The Sacred Nature of Saturday and Sunday

 I have always struggled with keeping a tidy and clean home. Dishes pile up. Laundry seems a daunting and unending struggle. Cobwebs and dust make my place feel like Edgar Allen Poe might be tucked away in some dark corner sipping on absinthe and composing a fever dream poem. 

I could make tons of excuses about this. It comes down to two realities. The first is that I don't enjoy cleaning. It is a trite but necessary function of life that brings me no joy until it is completed. The second is that I manage my time poorly. 

I wake up in time to handle getting ready for the day during the week. Its a shower and the daily rituals after seeing the kid off to school. If I could commit to doing it regularly I would cook myself a good breakfast. All too often that is a bowl of Raisin Bran or worse a Pop Tart. 

I spend a little time in the morning looking at my calendar and writing. I put a few daily to do items on the list. Typically, I won't get in more than three. I try to keep it simple. I do one thing to grow or complete professionally. I do one thing for my personal growth. I put one thing on my parenting to do list. 

I spend a little time on gratitude. I was in the habit of putting three things on the page. Now it is a minimum of one. I can certainly add more, but I don't make myself work to three because that all too often feels fake. 

I spend some time writing. I check my to do list. I log in to work and work through the calendar there as well. Then it is all into work mode. I do that until it is done. 

I do get outside for any breaks or lunches. Honestly, I have been taking target practice at least once a day and sometimes three or four times. This is super soothing to me. It gets me some sun. If I am shooting the bow or throwing knives or axes it adds a little exercise. No, really, chasing down a throwing knife every 30 to 60 seconds for ten minutes is a surprising number of steps. I don't miss much with the bow. I guess we will count picking up shell casings as exercise as well. 

I try hard to get a little work around the house done. I often clean the cat boxes and take out trash. Both activities get me outside. Less rarely I knock out dishes or laundry. It happens. Not as often as it should. It is a thing I have pushed for intentionally as a demarcation between weekday and weekend.

That is the thing. I rarely, if ever, have big weekend plans. Right now I am looking at this weekend with great excitement because I should be playing D&D. I spend time with the kid. I take some time out and watch cartoons on Saturday morning. 

What I absolutely don't want to do is spend my weekend messing with dishes, trash, sweeping, mopping, running the vacuum, doing dishes, or washing laundry. It all has to be done. 

Currently, I am making a concentrated effort to keep all of those things maintained during the week. It gives me the feelings that my down time on the weekend is actually used for rest and recreation rather than playing perpetual catch up. 

I recently moved my desk set up into my living room and gave up my office space so a... friend... could stay with us. She headed back home and I have found myself thinking about the advantages of having my office back in the office. 

I just couldn't convince myself that I wanted to spend another weekend cleaning, rearranging, and working on that type of project. The way I figure it I can add the items I need to do to move things around to my to do list and spend time before and after work next week getting them done. That lets me decide on the weekend if I really want to dedicate more time and energy to that sort of thing. 

This may sound like a simple thing, but in my life it is an actual revelation.