a nightime ritual

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woodstovedecember.jpg

I know we are not supposed to love the long, dark winter nights, but I do anyway. (Especially now that we finally have our little hobbity wood stove installed and every night means curling up by the fire.) The only thing I don’t like about winter really is trying to get up in the dark, cold mornings. I’ve been working on waking up at 5 am for quite awhile now and I’m doing much better, but I do find that what happens the evening before is really the key to an easy wake up.

Right after Thanksgiving I noticed I was feeling stressed already about the holidays, so I wanted to make a little more effort in keeping to a nighttime ritual in December. When I keep to this ritual it makes such a difference in my sleep and my mind is clearer the next day to get right into work:

  • Dinner together and conversation

  • Clean up kitchen / make fire (usually my husband does this)

  • Get things soaking: beans or grains for the next day, my herbal infusion*, seeds sprouting

  • Put away screens

  • Turn off overhead lights, turn on lamps

  • Light candles

  • Choose relaxing music

  • Wash face and put on pjs

  • Knit (with tea and my two squares of dark chocolate - such an old lady)

  • Read

  • Go to bed by 9:30 (my daughter is waking up in France at this time, so we usually text a little, even though that means looking at a screen. I sleep better after talking to her. <3)

Other things that help are exercising during the day so my body is tired, not eating too much at dinner, and sleeping with an eye mask.

What about you? Any nighttime ritual tips?

(Obviously, I don’t have little ones at home anymore, but when we did, I kept a pretty similar routine but instead of having personal time, I would read aloud to everyone for a good half hour or more while the kids drew or played with legos. Those were some of our favorite times and we read a lot of good books! We kept it up until they were older teenagers - although at that point they would mostly just fall asleep on the floor. :) )

For more inspiration:

Niamh at Fairyland Cottage has some videos about setting the tone for sleep and waking up early that are so lovely I’ve watched them multiple times.

*I do a quart jar with nettle and red raspberry leaf overnight and drink it over the next two days. Sometimes I add oatstraw or red clover or hibiscus too. I find the raspberry leaf helps even out my hormone swings quite a bit! You can read more about infusions here.