Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Getting It All Togeter: Routines Baby

The first section I want to work on is the Daily Routines Section of my binder. It will be divided into three sections (routines): Morning, Afternoon/Midday, and Evening.
I will start with an evening routine. Why you ask? There is nothing more aggravating to me than getting up in the morning, goopy sleep stuck in my eyelids, dragging my feet across a dirty floor covered in crumbs and entering a dirty kitchen with a sink filled to the brim with dirty dishes from the night before. It makes me really, really grumpy when I have to finish yesterday’s work before I can even begin today’s work.
A few months after becoming a stay-at-home-mom I realized just how much I liked missed having structure to my day. I was accustomed to working in an office, with a schedule and fine tuned routine and defined expectation. I’m the kind of girl who needs order and routine. Motherhood offered me neither with my new job having no beginning or end, no boss to tell me what to do and when, no schedule, no plan. I became undisciplined and unmotivated. During my undisciplined and unmotivated days I was doing some surfing around on FlyLady, and found her routines. Once I implemented an evening routine I began to feel a sense of structure and peace return to the home. Yes, it will take some commitment but unless you commit to following your routine, it will never work. And not to sound like your mother but I’m sure you’ve heard it before…”when you don’t feel like it – do it anyways”.
Don’t feel bad if you can’t always follow the routine. Don’t let it become a burden, it’s there to help.
If you don’t know where to start I’d like for you to stop by FlyLady to see her routine. Also, here is a link to My Evening Routine for you to download, print out and place in your new handy dandy household notebook.

Or here's a quick challenge for you:
Start by writing out just 5 things you can or should do every night
Stick this list in your notebook
Do it for just one night and see how the next morning runs SOOO smoothly
If you try it, you'll be hooked. And then you'll do it the next night and the next.

Do you do an evening routine? What's on your list?

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

Oh boy, oh boy. My evening routine is drop everything and chill with Kale and Grace. As soon as he walks in, my day is done, except for dinner. But I have a list of 5 wonderful things that I know would help. Thanks for encouraging me and leading this journey to sanity!