Creating your own routines is a great way to get in the habit of completing the regular tasks you do throughout the day. Everybody has some sort of routine, but it is not always a good one. A few years ago I had a really crappy morning routine. It involved waking up late, rummaging through a pile of washing, ironing something from the pile, brushing my teeth and running to the bus-stop without any breakfast. Then there was that one bus driver who would flash his lights at me. I had to change my schedule to catch a different bus.
That was not a good routine.
Here are some examples of good routines.
- Flylady’s daily and weekly routines
- Schedules and Routines at Household Management 101 – with great daily and weekly examples
- Leo Babauta’s morning and evening routine
- Simple Mom’s morning routine and weekly routine
- Magic Minimum at Organized Home
- The Daily 7 at Totally Together Journal
- Establishing Routines at Unclutterer
- S.H.E. ROUTINES keeping you sane at The Shebang
- Strong Bad’s morning routine (perhaps that is not a good example either)
If you put your routines into the HomeRoutines app (or write them down on paper in a home management notebook!) it has such a powerful effect. Firstly, it is a reminder of the tasks that you have chosen to be most important. And secondly, it’s a really nice feeling when you complete a task and you mark it as complete. That’s why you get to give yourself a gold star when you complete a task with HomeRoutines.
The app also lets you give yourself credit for the regular, routine jobs that do not register in your brain somehow (which leads to the horrible “Did I lock the house?” feeling because you’ve been running on autopilot)
That autopilot effect sometimes makes us feel like we haven’t done anything at all, all day – especially for stay-at-home parents who have little children running in circles around them all day. So HomeRoutines has a daily Accomplishments screen: it compiles everything you’ve done, from your ToDo list and your Routines and Focus Zone work.
I read something good today on the Zen Family Habits blog. In an article about assessing your work, particularly as a SAHM, it ends with some positive advice:
Finally, celebrate. Celebrate your victories no matter how small. So you haven’t accomplished all you’ve set out to do. So what? Maybe you’ve finished some small yet significant task. Celebrate!
