My Five Bad Habits

What is wrong with me?! Thus starts the renewed interest in self-improvement. While these bouts of anxiety usually hit around the New Year, they can pop up anytime. I have identified 5 bad habits that are creating stress in my life along with my strategies for eliminating them.

I don't get enough sleep!

Being a night owl by nature, I often find the morning stressful and the days long. Much of this can be attributed to a late bedtime and the lure of television. This habit should be a no brainer to knock off. An earlier bed time is critical. It takes a long time to drift off to sleep and you can't expect to lay down at midnight and rush quickly off to sleep. Obviously, watching what you eat prior to bed time is critical. It is probably best to stay away from any food or drink two hours before heading to sleep. To resolve my tendency to watch TV, I plan to utilize the DVR that I pay for every month. I have scheduled the shows I like to record every night. Then, I can watch the previous night's shows earlier in the evening.

Where do all of these dishes come from?

With three young children, the dishes will pile up if you turn your back only for an instance. Leaving these dishes to pile up is a very bad habit. The easiest way to tackle this problem is to rinse dishes and put in dishwasher immediately. There shouldn't ever be dishes in the sink that belong in the dishwasher. For other types of dishes, like kid's cups and pans, a quick rinse will save lots of problems later. There will always be dishes in my sink. My goal is to make sure that the ones that are there are not growing funk.

I can't walk through my house!

A messy, disorganized house is the product of multiple bad habits. Primarily, the house is messy because there is too much STUFF! I have a bad habit of accumulating stuff. The first order of business is to start getting rid of stuff. This can actually be fun activity for a weekend with good weather. Put down some old blankets or tarps in the driveway and start moving everything that isn't furniture from the floor to the driveway. Once everything is out, you will have such a great time walking through your house. Now, comes the hard part. Nothing goes back in unless there is a place for it. At least 60% of this stuff should be donated or thrown away.

I have no clothes to wear!

Clothes are like dishes. You can ignore them, but they will just pile up. This bad habit is pretty easy to fix. I have decided that I will run at least one load of clothes every night. This is the burden that people with children must recognize. Washing clothes is not rocket science. Getting help with the clothes will also make this easier. Create a cheat sheet that shows how to wash a load of clothes and teach spouses and kids to pop in a load. It will also make this process easier if you train your household to keep types of clothes separated properly. Instead of a single laundry bin, there should be at least two. Once bin for whites and one for colors.

There is nothing to cook!

Another bad habit is grocery shopping without developing a menu plan. This results in purchasing lots of pre-cooked food and junk. I plan to sit down before every trip and plan out my meals for the week. This can actually be a fun exercise for the family. Meal traditions can be a great way to make planning easier. There should be an Italian night and a Mexican night. The family will begin to look forward their favorite meals on specific days.

Breaking bad habits is never easy. My simple strategy is to identify the end result of the bad habit and to find simple, repeatable alternatives. I wish you luck with your list and I will follow-up with the results of my efforts.