Revisiting Past Days
How is your sleep? Is the bedtime routine becoming more routine, so that you don't need to refer to the checklist as often? It has been four days, so if it's working well and you are starting to fall asleep quickly, you could consider making a small change to the routine if you wish.If it is not working well, go back and re-read and see if there is anything you missed. It might have just been too hard, or you couldn't stick with it - that's fine! It's an experiment, like all things in this course. If you've followed all the suggestions and getting frustrated, it might be time to try a bigger change. Is your desk in your bedroom, and if so, can you set up a temporary work space elsewhere? Keeping the bedroom just for sleeping is one of the biggest pieces of advice you see over and over again in discussions about sleep hygiene. Is there a way you could try it for a week, perhaps working at the kitchen table instead of in your room? Although the change could be awkward, if you start to sleep better, you will know what the factor was and can work towards a more permanent solution.
How are you liking Habitica? Are you accumulating gold at a rate you like, and do you get enough rewards to enjoy using it? New users sometimes have a hard time waiting for the rewards, so if you think it would be helpful for you, consider adding a small reward that costs only a few gold, such as 5 minutes of a new game on your phone. That way you can have an immediate reward after every habit, which might help form them faster.
Are you up to date on your practice pages yet? If you have a full undergraduate course load that can be a lot of work. You can look forward to a new schoolwork topic tomorrow!
If you haven't caught up on your daily log yet, do that now. Make sure yesterday has a few notes about what you did to remind yourself, and start a new heading for today with any timed activities you have during the day - classes, tutorials, labs, meetings, etc.
Laundry
Doing laundry is up there with making dinner and doing dishes, on the list of things people hate having to do. It has the further disadvantage of occurring less often, so you don't have to think about it every day (unlike dinner!).Today's task is going to be highly individual depending on your laundry situation. Ideally, of course, you'd have a washer and dryer in your living space. More likely you have a shared laundry room if you are living in an apartment, or you go to a laundromat if you rent a room in a house.
Turn to a new page and give the heading LAUNDRY, and the date. Write a bit about your situation, using these prompts: What's the worst thing about doing laundry? Are there any good things that come out of doing laundry? When have you been most successful about keeping on top of your dirty clothes? What benefits do you see to staying on top of this chore?
In my case, we have a laundry room in the basement of our apartment at school, but we use a laundromat at home. Because of my physical limitations I have a hard time carrying baskets up and down to the laundry room. I have to make a separate trip for each load, where my partner can carry two loads at once. The time I was most successful at doing laundry was when we had a rental room with a brand new washer and dryer right outside our bedroom - it was amazing!
The first decision to make is what your minimum load size is to make doing laundry worthwhile. For me at school, it's two loads of washing, since they can both go in one dryer load, which has a fixed drying time of 1 hour. So my goal is to do laundry as soon as I get to that load size. At home, the pattern is that I ignore laundry until I put on my last pair of clean underwear, then I panic and have to shoehorn a massive laundromat run into my day! This is what I want to help you avoid. So, decide on your minimum load size, and write it down. Also decide whether sheets and towels are part of that, or whether you want to consider them separately. (Most students don't have enough linens for a separate load, so I recommend mentally adding them to the pile when you check to see how much laundry you have).
The second thing is to have a way of remembering all those things that get forgotten when we do panic-laundry. On your laundry page, make a list for all the things you might forget: for me it's sheets, towels, bathmat, and kitchen towels.
Finally, you need to collect gold for the laundry you do! Set up a Habit for laundry. This is a good one to add a description to, since you'll want to remember what you can click for. Mine says this: "Click for each load that is sorted, in washer, in dryer, folded, put away. Also click for each hand-wash item".
Use this habit as your reminder to look at your laundry every day. I really mean just look at it - and compare it to your minimum load size. The best possible situation is that you have laundry baskets that exactly hold your minimum load size. If you are that lucky, as soon as you notice they are full, it's time to start the process.
Tip: Be creative with your idea of laundry baskets. You have the option of going to the dollar store, but I don't want to encourage you to buy plastics. There are lots of creative ideas: you could keep an eye out for big cardboard boxes in the recycling, use a drawer in a dresser, or use big shopping bags or pillowcases to collect things in.
Tip: If you tend to forget when you last changed your sheets or towels, make a note in your daily log when you do it. It can be as simple as an S or T in a circle to remind yourself. If you really have a hard time remembering, you can use a To-do with a due date to put in the next date they should be changed. You can even make it recurring so it automatically resets every time you do it!
Tip: If you don't have a spare set of sheets or towels, perhaps you can suggest it as a gift idea to someone in your family, or add it to your to-do or reward list. (As of today you can get a fitted sheet for $10 and a duvet cover and pillowcase for $14.99 from that popular Swedish store. I happen to think an appealing duvet cover that you like makes a lot of tasks more fun - making your bed, doing laundry, and going to bed.)
Your final task for today is to use a "Five minute anti-procrastination" block to organize your laundry supplies. Make sure you have detergent, whatever kind of softener you use, maybe stain remover, change or laundry card, etc. all in one logical place. If there is anything you need to buy, add it to your to-do list. Anything else you notice needs doing, like cleaning up spills, that doesn't fit into the five minutes should also go on your To-Do list. After trying various places our laundry supplies ended up under the bathroom sink. It has turned out to be a handy place, even though the bathroom has nothing to do with laundry, because it's near the door of the apartment.
Tip: Some stain removers have to be washed within minutes of being used. My partner found one that can be used up to a week ahead of time. It's perfect for me because I remember the stain when I'm taking off the shirt, not on laundry day. That lives in my closet instead of with the laundry supplies.
If you're inclined to, jot down a few more notes about laundry. How are you going to handle it? How do you think this is going to go? Did I actually get you inspired to think you might be able to enjoy laundry?
Tip: You might already be far past the point of your minimum load size. That's just fine - now you can think of it as an opportunity to earn gold! Check your calendar and plan ahead to which days you can do laundry to catch up.
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