Lifting The Curtain

One of the comments I get all.the.time is “I don’t know how you do all you do.” And while I am a personality type that likes to accomplish things, there is plenty of time I lay around reading or watching tv. But I do tend to do those things when I’ve finished with my to-do list so it’s more of a reward.

I’ve written about goals and to-dos since the beginning of the blog (you can see them all here, starting in 2010!), but always with the caveat that I use them as a guideline and have no problem moving them or getting rid of them if they didn’t work out one year. My daily life reflects the things I’ve prioritized in my yearly goals, as well as just regular life things, so I thought I would share a couple “day in the life” type posts, one in summer and one in winter, to give you a rough idea of how I get things done - or at least try to!

I’ll also be sharing some things along the way like what I’m eating and how I’m moving. I tried to pick a typical day in mid-summer, but will mention differences or what I do other days as it comes up.

6:00 am: Brian and I naturally wake up about the same time every morning - it’s been years since we’ve set alarms. Brian still brings me a latte every morning (started when our daughter was born and she just turned 30!!!) and I read a devotional (right now its She Read’s Truth’s The Bible Is For You), occasionally journal, and go through my personal email which includes news of the day. This is the only time I read news unless something is happening in the world - it’s enough for me to feel caught up but not enough to bring me down or take over my day.

We have a family subscription to The New York Times newsletters (paid) and I get The Pour Over for a Christian perspective that often includes prayers, as well as brief USA Today and The Skimm newsletters.

7:15 am: I do 30 minutes of exercise M-F. Three days are progressive weight training using the videos I recorded while I had a Faster Way membership, and two are HIIT and/or a brisk 2-mile walk (the FW coaching and dieting/macro counting helped educate me, but in the end was just too much food and thinking about food for me, so now I’m back to my own thing). But I LOVE the video weight workouts and some of the HIIT videos. AND last month I learned that doing 3 years of lifting weights had reversed most of my osteoporosis back to osteopenia! This was a huge motivation to continue - and my encouragement to you to add weight workouts if you don’t!

(By the way, I don’t have a gym or a room to set things up - I just keep them in boxes and bins hidden around my room and bring everything out when I need them, so it can work almost anywhere.)

8:00: I’m usually in the shower around 8 - this day I had to wash my hair so my getting ready routine took a bit longer than days I don’t. I’ve moved to washing my hair every 3-4 days instead of every other day, using baby powder as a dry shampoo in between, and I love it. (Notice how my hair isn’t moving? I thought it would be easier to take the pic if the dryer wasn’t running, but it wasn’t until I saw this photo that I realized how ridiculous it looks, lol.)

8:45: Today was an “egg day.” We have granola with berries four days a week and some kind of eggs three days. This morning I used kale and onions from the garden along with some store bought red peppers in the scramble. Two turkey sausages, half a piece of sourdough toast, plus summer fruit of fresh blackberries and the first of our 3 peaches that grew on our tree this year! Brian and I listen to a book during breakfast (meals and driving are how we listen to so many together).

9:15: I make coffee and start the morning watering. Most mornings it takes about 10-15 minutes and I love the quiet, peaceful time enjoying the flower garden and pots. This morning it took a bit longer because we had been gone the three days before.

9:45: Then I moved to harvesting time, starting with the abundant thornless Navaho blackberries we have this year (I am in heaven!). Last year was their first year producing, but this year is amazing - I’ve already picked three of the buckets you see and you can see how many more will ripen over the next weeks. Yay! One of the reasons we’re getting this is because of the fenced covering we have over them. These were not cheap berries to get, between the huge cover, the beds, and the watering system, but it’s worth it to us (well, to me at least, ha!).

10:15: I started listening to my current audiobook and moved up to the vegetable garden to do the bit of hand watering there I try to do each day, including the seedlings I’m nursing along for fall plantings. Then since we’ve been gone all weekend I looked for things to harvest. I clipped flowers for new inside bouquets and filled my basket and bucket with:

I also have carrots, turnips, kale, and cabbage to harvest, but ran out of time and they will hold.

11:00: harvesting is only part of the picture - then you have to bring the produce in and get it cleaned up enough to put away in bags and containers in the fridge and pantry. I’m way behind in starting my computer work!

11:30: I finally sit down at the computer with my to-do list, checking my editorial calendar, answering comments, and start writing. After many years of using The Flexible Planner, I realized I didn’t need as much space so now I use a basic dot grid notebook and simply list a short daily to-do each day.

12:00: I get my first cup of tea with collagen (I use this kind) and take a minute to add the frozen blackberries from last week into containers (I’m experimenting with paper containers and so far the results have been pretty good! More on this later for sure.) Then it’s back to work.

12:45: Brian and I start making lunch and this day is very typical if we don’t have leftovers: lettuce layered with veggies, kraut, meat, feta, and anything else we can find (I love adding spoonfuls of Three Bean Salad, as well as cottage cheese). The bag is Trader Joe’s Dippers - we each have a couple to scoop up the salad. We eat on the side porch pretty much daily now. I use the water jar I mentioned in a previous blog Good Things List that I fill up each day, drinking that on top of all the other things I drink to make sure to get enough water.

1:15: We go on an after lunch walk down our quiet lane. I do this every weekday, either outside or on my walking pad. I made a goal of 26 minutes walking 5 times a week for 2026 and I keep track of it on a simple app on my phone. It’s the motivation I needed to do this regularly instead of just when I felt like it. Also, after using a continuous glucose monitor and reading The Glucose Revolution, I realized that doing it after lunch is a perfect way to minimize sugar spikes after eating.

1:45: It’s back to work, thankfully with some uninterrupted time to get some things checked off my list.

3:00: I try to get up every hour or so - and my body usually wants to by then - so this is when I have my second cup of tea with collagen (and milk - I always have milk). Then it’s back to work. This day I needed to edit photos of the new BBQ ribs recipe as well as write the blog post so it could go up the next day (yes, I was a bit behind…).

5:15-6:15: We decided to use a couple of our heirloom tomatoes on a caprese-blt mash up I came up with: ciabatta rolls (from Costco) spread with homemade pesto (using up last year’s stash), layered with sliced tomatoes, sliced parmesan, bacon strips, and mozzarella. I pressed it all together on a panini maker and they were delicious! We’ll definitely make them again, maybe on homemade focaccia. I served the sandwiches with a chopped salad with garbanzos, feta, carrots, basil, onions, and pickled peppers.

We usually have a piece of dark chocolate after dinner, but I had harvested some really ripe strawberries (after I snapped the harvest photo above), so I served them cut in half with a bit of whipped cream.

Garden produce all through the meal - I love it!

6:30: Sadly I had to work after dinner (I used to do this all the time, but have really tried to curtail it the last few years). It was mainly because we had been gone and the produce needed to be harvested this morning, our first day back. I only needed another hour, though, so it wasn’t a big deal and I finished the recipe post. I also checked my work email.

7:30 The beautiful summer evening was calling me. I spent a half hour on the porch couch with the dog, enjoying the view and scrolling through Instagram and my personal email.

8:00: I plugged back into my current audiobook, Commonwealth, and worked on my summer t-shirt knitting project. Gah, it’s kicking my butt with it’s small stitches and splitty yarn! The sleeves weren’t working with Magic Loop, so here I’m changing to double pointed needles to see if I can get this moving along.

(If there is something Brian and I are watching, I will knit while we watch. So I’m either listening to a book or watching tv while I knit.)

I love this knitting time and look forward to it all day, really. But it is about the only time I knit besides car trips.

9:30: I start my evening routine which I try to keep to after reading many years ago about the importance of “sleep hygiene” for those with sleep issues (waving hand frantically…). Weekday or weekend, it’s all the same:

I try to turn my tablet off about 10:45, earlier on the wonderful chance that I’m sleepy, later if I have to struggle to keep my eyes closed (sadly more often). I have tried all kinds of things and haven’t found that the tablet makes a difference for my sleep and it’s much easier to hold and see without bugging Brian than a physical book.

So that’s it - a typical day in my life in mid-summer! Saturdays are for trips, family times, and working on the house and gardens. Sundays are for church and quiet days at home or more family/friend time. (I no longer work on the weekends, amen to that.)

I’m super grateful for the time I have and the ability to plan my schedule and have the flexibility to change it when needed. I do know this isn’t the norm for everyone and there was definitely a time when I didn’t have this freedom. I hope to encourage you to do what you can with the time you DO have, planning for even the margins so that when you hopefully will have more time you have the skills and joy in the things you know you love to do.

Leave a comment with any question you have or areas you’d like me to cover more of!