I realised I was back to Normality -what even is that anyways- when I had a great morning on the 16th Jan. Let me tell you how I think I have done it, because it wasn't fully apparent until I had this great morning.
Financially-Lets not forget Christmas is expensive! Thankfully we don't have kids yet so Christmas was nice and steady for us, so much that we bought a wardrobe.
Personally-People are different at work than they are at home, so it's a lot harder when you have a considerable amount of time away from work to snap back to professional mode straight away.
Space- Decorations, Wrapping paper, new stuff. Your personal space takes a hammering over Christmas, because there is so much to maneuver around, my cleaning routine goes out the window
But what happens when it is over, the adverts never cover that do they? They never show the turkeys, chilling out because they lasted one more Christmas. They don't show the tip queues because people are throwing their old stuff out.
We are back into the swing of things and this is how I did it.
Christmas fucks you up in so many ways
Professionally- you will have your national holidays to take, unless you work in the leisure industry then you may be working Christmas day, but the time away from work can take you out of that head space and it is hard to get back.
Financially-Lets not forget Christmas is expensive! Thankfully we don't have kids yet so Christmas was nice and steady for us, so much that we bought a wardrobe.
Personally-People are different at work than they are at home, so it's a lot harder when you have a considerable amount of time away from work to snap back to professional mode straight away.
Space- Decorations, Wrapping paper, new stuff. Your personal space takes a hammering over Christmas, because there is so much to maneuver around, my cleaning routine goes out the window
For all the negative affects that Christmas has on your space, professional and financial self it is all worth it for that day of too much food, alcohol and family.
But what happens when it is over, the adverts never cover that do they? They never show the turkeys, chilling out because they lasted one more Christmas. They don't show the tip queues because people are throwing their old stuff out.
We are back into the swing of things and this is how I did it.
- I didn't sleep in on the weekends
This works for resetting your body back to your work clock if you have the same shift pattern.Your body cannot go from 11am wakes to 6am as soon as possible, you will put yourself in a sleep deficit. So the weekend is where you hit the reset button, force yourself out of bed at 8:30am the latest, and do something with your day, when you go to sleep that night, your body will get the sleep it needs and the next morning should be easier. I made the mistake of staying in bed all day one day and it was probably the worst thing I could have done for my mind, sleep and body. After that I made sure I did something every day even if I had nothing to do, I swear my house and laundry pile was never better.
- I went food shopping to take stock of our food and meals for the next upcoming weeks
Restocking your fridge has to be one of the best things we did after NYE, we made a meal plan and we stuck to it, we even made dinner for others, it was the busiest Sunday I had had since leaving work on the 21st December (I have a post about it here) We have a supermarket just up the road and it is convenience heaven, I went shopping on Saturday as well as Sunday in the first week of Jan (5th & 6th) because we took stock of packed lunch ingredients. Because of the stocked fridge and freezer, we got creative with the cooking and tried something we hadn't cooked in our new home yet. Enchiladas. - I did the routines I liked first
Transfer your routines to how they were gradually until it just becomes easy. But for the love of god, do the ones you like first, because you'll feel accomplished faster and it'll make it easier to do the next lot which you don't like. Like I'm still getting around to transferring the ironing to the weekend or evening, however I feel ah-may-zing because I now do the packed lunch every night like before Christmas and it makes me feel like ironing might not be that bad. - I cleaned and de-cluttered my space
It's a no-brainer really, tidy and clean your space so you know where things are and you are organised and have more time on your hands to do the things you want instead of flailing around your house in a hot rush trying to find your bus pass/car keys/key fob (all that essential stuff you need not to put on people). Put it where all the other things of the same category belong. I have a rule for things, if you can't find it in three places, it's not where it should be. It's like OCD with flexibility. - I made a list at work just before I left for the day
Before I left my office on December 21st I wrote myself a new year's list, it was the stuff I needed to get done when I came back, do you know what this allowed me to do? UNPLUG.
I could unplug because I had left myself little breadcrumbs when I came back to work. So instead of worrying about what I had to get done at home or at work I wrote myself a to-do for me to view as soon as I had gotten back. I do this on Friday's also so Monday's I'm not spending a couple of hours just acclimatising to my workload and procrastinating.
Wow, it sounds like you've got it all figured out! I definitely wasn't this organised over Christmas but I wish I had been, it would have made everything a lot easier. The worst one for me was having too many lie ins, you're right it made it so much harder going back to those 6:30am starts. I suppose there's no better time than the present to get on top of everything so I'll be de-cluttering my space this weekend!
ReplyDelete