As humans I believe we are all creatures of habit, have our funny quirks for doing things.
One thing I know I do is mindless turn on the TV at the end of the working day and spend the evening staring at the screen on the wall without really watching it, I find that I get a bit restless and can’t settle to watch anything yet I rarely turn the TV off and do something different with my time!! And there is a list as long as my arm of tasks I could be doing instead of watching TV – some of these are household tasks others are hobbies which I love doing but rarely do.
After a very lazy weekend where I spent many hours on the sofa looking at the TV, I decided that I was going to challenge myself to not watch the TV in the evenings for the first four days of a week (Mon – Thurs).
Day One – Monday – Mid-afternoon I had to remind myself of the challenge I set myself so decided to go into the loft and get the Christmas tree and decorations down, that took all of 10 minutes as I soon realised I didn’t have any lights – putting them up will have to be done another day. So I set about making myself some food and also getting a few crafty things out my craft cupboard to work on during the week.
I tend to go to bed pretty early as I’m a early riser so the time seem to go pretty quickly, my fear is that I’d get bored and give in to the tellybox, but I managed to keep myself busy until bed time.
Day Two – Tuesday – I’ve got an open fire and today the chimney sweep came to do the annual clear out so that it’s safe to light fires, I have lit a few fires this winter already but always feel a little uneasy if I haven’t had the chimney swept! So in celebration, I lit a fire which felt very indulgent on a weekday evening, I usually only light it at the weekends. I prepared my evening meal, ate it in front of the fire, actually savouring every mouthful and being mindful about the nutritious food I had made and was eating, rather than shovelling it mindlessly as I watch TV, then I settled down in front of the fire to read The Happy Newspaper which I subscribe to, it arrived on Monday and usually, it sits unopened for a week or so until I make time to sit down and read it.
Day Three – Wednesday – While tea was cooking (well warming up) I did the washing up and a general kitchen tidy, I’m not good at keeping on top of the housework as it’s not my favourite thing to do but over the last few months I’ve found it quite therapeutic and love the feeling of coming downstairs of a morning and the kitchen is free of dirty pots and pans and not having a TV programme to watch it didn’t feel like I was missing any of it, instead, I put some tunes on and sang my heart out while washing up!
Day Four – Thursday – As this mini-experiment draws to a close I have started to think about how I can continue this habit on into the future, this evening I started by warming up my food, while it was cooking I put my clean washing away, again something I rarely do, most the time it all ends up in a massive pile on the spare room bed until I can’t find what I’m looking for and end up getting frustrated as I can’t find what I need, this is usually when I’m in a hurry too!!
I am really surprised how little I missed the TV, yes on Friday it was nice to sit down and watch a couple of programmes that I recorded during the week but overall I feel that maybe each week I can have some TV free evenings and be ready to turn it off when I don’t feel like I’m actually engaging in the programme I’m watching.
It’s strange how I have habits that don’t serve me well at times yet I still do them even when I become conscious that they aren’t serving me well! This week has taught me that simple things can make a difference as I’ve managed to keep on top of both the housework & cleaning pile, these are now just 5-10 minute jobs and easy to do with not much effort but make a big difference about how I feel in my own home!
As 2020 draws to a close, I feel that 2021 will a year where I explore my habits and actions more and make plans to change any that are negatively impacting on my life.
What habits do you have that you know aren’t serving you well?
Lincolnshiregirl 