Self-care Sunday is here…

What’s your Sunday routine? How do you get ready for the week ahead? I don’t work on Mondays so I don’t have quite the same Sunday as most other people. It frees me up to have totally indulgent, lazy Sunday. Proper self-care if ever I’ve known it.

I love working three days a week, it’s so liberating. I’d work less if I could, but damn it, I have to pay the bills somehow. As a result, my Sundays are truly my own. No Sunday night blues – dreading work the next day, and worrying about the week ahead. No, I just get to kick back and take care of me and mine.

As for most, Sundays are usually a family day. Poppet and I are most likely to be found hanging out with ‘Granny’, either at our place or at her house – the house I grew up in. My brother and his partner sometimes join us. These are the kind of Sundays I missed hugely when I lived in Sydney, and as a result I appreciate them all the more now.

The self-care element of family Sundays is not to be underestimated. When I was on the other side of the world there was no default position of just hanging out with family on Sunday if I didn’t have anything else arranged. As a singleton I often found myself at a loose end on a Sunday, which stressed me out and made me feel lonely. Not good. Here it’s easy-peasy.

As a result of getting so much quality family time it means I can now enjoy those rare Sundays when we are alone. In this busy, busy, information-overload culture we live in, a restorative day at home does wonders for the soul.

So I love a Sunday just kicking back at home. Poppet and I have a busy time during the week, and on Saturdays she has her ballet class and we catch up with friends afterwards, so on Sundays it’s a treat to just stay in pyjamas all day, not have to put on any make-up, and just please ourselves. Lie on the couch watching movies. Yes please. Laze about in the garden, maybe stirring occasionally to do some weeding? Yes again.

Sunday me can also be ‘get things done’ me. There is after all so much to do around the house. The mental list I have running at the moment consists of:

• Put up curtain rail in Poppet’s room so I can hang her black-out curtains and conjure up some semblance of darkness in her room at bed time (and at 6am!).
• Hang pictures. All those lovely picture frames I bought before we moved in won’t I’m afraid fill or hang themselves;
• Fill holes in walls. Tedious but necessary.
• Hang lovely vintage shelves I bought months ago on the kitchen wall.
• Mow the lawn. Again! Who knew you had to do this every week!?
• Weed the front garden. Those pesky weeds keep on coming back.
• Prepare our vegetable beds for our Rocket Garden children’s garden plants. Home grown veggies here we come.

I could go on! The list never ends, or in fact gets any shorter. I find ticking this stuff off therapeutic, don’t you? A get a satisfying sense of achievement. I’m still making this place our home, and it’s getting there, step by step. Having not lived in a home I owned for getting on for seven years, it’s delightfully grounding feeling to know this is ours, and to be able to put our stamp on it. We are marking out our territory in the most primal way. As a result I feel more grounded than I have in a very long time.

So that’s self-care Sunday for me. The people and places that make me feel safe, secure and loved.

Tell me what Sunday means to you in the comments below. Do you spend it with family? Dedicate it to a hobby, or find yourself lost and at a loose end?