Sleep and a Messy House

February 13, 2013 · By · 16 Comments

You know, for all the effort I put into eating well, workout out, and taking care of myself, I have to admit that there is one category where I suck: getting enough sleep.

We have pretty busy lives over here, but doesn’t everyone? On Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays we are up at 5 for the 5:30AM WOD, but my other days typically begin around 7:30, when I wake up scramble to shower (well… sometimes I shower anyway) and get my 3-block breakfast, 3-block lunch, and 2-block snack together before making it out the door by 8:10 for my 45-60 minute commute. I’m at work until 5-5:30 and then I get back in the car for a 60-75 minute drive home. Most nights Brandon doesn’t get home from school until about the time I get home from work, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays he doesn’t make it home until about 7:30PM. If he is home, we will go to the 7PM WOD and usually not get home until 8:30, at which point we still have to make dinner and Brandon typically has at least an hour or two of homework. We rarely make it to bed before 11:30 (I usually to stay up in solidarity with his studying habits… not sure why…), and then it happens all over the next day.

You are probably thinking, “7:30 is NOT early, and actually that is 8 full hours of sleep!” But let me tell you, with 10-12 inevitably stress-filled hours spent in traffic every week, 4-5 WODs, and what feels like a LOT of scrambling, I am almost never ready to pop out of bed in the mornings. In fact, I feel like I could usually use at least another hour of sleep. Or three.

Not only do I really not get enough sleep, but I have another confession: My house is almost always a mess. For some reason The BF and I each seem to own about 6 puffy jackets, which can be found draped over every seat in the house. The recycling is overflowing, the dish towel that is draped over the oven handle will probably actually make your hands dirtier, and I literally don’t remember the last time I actually hung up my clothes instead of just living out of a never-ending pile of rotating laundry. Our house is only about 750 square feet and you would think it would be easy to keep such a small space clean… But apparently not.

What do you do to make sure you squeeze in enough sleep at the end of the day? My life is not as full as it could be, I mean I don’t have kids or a huge family to cook for (although the BF does eat about 3x the amount of a normal human), but I don’t want you to get the idea that I have all the time in the world to weigh and measure my food, or that I have time for CrossFit because all the other pieces of my life are tidy and orderly. Not even a little bit.

I guess it’s all about priorities. Like the fact that it’s 10:45 at night and instead of getting a little extra sleep, I am writing this incredibly random post. And I hope you can relate.

Filed Under: Life ·
  • Marija

    I can absolutely relate. I feel like these days I have no time for anything other than work and the gym. Our house is a mess, pretty much all the time. When my mum announced her visit last weekend after we had turned her down about 10 times due to being busy we spent 2 days cleaning up(mostly just tucking stuff out of plain sight)… We both(boyfriend and I) work 8/9 hour days and have part time at home jobs. We also hit the gym right after work cause it’s the only time we can fit it in which means we leave the house every day at 7.30am and get home after 8pm most days. We sleep about 6 hours if we’re lucky and even though we spend about an hour tops in front of the tv(usually over dinner) we turned the tv into his monitor for work(he’s a programer) and now we go to bed a bit earlier and bring some books along(that usually makes us fall asleep a little faster but we’re still talking about minutes, not hours gained by this.Lately it seems I just cannot make time for my friends because whenever there’s a day that’s not so structured and planned out I try and get some “me” time. Catch up on my reading, get some inspiration and motivation from some great people on line or just chill out in the quiet of our home with my man. So from another girl struggling to find time I can honestly say I can relate but cannot help sadly … I’m sorry …

    • clairechapman

      Haha I can totally relate to the cleaning aka hiding method! We had a friend stay at our house a few weeks ago to watch the dog while we were away, and instead of actually putting any of the laundry away, I just piled it all up in the closet and shut the door, hoping our friend wouldn’t look in there :) I also definitely feel like I have almost no time to hang out with friends unless I’ve made plans a week in advance, and even then it feels like a squeeze!

  • http://twitter.com/SnowfoxBandit Simone

    Yeah…. I’m with you on this one too. I’m a morning person (though I suppose I can’t claim that until I start getting up at 5 to workout, too!), so I like to head to bed around 10:30 or 11 (we get up at 6:50 for work/school). I, too, have an hour-long commute, though it’s usually not too crowded — I’m leaving the city to head to school while everyone else is trying to get in. Thank goodness I’m not going the other way!

    My biggest problem with eating well is my sporadic schedule. It’s my last semester, so my classes are crammed in all over the place (even if they’re fun things like Chinese calligraphy and guitar). We do CrossFit out of our garage with several friends on T/Th nights and go to kung fu on Wednesdays and Fridays. Who wants to start cooking at 7 or 8 after CrossFit (or 10 when we get home from the kung fu studio)??

    And don’t even get me started on how messy the house is. We stay on top of dishes, but that coat and laundry situation sounds real familiar…!

    • clairechapman

      That’s pretty awesome that you do kung fu.. and Chinese calligraphy sounds pretty cool too! And I’m glad I’m not the only one who uses the floor as a closet :) My commute is WITH traffic unfortunately, and there has also been a lot of construction going on in the past few weeks which just adds an extra little variable of “Which lane will be closed today?”

      • http://twitter.com/SnowfoxBandit Simone

        Yeah, I spoke too soon — 20-minute standstill on the freeway this morning! Grr!

        I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of the blog Nerd Fitness, but today’s article was all about procrastination and productivity and really hit home after identifying with you on this post… :)

  • http://twitter.com/winetoweights Jennifer

    Thanks for being on my page yet again, Claire. I HATE cleaning. And I get a full 8 hours of sleep each night, but housework definitely takes the backburner! I vacuum once I start to notice the dog hair sticking to everything.. I have the same rotating laundry pile, and as long as I have clean workout clothes (clean = 2x wear, usually), I will re-wear jeans or work clothes multiple times.. haha.
    Girl, I wish you lived closer to me so we could hang. So many times I want to talk about you on my blog lately, but don’t want to come off as some creepy girl crush, but I just love everything you have to say. lol. In a not creepy way. :)

    • clairechapman

      Haha don’t worry I’m not creeped out :) And you know, you could always move to CO, because everyone knows that Detroit is way lame compared to the mountains… Even if you are close to Canada…

  • Shilpa

    Hi Claire -

    Thanks for the post – that’s seriously one of the things I appreciate most about this blog, a sense of normalcy! All the other CF related blogs I read are just about the WOD, so I (for some strange reason) assume that these people all get enough sleep, never slip up their diet, have immaculate homes and are never stressed about anything.

    Anyway – my gym has been doing a 90-day sleep challenge this year, instead of a 90-day Paleo (or some other food related) challenge! And I’ve only in the past few weeks really gotten into a solid sleep schedule. I can definitely relate to the early morning WODs, plus having a full life. A few things that I’ve found to really help my sleep (besides trying to get to bed earlier, which is kinda hard) are:

    Installing f.lux on my computer. It’s a free program that changes the amounts of blue and yellow light coming out from your computer screen to better mimic the natural light. It’s based on getting melatonin production in sync with a natural rhythm (I’m not saying it as well as others have, but that’s the gist). It makes my screen look kinda funny, but I typically don’t mind. My job requires some graphic design work, so if I’m working at night then I turn f.lux off for that chunk of time, and then turn it back on if I’m doing anything else.

    Dark, light blocking curtains.

    And, I splurged on a really nice alarm clock. Like the kind that have a fancy light bulb so when you set your alarm, a faint light starts up about a half hour before the alarm time and gradually gets lighter until the alarm (which can be set for a variety of sounds, from annoying to nature-inspired). It was definitely a splurge, but totally worth it! I also get a bit of seasonal related depression, and having some natural-light simulation in the wee hours helps.

    And, here’s a link to a post on my gym’s website about the sleep challenge, just in case anyone wants to check it out…

    http://www.crossfitasheville.com/2013/02/07/sleep-and-light/

  • Carol Setters

    A clean house is a luxury, really. So as long as it’s not affecting your asthma, don’t worry about it.

    But sleep? Sleep is essential. I recommend setting a new bedtime, and I love the idea of a sleep challenge.

    Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
    The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
    Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
    Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
    ~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

    • clairechapman

      I wonder what MK would say if I told her I was late to work because I was doing a sleep challenge…

  • Chriss

    Its incredible how I can relate. This balance is a constant battle for me and seems to be getting worse not better. I am a single mother with 3 boys, a full time job and all the craziness that comes with that. I do my best to keep up with my crossfit.. house and sleep. But I feel as though I am failing too. I also have this underlining problem of thinking I am Wonder Woman and beat myself up for not always having the perfectly clean house (by the way have a bit of a neat freak mentality and get very grouchy when things are not in their place), beautiful meals cooked for my kids, homework done with the greatest of ease, plus be in the physical condition I aspire too. And at the end of the day… why does Wonder Woman feel like she has been hit by a bus? But I work very hard at coaching myself on what the priorities need to be and catch myself all the time saying..”the world won’t end if this one things doesn’t get done today” My greatest fear is getting behind and then there is no chance of catch up. I find I am causing myself unnecessary stress cause of the expectations I put on myself. Which I tell myself “this is what will build my character and make me the woman I want to be…” But the truth is I am behind anyways. So… my advice is.. sleep… it makes everything better.

    • clairechapman

      Holy crap! I can barely take care of a hungry boyfriend and a border collie, I can’t imagine being a single mom… but I definitely put a lot of pressure on myself, too. I have always been a “high achiever” and now I feel like everyone expects me to be perfect at everything–perfect job, perfect boyfriend, perfect diet, perfectly clean house–which is why I like to write these posts to remind myself that real life is never so pretty and neatly packaged!

      • Chriss

        I am right with you there. And I wish I could say that expectation gets more realistic as you get more on your plate, from you and from others.. but it doesn’t. We just have to remind ourselves that we are awesome enough sometimes!! I use that at work too sometimes.. my interactive team has heard it, well often enough.. lol.. But don’t tell.

  • Shilpa

    Tried to post earlier, but I stepped away from my computer and it didn’t go through – but my gym is doing a 90-day sleep challenge (instead of the 90-day Paleo challenge we’ve done before). Here’s a few things that have helped me since taking on the challenge:

    Installing f.lux on my computer – it’s a free program, and I won’t try and describe the science behind it, but it has to do with the levels of blue and yellow light coming out of a computer screen.

    Dark bedroom curtains.

    And, about a year or so ago, I got one of those alarm clocks that slowly lights up – which totally helps me with the early wake ups!

    OK, hope take 2 goes through!

    • clairechapman

      Haha I actually saw your longer comment earlier and then it went away! A sleep challenge sounds like a great idea, and I’ve never heard of f.lux but I will definitely look into it–our gym is doing a “cortisol challenge” and part of it has to do with not being in front of a screen of any kind for an hour or so before trying to go to sleep, but I find that pretty hard with a computer-based job and trying to keep up with my blog, so maybe f.lux is the answer!

      • Shilpa

        I can definitely relate to having a computer based job and the challenges that come with that! I really like f.lux – it doesn’t do anything to the look of a screen during the day, but at dusk it slowly starts changing the blue/yellow balance and my screen gets a rosy look – like looking at the world through rose tinted glasses! For me, if I know that I am going to be working later into the evening, then I just have to make sure I do any design work during the day (so the colors look normal), but for content writing or editing, I’ll save that for later when the look of the colors doesn’t matter as much. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I try. Good luck with it!

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