Have you ever wondered how it is that life suddenly got so crazy that you don’t know if you are coming or going? Now that we have Sunday Shopping available to us … and stores open from 6 a.m. until the wee hours of the night … how come we still never seem to have enough time to shop and take care of errands outside of the home? Supposedly technology, conveniences, more “disposable” income has made our life simpler – yet we are more wearied than ever before. Not - “I’m exhausted from doing hard physical work and now I am going to slip into my nice cozy bed and drift off into la la land” kind of weary,” but rather a “I’m so worn out I could puke and I’ve only just gotten out of bed” kind of weary.
Some time back, a friend, Rachel mentioned
that she was going to eliminate “extra shopping” for a set period of time. All in all, she was extremely
successful! That got me thinking. So, I included
something similar (but with a twist) in my Lent Challenge. I chose not to shop on Saturdays and Sundays. As I’ve mentioned before – Sunday is rarely a
day I shop anyway so it basically just nixed the Saturdays. Two days. How hard
could that be? Well – when you work
Monday to Friday and are involved in your son’s high school and community
basketball … not to mention multiple projects for others … it doesn’t leave
much time to address all the needs for the house, the groceries, the family,
and whatever and whoever there is to shop for. So everything defaults to
Saturday and Sunday - the precious weekend when you want to be spending time
with family and /or focusing on rest, relaxation and finding time for
yourself. Maybe even tackling projects
or tasks around the house that there never seem to be time for during the
week. Eventually, those little tasks
become piles of mess, then mountains of dread and ultimately, valleys of doom.
So what’s a person to do? Probably what a lot of us do … take it out on
our families, ourselves, our jobs, leave it, avoid it, be frustrated by it, and
for lots, just be overwhelmed by it.
What I do know is … we only have X amount of time. Oh, wow – big epiphany, eh? While that simple fact is … well, simple … we
often forget it while we are running around like a chicken with our head cut
off. Do you ever wonder how some appear
to go through life calm and collected (not fair) and we are constantly dealing
with the steam and stress of making it through each day? Guess what?
They are either a) just not showing it (because really ... most of us
don’t wear signs over our heads telling the world that we are losing it), or
they are the type of person that plunks everything onto other people’s laps, or
they are just fine with all the chaos (they may in fact, not even see it), or
have figured out how to make it all work.
Most of us have been in the first 3 places but during my Lent Challenge
… oddly enough, I was able to get myself into the latter.
Quite frankly … being somewhat organized is half the battle but that is not what I initially started out with. It was simply to not shop on Saturday/Sunday. GASP! I imagine some would think ... “And, exactly WHEN do I do my shopping?” Well … that’s for them to figure out. Sometimes the drastic changes you make are more drastic in your head than in reality. And sometimes, you have to make some changes – relunctantly or not ... for your sanity. As they say, “if you don’t want anything to change … continue doing what you are doing.”
At the end of the week (that would be
Sunday, in my books) I would sit down and figure out what my week was going to
look like. It involved looking at the
family calendar and thinking through all the birthdays, meals / grocery needs,
school lunches, sleepovers, functions you have to bring a gift or food, etc.
for the week (and only that week – otherwise I’d get too overwhelmed). Then, it
meant writing those purchases down. Not on a slip of paper that goes by the
wayside but in a small journal I took wherever I went. And finally out came my schedule/calendar and a little figuring out as to what could be done or picked up on my lunch
hour, after work or evening. Maybe even
delegating a shopping errand to someone else in the family. Friday after work was often when I finshed up
the last of my shopping. Yes - it could make for a busy Friday but that’s ok – the
weekend was coming! That left Saturday free from all that. Still not buying it?
It is absolutely amazing how fast the day
goes on Saturday when you spend it in the car running from A to B to C to … The
lineups in the stores are crazy, the parking lots are full and your energy
level gets sapped. Then, of course, Murphy’s Law ... what you needed was out of
stock and that meant another trip to yet another place.
Prior to my Lent Challenge, Saturday morning meant leaving early
in the a.m. and arriving home in the late afternoon, too pooped to do anything more. Dinner didn’t happen (we’d order in, hit a
take out or throw something blah together). The thought of going out Saturday
night with friends or family made me cringe - not because I didn’t want to … I
simply had no energy left. Then there was the mess in the house and all that was left undone all week to deal with - blah!
Can I say that when I used my little
journal and my time through out the week to do those errands and shopping stops
… I would often have one of those moments that you get when you’ve finally finished your last Christmas
gift/preparations. You sigh and say, “I
can’t believe I’m done! Yeah!!” Relief or maybe just a resignation that
there’s nothing more you can or want to do. Somewhere in your soul, you have a
sense of peace about it. That is what my
no shopping on the weekend for my Lent Challenge did for me come Friday nights. “It is finished.” I suppose there was always one more thing I
could have done but the First Things First were done and I had to tell my
head, “Hey … you are done. Leave it.”
So what did Saturday / Sunday’s during my Lent Challenge look
like? Well – for once, I wasn't dashing out the door early. I slept
in. I got to sit and have coffee with my
husband. In my pajamas! With my messy hair. When I finally got myself dressed … I was
able to do what I really wanted to do … I could actually clean my house –
properly. One could say that the cleaning would be a
waste of time but I like having a clean house. During the week … only the
bare minimum seems to get done.
I'd throw open the windows and doors, let the fresh air and sunshine in. I wasn't racing around at a crazy pace. Did a little this and a little that (in between cups of coffee). Saturday is the day that works to get things like laundry and cleaning done at my house – and when you do
something regularly, oddly enough, there seems to be less and less to do each week. You get in the groove and it actually goes
way faster. If we had a sports activity to go to, then some of it would get done Saturday and finished on Sunday. Flexibility was possible when shopping wasn't a factor.
I rarely cooked on Saturday … often we would pick
up a pizza or go out to eat. This was not a day that I slaved in the kitchen (or pretended to - lol). Then, maybe out to
a movie. What I wasn't doing was racing through a mall looking for a last minute gift, having a shopping cart crashed into the back of my heals while heaving 10 lbs. of potatoes into my basket, or flipping out because the store I need to be at … closed 5 minutes before I got there.
Sundays
started out the same. Coffee and a
slow pace. We’d head out to church
and then have a nice family lunch. The
kids hung around the house .. maybe we’d even do some yard work ... whatever ... it was all good. I planned my meals and organized the family
calendar for the coming week. Tea in the afternoon and popcorn and a movie night at home. How nice is that.
My challenge this week is to revert back to
a little of that sense of peace and order I had during my Lent Challenge. I'd invite you to try it for a week or so and see if there
isn’t some merit in it. In my mind,
going on holidays doesn’t count - I love to shop on holidays all the time (lol) but during the working week … anything
you can do to make your life truly restful on the weekend has to be worth a
shot. Set it up for yourself … how I do
it doesn’t have to be the same as what works for your family. After all the purpose of the “weekend” is to
find rest and relaxation, isn't it? That plays out very differently for all of us
… whatever you do, just do it! Do I hear the NIKE swoosh here?
Food For
Thought:
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