Spring Has Almost Sprung
It’s almost spring and with that the time has sprung forward. It may be unpopular opinion but I am not a fan of daylight saving time. To be honest, I just don’t like that the time changes at all. Let’s chat about the struggles, the good, and how to stay productive and have a positive mindset while embracing time change.
Springing Forward
I find the act of springing forward to be something I dread every year. Not only do we lose an hour of precious sleep but it is also a time that makes it’s harder for me to get up in the mornings and harder to wind down and go to bed at night.
Waking up in the dark of night even when it’s seven in the morning is not my ideal start to the day. Additionally, the sun glaring through your toddler’s window at their bedtime makes evenings harder. Even if you don’t have children, let’s face it – if the suns up you want to be up. Our bodies are made for a slow wind down in the evenings and it’s anything but during daylight saving time.
The Struggles Are Real
Everyone struggles with change. Even if it’s change you’re excited for. In my case, I dread the change that comes with daylight saving so that makes it all the worse. How do we keep our sanity and how do we maintain our relied on schedules? I thought you’d never ask!
1. Be Scheduled
I know it sounds counterintuitive to be scheduled in order to keep your schedule, but hear me out. People naturally thrive on some form of a schedule. Schedules can be hard to keep for many reasons though. As we all know, it’s easier to break a habit than to create one.
Since I stay at home with my daughter, and she is thankfully a late sleeper I have tended to get up with the sun. When daylight saving time is here; however, waking up at my usual 6 or 7 AM is no longer so easy. I feel like I am waking up in the middle of the night at 3 AM with how dark it still is. Getting to bed isn’t any easier. I look out my window and it looks like it’s 4 in the afternoon only to realize it’s 6 PM and we need dinner on the table. The mad dash at night, the struggle to wind my daughter and myself down, and the shorter down time I feel I get because of it makes things all the harder.
Because I know I am going to be struggling with my environment and it’s going to take me time to adjust to this new time change I have to be really strict about my routines and schedules I followed before the time change occurred. Is it hard to get out of bed in the dark of night? Absolutely! But I find ways to push myself to do it. The same goes for the bedtime routine at night. The more we continue on doing our regular schedule the quicker and easier we will adjust to the new time change, BUT we have control of our daily situations versus letting the sunrise and sunset dictate our day.
2. Embrace The Season
Even though I don’t enjoy daylight saving time I do enjoy spring. I didn’t always though. Spring used to bring bad allergies for me and living in Texas it also means that the suffocating heat is just around the corner. Since having my daughter, and also since having gotten older and having grown out of the allergies I had growing up (or more correctly they’ve just changed to something I can more easily tolerate) I am finding that I enjoy the start of spring much more than I used to.
I am trying to add more to my spring and Easter home decor collection. I have quite a bit for fall and a good amount for winter and Christmas, but I have never decorated much for spring and now that I have a child I would like to. Like the last several seasons, I also plan to do a spring bucket list. Making spring themed sugar cookies and decorating them, enjoying a lot of outside time before the summer heat hits, festivities around Easter are just a few of the things I am looking forward to this year.
A lot of people also like to spring clean. I tend to clean all year, but I do have some areas of the house that I would like to tackle, again before the heat hits and my energy levels go down. This means I may be doing some semblance of spring cleaning after all!
3. Embracing The Church Season
This is a bit of a niche area, but as I get older I am finding that I appreciate more than ever my Christian faith and am really embracing God’s Word and the study of it. In a world filled with so much chaos and stressors I find this to be a place of much comfort and it also gives me my vocations and purpose that I can follow very clearly when I am not sure what to do or how to help when the world seems to need so much help.
In a confessional LCMS church we are a bit unique in that we follow the full church year. I find many churches today only touch on this slightly. Christian churches almost certainly celebrate the major holidays such as Christmas or Easter but very few delve into Lent or Advent. The Easter season and what leads up to it is full of rich history, wonderful reminders straight from God’s Word, and more opportunity to go to church and focus on what should be really our primary focus anyway – Christ.
Lent is forty days long, and is filled with some wonderful services to attend such as Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, and midweek Lenten services just to name a few. It is a somber and reverent time that leads up to the celebratory feast day of Easter Sunday. It is an exciting time filled with first and foremost Christ, but with Easter comes fun and traditions as well – Easter egg hunts, a tasty and special Easter meal, and perhaps an Easter basket or special Easter outfits for the little ones (and maybe older ones) in the family.
4. Prepare For The Time Change
This is a new idea for me but one that I tried to do a little this year and plan to do more next year. You can start preparing for the time change. Naturally, the sun begins staying out a little later into the day even before the time change hits so with that you can start slowly adjusting aspects of your schedule to help make things a little less shocking to the system when the time change actually occurs.
Think about going to bed a little earlier a few days or maybe even a couple of weeks before the time change. It doesn’t have to be a thirty minute difference, even five to ten minutes will help so that you don’t end up feeling like you lose a full hour of sleep the night the time change occurs. It also gets a good routine started before the time change that you can keep using once daylight saving time is in effect. This can go for every big part of your day, getting up, going to bed, and even meals.
5. Prioritize Health
Our circadian rhythm, and therefore our health, thrives on sunlight and darkness to set in at certain times assisting our bodies in waking and sleeping. Unfortunately, for all you daylight saving time fans out there who love those seemingly longer and sunnier days this tends to have an unhealthy effect on our bodies. Daylight saving time was primarily originally created to conserve energy, but instead of using our lights and energy at night we now have to do it in the mornings so it really isn’t doing much but negatively impacting our health. The abrupt time change is already difficult and not ideal for health but the dark mornings and bright nights aren’t doing us any favors either.
The fact is the day isn’t longer, the sun is just up later and out later. Instead of using lights at night which we can dim and adjust for preparing us for bed, we are using lights in the morning which is a lot more assaultive on our system and much less healthy than the needed sunlight exposure in the morning to help maintain our circadian rhythm.
This means that during this time change it is important to prioritize your health. Have a set routine as we’ve discussed so you are getting adequate sleep, eat balanced and regular meals, exercise gently with walks, and getting some sun exposure as soon as you can in the mornings – later is better than never (The number of times I went to work in the dark and came home in the dark is more than I’d like to admit!).
Whether You Like It Or Not
Whether you are a fan of daylight saving time or are more like me and think it needs to be eliminated altogether we all have to learn how to adjust and embrace the time change, at least for now. I can understand why so many like the sun out for more of our waking hours, but the health benefits alone are argument that standard time is far better for our health, physical and mental, better for our schedules (kids are an excellent example of this during the time change adjustment), and it’s just nice not to have the sudden shock to the system of any time change in general.
Maybe one day they will do away with the time change, but until then I hope the tips above are helpful as you continue to adjust during this daylight saving time. It can take months sometimes to feel fully adjusted, and just as we have embraced it it’s time for the next change. Here is hoping these tips make the adjustment phase just a little less lengthy and make things a little more productive. Plus, spring is just around the corner – woo hoo!
Looking For Helpful Information To Keep You Scheduled?
If you need help maintaining a schedule during this time change then look no further. In my Homemaking section I discuss anything from weekly tips to keep you scheduled like this Saturday Reset post or even my French-Inspired Skincare Routine. I love a good routine, schedule, or checklist so there is no shortage of those topics here on my blog!
I also have a free year long cleaning checklist that you can download by clicking on the button “Download Your Checklist!” on the Homepage. The checklist will be emailed straight to you. It even has an extra seasonally themed cleaning or organizational tip you can choose to do that is perfect for that spring reset we all crave!
