Thursday morning, I woke up well before sunrise. I had to be bundled up and ready to milk the cows by 6:30. At other times of the year getting up early is not so hard, but in the winter when it is dark and cold, all I want to do is stay in my warm bed.
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I am currently living in a tiny house on a small raw milk dairy farm. I only have to do 5 of the milkings each week and only one is the morning milking (Thursday morning). This week I was so tired from doing the evening milkings that I would sleep most of the next morning, resulting in very unproductive days. My dishes and laundry started to pile up, and I started to complain about it. My grandma and cousin both told me to buy paper plates. The dishes were really not the problem though. My lazy start to the day was. I realized after reading about a 14-day course called Make Over Your Mornings, that I needed to learn how to start each day with more focus and purpose.
Looking back, at the week my most productive day was Thursday, the day I woke up ready to get the day going. It went something like this:
From 6:30 to 9:30 I milked and bottled. Then I came inside my tiny house and saw all the things I had neglected to do the past couple of days. I thought to myself, “If I can spend an hour washing milk buckets and bottling milk, I can do a sink full of dishes.” I took a quick shower, got dressed, and set a timer for 30 minutes. (I decided that I could postpone going into work for a half hour so that I could do some chores at home and be less stressed out when I got home.) Then in 30 minutes I did the dishes, put clean sheets on the bed and started a load of laundry. I even had time to cut a few potatoes and an onion to throw in the crockpot for dinner (I made homemade clam chowder later that day).
I went to work for a few hours, came home and made dinner. Then while laying on my bed watching too many episodes of TV on Netflix there were still things I needed to pick up. I pushed pause, set another 30 minute timer and put away random piles of sweat shirts, collapsed my pile of Christmas light boxes and swept the floor.
(The reason for the timer was because, in my laziness, the only way I could convince myself to get things done, and to get them done quickly was if I knew I could stop in a half hour.)
That night I fell asleep much easier. Simply knowing everything was in order made my tiny house even more peaceful.
In contrast, on the days I don’t have to milk until the evening, I stay in bed until almost 10. It is not that I sleep in that long. It is that I have no plan for my day. I daydream, play on Pinterest, check email, read blogs until I finally decide to go do chores in the barn, or get dressed for work.
I may not want get up early everyday, but I do need to change my habit of staying in bed too long because I have not set an intention for my day. This is why I am setting a goal to start my days with intention in the New Year, and Making Over My Morning‘s now, so that I will wake up ready and refreshed when the New Year comes!
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So here I am Day 1! Today, I committed to making a change in my day by signing up for the course, and am making my day count by writing more on my blog – which makes me happy (:
Thank you for reading! Does anyone want to join me in the challenge? You can find out the details of the course here, then come back and comment so we can share the journey together!
Happy Holidays!
~Rebecca
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Gramma says
Sounds good Becca. Seems maybe you didn’t have deadlines to meet and that kept you in “Thorne “. This is from the book Watership down. The bunnies would just go into a catatonic state. It is an excellent book.
Carla says
I think the idea of setting a timer is great. With 2 small children housework piles up quick but I am not motivated to work on it. I think letting myself stop after 30 minutes would help me get more done!