My habits are pretty deep trenches right now. I’m home almost all the time. I do the same thing every day, even when I don’t really want to. Changes to the routine are difficult to make, especially when I’m the only one who wants the change.

I have hope, because we made a positive change this year by adding Morning Announcements to the roster. Since this has become a part of our routine, I come downstairs, wait until there is a critical mass of awake kids in the room with me, and then we start.

On Mondays, I give a breakdown of the whole week – activities, doctor’s appointments, zoom field trips, and whatever odd reminders are on the calendar. Each of the other days of the week, we just review what day it is and the activities for that day.

This has been good for two reasons – first, saying things out loud each day makes it less likely that I will forget anything, and second, when the kids know what to expect, there is less moaning and groaning.

The only reason it worked is because the kids also see the benefit. Our interests are not so well aligned for most of the other changes I might want to make. Start school earlier? Nope. Quieter quiet time? Definitely No. No rough housing indoors? Meh. Hard to enforce in bad weather. Get more help with housework? *crickets*

When it’s solely up to me, change can be even more difficult. I’ve trained them not to bother me before I come out of my room in the morning, and I’ve disciplined myself to meditate for 20-30 minutes each morning.

I have difficultly going downstairs to meet the day – I know most days are going to involve unwilling scholars, a sink full of dirty dishes, and at least this week, a broken washing machine.

Instead of meditating right away, I’ll read my favorite advice column’s email newsletter. Then I’ll dip into its archives for a bit… and then I’ll meditate, get dressed, and come downstairs.

Sometimes I’ll meditate first and advice column second. Sometimes I  check my email. No one is making me come out of my room, and it’s hard to make myself get up. There is a time after which the kids raise the volume significantly to let me know it’s time to come down, but before that, the morning’s all mine until I come out of my lair.

One could argue the advice column/email checking is a waste of time, that I’m burning perfectly good minutes that I could use being productive, but I can’t break the pattern.

Then I go downstairs and spend close to two hours doing housework, another thing I dislike about my routine but can’t seem to stop. The mess is there, I hate disorder, and little red hen that I am, cleaning it myself is a whole lot easier than the kids’ griping if I try to get help.

But those hours I spend are some of my most productive and energetic hours of the day, and it feels like a huge waste to spend it on the same, self-perpetuating thing every day. The laundry, crumbs, and dirty dishes will be here tomorrow. I will not always, however, have the eyes and fingers and wrists clever enough to hand sew costumes. Yet it’s very hard to prioritize my own creative pursuits when the whole house is a steaming wreck.

The remainder of my energy each day is burned out on homeschool. Once that’s finished, I’m usually, metaphorically and sometimes literally, slumped over and easily mistaken for dead.

In all areas of my life, the most effective thing I’ve found to change these types of repetitive, habitual behaviors, is building in an interrupter. The most effective interrupters are the ones that are in place ahead of time and aren’t easy to blow past.

So, an ineffective interrupter might be that you look at your clock and say, I will only do this thing for fifteen minutes. A more effective interrupter might be actually setting a timer you’ll have to shut off after fifteen minutes.

Tiny snack bowls are interrupters. Habits themselves can be interrupters: once you’ve been doing something for a certain amount of time, your body will communicate in whatever way, time to be done – whether that’s a sore back, cramping hands, or a feeling of restlessness.

An effective interrupter for decreasing my news consumption has been opening a tab for each one of the headlines that interests me, pausing for a moment or longer, and then coming back and deleting all of them without reading the articles. Just opening the tab scratched the itch.

While I’m not satisfied with my morning routine, I’ve put some things in place to keep things moving – I set a timer for ten minutes now when I come down to a sink full of dishes, and only do what I can get done in those ten minutes. It’s easier to put a timer on for things you don’t enjoy. It’s a little tougher to use it for something like internet browsing, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it.

I haven’t figured out how to get around the massive clean I’m compelled to do when I get downstairs each morning. I don’t feel “right” when I keep walking past the messes to do something else. I don’t feel “right” until I’ve spent a certain amount of time cleaning. But I’m also walking past my creative projects while I take out the garbage and clear other people’s breakfast dishes. I’m wishing I could do that instead, but I’m unable to switch over. It’s pretty bleak thinking about how many years the bulk of my time is spent doing things that moments or hours later, will be undone.

I keep thinking, we added Morning Announcements, so change is possible. So what is the key to altering these other habits? What’s the interrupter that’s going to work?