I have made it a habit, over the past year, to make my bed every single day. There have been few days that I have missed doing this daily task. When it was suggested to me, at first, I thought it was such a dumb idea. As a kid, I had to make my bed every day. I always thought it was a fool’s errand. I gradually did it less and less when I still lived at home, sometimes never. So, as I grew up, and got under my own roof, that forced habit waned little by little until it was non-existent. For years, I had made all the excuses for not making my own bed:
- I’m just going to get back in the bed later.
- I like my room to be a little “messy”
- No one else is going to see the bed, so what does it matter?
- I don’t have to “conform” to society’s standards of cleanliness.
- I don’t give a shit about my bed
- I don’t care, period.
Excuse after excuse, until I really had no firm reason as to why I wasn’t making my bed, it had just become a habit to not do it. A month or so in to my sobriety, I was talking to some of my sober friends about their own ways to deal with anxiety and making big shifts in our lives. One thing that kept coming up was cleaning house, both mentally and physically. I started to look around. Things were definitely a mess. In my head, and in my home. That’s when I heard someone say something about making their bed every single day. It had been said before, I just wasn’t prepared to listen. So, once I did listen, like every other good habit I had been picking up, I started to try it.
A small spark can ignite an inferno.
When you are trying to make a big life change, in my experience, it only sticks if you make the change to all of the small daily habits you indulge in that bring you down. Until I made my bed every day for a month, I didn’t even realize how much better it actually made me feel. It’s a tiny victory, and a way to prepare for my day.
I work from home, so it’s even better for me to walk by my bedroom throughout the day and see the bed made and the bedroom in order. When that wasn’t the case, the unmade bed was always a welcoming temptation to climb back in and give up on the day for awhile. However, even on the days when I do go out and work at a coffee house or I have a meeting, coming home to a made bed just makes you feel at ease. Like your life is in order, and you’re doing the right things.
It’s one of those little things in my daily life that I actually cherish. If you told me a couple years ago that I would “cherish” making my bed, I would’ve laughed at you and called you an idiot. Now, like so many things seen in retrospect, I realize my own push against a healthy habit like that was just me not wanting a healthy life in general. My brain knew, even if I didn’t, that once I started making one small change for the good, many others would follow.
If you don’t make your bed every day, I challenge you to try it for a month and see what it can change in you. It takes you 30 seconds to a minute each morning. If I’m wrong, you can always just go back to not making your bed. I’ll bet you I’m right though.
#changeforthegood #smallhabits #happylife
Trackbacks/Pingbacks