Good Habits - the basics of routine

First of all, a quick thank you to all that have stopped in to my little spot in this expansive online world. I have enjoyed exploring many of your blogs and look forward to reading future posts. I am doing my best to transition into this online world of friendships, information sharing, and relating but am still not yet consistently finding a good time to write. There are days that are over before I have a chance to put any thoughts to paper and I have had to be forgiving to myself so that I dont get caught up in feelings of failure. Now, instead of dwelling on the negative let me move on to sharing some positive from this week.

Good habits, hard to form, easy to break. Since I wrote my post last week about my HMB I have been carefully evaluating what habits I have (or dont have or that I would like to have) and how they would fit into a workable routine. I thrive on schedules and routines and do not adjust quickly to changes in either. Albiet, this is something I have had to work on with having four children and a sometimes spontaneous husband. Review of my existing, unusable, HMB revealed my routine lists to be much too long. This is mostly because of the extensive list of ideal habits I was hoping to form. Also, I never gave myself adequate time to complete everything on my list. Granted, if I had a perfectly uninterupted moring I know I could probably get through the list in the alloted time; however, rare is the day that that happens. More often than not, I have one or two little ones swarming around me before I am ready to get out of bed nevermind work my way through my over-zealous list of routines. So, I have decided to change my approach.

Instead of creating a new routine from scratch and then attempting to force my life into it, I have decided to journal the natural routines I do have. Now, this does vary day-to-day and some days work better than others and some days leave me feeling more satisfied in what I did. Here are some of the basic things I always (or near always) do on a daily basis:
Morning
- be the first one up to get the house ready for the day
- make my husbands lunch
- bring him coffee
- feed kids as they wake
Mid-Day
- pick-up toys
- feed kids lunch
- quick tidy kitchen
Evening
- pick-up main floor
- ensure dishwasher is unloaded before dinner
- dinner
- clearing table and washing dishes
Before Bed
- set coffee maker
- run dishwasher
- make sure my kitchen sink is empty

I have been experimenting with adding other things like starting a load of laundry in the morning with the goal of having it put away by evening, getting the dishwasher unloaded in the morning so the dishes don`t pile up in the sink during the day, and making sure I have some good personal maintenance habits. Having functioned as a sleep deprived, over-demanded, mother for the past 6 years, personal maintenance has been low on my list. My priority has been on being there to meet my kids needs and having a functioning house. My girls are getting older and I am now realizing that it is important that they see me taking care of myself so that they can develop their own healthy habits and self-image.

This week, I would like to be more consistent with a few of these habits and perhaps try a few others to find out what works for me instead of taking somebody elses routines and feeling disappointed when they don`t work for me. They are not supposed to. They can be a great jumping off point to get me headed in the right direction but I need to have something that is proven to work in my life. So, that is my little challenge to me this week is to get some workable routines in place and start using them, then tweaking them, then tossing them out if they don`t work and trying something else.

Please feel free to share your routines, or other methods that help you get through your daily got-to-do list.