value of routines?

[redsage]

I'll be starting work on December 3. (Eee!) It's been five years since I had any sort of regular schedule; I've been in school (and doing other stuff) in that time, and generally haven't had to be anywhere at the same time 5 days a week. I don't have any sort of routine, and haven't in years and years. Even when I did, it was mostly haphazard as I was just trying to make sure I looked ok, didn't smell bad, and wasn't sick with hunger as I left the house.

I've been thinking about setting up a morning routine. On the one hand, there are things I'd like to do every day (hygiene, fitness, food, etc.) and setting up a standard order of doing things is more likely to help me remember them, but on the other I've never been overly fond of routine and I tend to forget some stuff and then get upset about it, and then stop entirely because it's upsetting.

What about you? Do you have daily or weekly routines? What do you like about them? Have you found some things are more likely to be forgotten than others, and any pointers?

Comments

[geminigirl]

I do have some routines. In the evening, while we clean up from supper (which has it's own routine) Cayne's lunch gets made and put into the fridge. I make a to-do list for the following day at night, though I can add to it the next day, it helps to organize it the night before-when I was working a full time job, I'd make my work to-do list before I left my office in the evening, and my home to-do list before I went to bed. I also, when I had to dress more formally for work, would make sure to set out clothes the night before.

For me, housework gets done more promptly and more efficiently if it has a routine-for example, Friday is laundry day, and Tuesday is for dusting and straightening, and so on.

In order to build our routines, we did two things-one was to make one change at a time, whether it was things like ensuring that all the dishes were in the dishwasher or washed before we went to bed or the kitchen floor swept and so on, and the other was to make a visual checklist of what needed to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. The list went on the side of the fridge and each chore that was done was added to the list until we'd built our complete list. Then we turned it into a chart with check boxes, and as we complete something, it gets checked off. The goal for us was to make sure that we had a guide for what needed to get done when, and it helped us to build the routine around the list-in other words, it provided us with the visual reminder of what needed to be done-the "when" was determined later on.