How to Become A Morning Person

I have to say- I love the sunrise. It is quite possibly my favorite part of the day, but getting up for it? Let’s face it- not everyone is a morning person. For most, mornings are something to trade through until that first cp of tea or coffee sets in.

HOWEVER mornings can be your best friend (or at least a close acquaintance). I have found that getting up a little bit earlier, before the kids and the responsibilities not only makes the day go better, but just just makes everything a little more enjoyable and more gets accomplished. I am a happier, more productive individual when I have those extra few minutes to get myself and my head together rather than trying to do that WHILE trying to take care of the kids and responsibilities. I have, over the past year or so, become…a morning person.

Obviously, these may be different for different people, but I wanted to share a couple tips on what helped me become a morning person.

  1. Go to bed earlier. I know- obvious and not always practical. This point goes along with the next one, but you will be surprised how you (and your body!) will adjust to this.
  2. Wake up earlier in 15 minute increments. DO NOT just start off by waking up at your goal time right off the back. This will fail miserably and you will be right back where you started. If you know what time you need/would like to wake up every morning, then set your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier every week until you hit that goal time. This gives your body a good amount of time to make adjustments naturally.
  3. DONT press the snooze button. Also, don’t set multiple alarms. This gives you an “out” to waking up earlier. I know how tempting that snooze button is and how easy it is to say oh only 10 more minutes and then I’ll get up. Let’s be honest, you won’t. Just RESIST that temptation and get up right at the beginning of your alarm.
  4. Do not stay in bed! Shut the alarm off and get up right away. Staying in bed will not allow your body to start waking up and get blood flowing. Whether this means putting your phone/clock all the way across the room, forcing you to get up and shut it off, or having a super obnoxious tone set for the alarm, do it. Set it up so that you force yourself out of bed. That will make it easier to get to the last (and best) tip.
  5. Have one morning thing. What is one thing that you look forward to being able to do every morning/day. Maybe it is making that first cup of coffee/tea. Maybe it is working out. Maybe it is simply taking a shower or getting ready for the day. Whatever it is, do it first thing in the morning. Right when you wake up and roll out of bed (already a little more rested because you want to bed a little earlier), do that one thing. When you have something to look forward to right at the outset, it makes the whole process of getting up earlier easier.

Those are my tips! Start at the top, work your way down and in no time you’ll be watching the sunrise with me…or not, but you’ll be more of a morning person than when you started out!

What have you found that works for you in the mornings?

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Spring is Right Around the Corner…

4315430272_IMG_0546Seriously. Our first blooms have popped through on the bushes and even though the weather may not be full “spring” beauty and warmth, the first official day of spring is tomorrow! First off, where is this year going? I feel like already the time is just flying by. Second off, spring seems to be a season similar to the new year. An almost “out with the old, in with the new” type of vibe to it.

We start to shed all of the layers of winter, not just in our clothes, but in our homes, our meals, our everyday life. Spring seems to bring a new lightness to everyday. It appears slowly, with a massive Spring Cleaning to start off with. A purge of the old, of what no longer works in the home, of what is no longer needed. Then comes the cleaning of spaces. A whole house and self scrub down you could say. Then, finally, it is in with the new.

Spring is a season of change. If you would have asked me just a few short years ago if I liked it, I would have shrugged my shoulders; “I’m more of a fall type of gal”. While I am still a “fall type of gal”, I have started to see the love of Spring. When the worst of winter starts to fade away, and a glimpse of summer peaks through. I thoroughly enjoy the idea of clearing away and cleaning out our wardrobes, home, and meal ideas. I also LOVE the fact that spring brings the “cool warm” temperatures that allow me to open our windows all day long.

Following along with the start of Spring, you will start to see the scheduled Wednesday blog posts following along with the concept of purge, clean, refresh for the month of April. It is really easy to do the spring overhaul in April as the weather is still finding its way and it really is just a transition month to the full warmth of spring in May. It’s a good time to look at how your year has started off, what you want to change and keep from the first few months, and what you want to do moving forward. I will be doing this myself in our own home, so I’m looking forward to sharing it with you!

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Planning in 2018

I’m a paper and pen kinda gal. I firmly believe in writing down goals, plans, to do’s and believe that it helps organize not only your life, but your mind. Once it’s written down, you are more than likely not only going to get whatever it is done, but you’ll feel better just by writing whatever it is down. I am not someone who really uses my phone as a main calendar, but rather as a back up system. I like to be able to disconnect and disengage from technology and by using a physical planner and journal, just makes it that much easier.

So, what am I using for this year? Excellent question. I tend to switch things up throughout the year, but one of my intentions last year was to stick through one single planner. This year I want to carry through with that same intention. I spent the better portion of the year in a bullet journal and considered that intention a success. While I love the bullet journal and think that it is great, this year I have decided to go back to a pre filled planner. At this point I really would like the bare bones of my planner already filled in and I can just write in my specifics.

IMG_7327This year I have picked out a Blue Sky and Day Designer collaboration planner from (big surprise) Target. I have used Day Designer planners before and I love them! I may actually end up going back to a full size Day Designer planner, but for now I have gotten this simple month and week layout going. I typically spend about 15 minutes or so Sunday Evening or Monday Morning mapping out my week and then about 5-10 minutes each morning with any specifics I want to mark down.

The other item that I have is my own personal journal. Once again, I am a firm believer in the paper and pen method and I write down 95% of everything. Some things I do not, but if something is bothering me or I’m having a rough time, I find that sitting down and writing it out helps so incredibly much. I try to write regularly and typically do about once a week (if not even more than that). It is just so helpful in getting things out of your head, off your plate, and a lot of times it helps me sort through my own thoughts.

This year I have a feeling I’ll be filling more than one journal, but I am starting with, yet another Target find, a Pink Light Design Notebook. It’s not what I typically go for, but I really liked it and I feel like it fit what I was hoping for for the beginning of my year.

So that is that! Those are the paper items I am using this year to help me stay on track for my year. Are you a pen and paper person? What are you using to keep organized this year?

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A Little Honesty for your Everyday

Let’s have a little honesty here for a minute…not that I’m ever dishonest, but let’s get really real. My life feels like a mess. This past week has been a disaster from start to finish in terms of just getting things done and it has made me crazy! I’m about to show how insane I can be with this post, so hopefully it doesn’t freak you out…

I am someone who likes things to be clean, put away, organized and handled. Mess causes stress. Clutter is no good in our home. I talked about my cleaning routine at the start of last week, which is ironic because all of last week I ended up getting very little cleaning done, which has caused me quite the panic.

*facepalm* right about now.

As I get later and later into this pregnancy (4 weeks to go if Little Bear comes when he is supposed to) I am finding it harder and harder to get things done. Not because I have a huge honking belly, or because I’m exhausted at the end of a long day chasing a toddler around, nor is it because I have been having contractions on and off. It is simply because there has been so much on my list of to do’s that I then end up feeling like I’m never going to get anything done.

This list is ever growing as we are counting down our days and some days it just seems like I add more to it than I cross off. The list was overwhelming me, the mess was overwhelming me, the general busyness of my days was overwhelming me. Normally I can barrel through just about anything, but nope I just hit the brakes. Which in any reasonable person would single a “hey- take a step back, breathe, realize that you can’t do it all.” thought or even a “it can be handled another day” though. Not for me. My brain immediately went into panic mode causing even more disarray. Not only was my house a mess and cluttered, but now so was my mind.

Thankfully when I have my moments, I have an incredible husband who steps up and helps clean up around the house, is an amazing father, and really steps in when I am drowning in my own mind. This has been a huge help lately as things start to change in our family with a new addition coming. Also, with him stepping in I have actually been able to cross some things off of my list and I’m heading into this week feeling more like myself than last week.

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Household Chores: Weekly Cleaning

It’s the household chores that not many like or want to do, but yet they have to get done. The chores like vacuuming, laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, every day things that need to be done no matter how much we don’t want to do them. On the whole, I am not a huge fan of cleaning, rather I like the results after I clean. I like having a clean, put together, presentable home and I find that our household generally runs better when it is clean. For us, mess leads to stress. Clutter is something we don’t like and when things are up and put away we are a happier family.

When you are tidying and doing regular every day cleaning, I find that the “bigger” things such as vacuuming or dusting or chores that are more “intensive” than just picking up toys and putting dishes away, tend to be put off. It turns into a “It can wait till tomorrow” or “It’s not that bad right now, we can wait another week”. Then those chores that may not have been at the top of the list, tend to become urgent later on. I have found a way to clean that not only works for myself, but allows me to have a clean house 99% of the time and doesn’t make me feel like I am just doing everything.

I figured this routine out by trial and error and a little bit of self reflection. I realized that if I was assigning myself one “chore” a day, such as dusting it was much easier for me to put it off to another day. For some reason in my mind, having one chore (even if it is for the entire house) is easier to put off, rather than having to do all of the chores for one room. In the end I was either missing chores throughout the week, or having to do do everything for the whole house on one day. Neither option was working. So, I came up with a new approach.

Every day (except Saturday and Sunday) I clean a room from top to bottom. For example, on Monday’s I clean the kitchen. I windex the windows, dust everything, clean and sanitize all of the counter spaces (which is something I do every day irregardless), clean the microwave and oven, sweep the floors(which I also do several times throughout the week in the evening) , and clear out our fridge and pantry. These are all tasks that are easily completed within about an hour and when done every week, keep our kitchen and dining area free of clutter and mess.

This routine ensures that I am not only keeping the house clear of dust and dirt, but also that those chores that I was putting off get done. Approaching it in a room by room situation seems to work better for me and helps me keep a more manageable approach to cleaning. Some days I do combine rooms as it is either simpler or not as much to do in each room. For example, I combine both Boy’s rooms and their bathroom, because they are smaller and require a little less attention than say, our Kitchen or Master Bedroom that has more items. I also do a mop of all of the wood and tile floors every other week, and wash blankets, sheets, etc every other week as well.

This is on top of just my standard everyday things that need to be done, such as picking up toys that have become scattered throughout the day, dishes, and just general tidying of our home. I like to wake up with a clean home, so every evening I try to make sure that everything has been picked up, dishwasher has been started, counter tops and kitchen table is clean and the house just has a generally clean state. I find that this allows my mornings to be so much less stressful (I mean who wants to deal with dishes first thing in the morning?!) and I get a much better start to my day. It may seem like a lot to do, but like I said when you look at the chores for each room, it only takes about an hour each day, with some days being less than that, and it seems much easier to say, today I am going to clean our Living Room and then just do it, rather than today I am going to dust and vacuum the entire house. The same chores get completed in the same timeline (each room is dusted, vacuumed, etc once a week), but taking it room by room seems to me to be less daunting.

I do take Saturday’s “off” of my chore cleaning as we are typically out of the house on those days and just enjoying our family time together and Sunday’s are devoted to the never ending chore called Laundry. Overall though, I really like this routine and while I am cleaning I blast some music – in my headphones because…nap time. Dare I say it- cleaning actually becomes enjoyable!

MiaLeave a comment

Let’s Talk About Planning!

I am such a pen and paper kinda girl – I always have been. There is something so calming to me about writing down what I need to do, ticking it off when I’ve done it, and just having notes to reference throughout the day. I find it really helps me stay sane when life can be crazy and it lets me keep my tasks and things that I want to accomplish straight.

I’ve had a planner for a long time, but never really found a planner that truly worked for me. I’ve had to just kind of work around what I’ve been using or have a notebook of some sort in addition to my planner. Those are all options, but I’ve been constantly trying to find or try something new.

This past year I have been really interested in consolidating. I really only want to be using one or two notebooks and my journal rather than spreading everything out through a planner, business notebook, journal, and brainstorming papers. I reached a point early this year that I just felt like nothing was really working for me and it started to bother me. I started doing some research.

I’ve known about bullet journaling for quite a long time, but I’ve never really considered it due to time constraints. I wanted to try it out, but felt a little daunted at the fact that I would be creating a planner, calendar and everything by myself from scratch. I didn’t realize that in reality that was the best thing for me.

Over the next few posts about Bullet Journaling I am going to share several things from what I use to create my Bullet Journal, some of my favorite pages, as well as little tips that I have realized as I have gone a long.

If you are curious to get a good overview of Bullet Journaling you can check out Ryder Carroll’s website HERE and see what it is all about. I will say- don’t get overwhelmed by everything that is listed and explained on the site. You don’t have to have a fancy key system or anything like that, but it will give you a good overview of what Bullet Journaling is.

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