scraps of paper that had to be hidden from guards. These letters tell of an enduring love – and also, intriguingly, of how Scott dealt with the most brutally testing circumstances. Available in paperback, e-book and e-audio formats. 

We are listening to – Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast 

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is a weekly podcast about making the most of your mental health and wellbeing, written and presented by Australian writer and speaker Jeremy Godwin. 

July Special Events and Dates –

Extra Support – 

The opinions and recommendations in this blog do not replace advice from your doctor or mental health practitioner. If you feel like you need further support, you can access many free mental health helplines, support websites, online counselling, web forums, interactive toolkits, one-on-one counselling and group therapy sessions. Please visit the Better Health website for a  comprehensive list of services.

Mental Wellbeing at MYLI –

The Healthier Habits blog is adapted from the Myli – My Community Library employee ‘Page Break’ program. Page Break is an initiative from our Manager Volunteers & Community Participation, Kathie Olden. Kathie sends out regular updates to staff inviting them to participate in simple activities and conversation starters that focus on making small changes to their mental health and wellbeing.

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