My evening routine
I started it; therefore, I had better answer it.
Geste at Home #1: What is your evening routine in theory? What is your evening routine in practice?
My evening routine is very minimal, but it is better since we’ve moved than it ever has been before — I have actually started the dishwasher before going to bed on most nights.
Yes, that is the sad reality of my evening routine: starting the dishwasher is a major accomplishment.
After dinner, I am done. I am a morning person, I have sailed through my morning, I have slugged through the afternoon, and after dinner a mental block slows all progress to a grinding halt. Soon after dinner (5:30-6:00), during which we all eat and converse about the day together, is bedtime (~7, give or take fifteen minutes on one side or half an hour on the other, depending mostly on the naps that were taken during the day). After getting the boys down to bed, I stare deadpan at the kitchen and slog through getting the dishes loaded and washer started, thanking God for the machines in my life. I soak other dishes (I still believe what I always told my mom and myself since I was ten years old: no, it is easier to wash a dish that has soaked all night than a newly dirtied dish). I make an effort to clear surfaces (the table and the island). Most evenings, however, are spent in recreational pursuits: a little time at the cross-stitch project, a board game with Matt, or a movie. Ten o’clock is a late bedtime; generally we aim for around 9.
The difficulty is that because I am a morning person and because it is the way I have done it so far, cleaning the kitchen in the morning is what I do. I’m ready to tackle the day, and the first place I always start is the kitchen. I get it all scrubbed, dry my hands triumphantly, and glory in one accomplishment with my first or second cup of coffee while Hans and Jaeger are in their chairs eating breakfast. I can do the same job in 1/3 the time as it takes me in the evening, because I’m dead after dinner. Since tackling the kitchen has been part of my default morning routine for 5 years (or longer, perhaps, Mom?), the nights I have knuckled down and gotten it done before going to bed haven’t produced the morning pride in a shining sink so much as a lost feeling of not knowing what to do. Cleaning the kitchen is what I do as I think over the day newly begun, as I talk to Hans, as I listen to the radio.
It’s weird, I know, but that is my block to even trying to attain a shining sink after dinner. Ideally, I would clean the kitchen after bedtime and reallocate that productive morning time, but I need to be around the boys while they eat anyway, so I just use that time for dishes.
Hi Hon, You’re making progress if you’re running the dishwasher at night. How about starting a sinkful of soapy water during dinner prep to soak pots and things making clean up after dinner easier? Doesn’t Matt lend you a hand with the dishes?
Yes, often Matt is the one who gets the dinner dishes into the dishwasher and starts it. We also generally just eat out of the pot dinner was made in, and I do soak it right after dinner and bowls and prep utensils go into the dishwasher. So, if there’s not room for them in the dishwasher and if the pots need to soak…why not wait until the morning when there is room in the dishwasher and the pots have soaked all night and I have energy?
Mystie, we must be from the same stock. By 6 PM I am done for, and it is a real effort to do anything around the house when I get home from work. There are days when I get it all done, and actually do some of my morning routine the night before, thinking it would give me more quiet time in the morning, and I just end up walking around in a daze in the morning wasting all that time…something about mindlessly doing the chores in the morning helps me wake up enough to have that quiet time…or then again, maybe it is just the coffee!!!
love, Connie
I like to have the kitchen clean in the morning so that I don’t have to push things out of the way in order to make my mocha and Judah’s breakfast. And then I like to sit and drink my coffee while I read my Bible or a book club book or World or something for as long as I can before the distractions and demands become too great. If the kitchen’s clean it’s sort of a weight on my mind forbidding me to relax. This isn’t to say that it generally IS clean in the a.m., just that I’d LIKE it to be. :-)