For most people, the beach is typically associated with vacation, carefree times, laughter, and a release from all stressful times. Our beach house thus far has proven true for all of these things. What we can’t seem to figure out is how to bring this lifestyle home with us to Maryland.
It’s the Christmas season, and for me that means baking cookies, doing Christmas Cards, buying and wrapping presents, decorating the house, and other fun holiday activities. At the same time, I need to fit in the typical stuff.. like cleaning up after 5 people, laundry, dishes, making meals, trying to work out, and blah blah blah. It’s a lot, but the real question we have is what makes life at the beach so easy? Why can’t we make it so easy here?
Our little ones come burrowing into our bed and wake us up at all hours of the night. When this happens, I get a chance to do some serious late night thinking, and I have come up with a few ideas on how to try and replicate beach life at our home in Maryland and see if it works. If it doesn’t, I don’t see how we could fail but we can keep discovering. So here it goes..
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We have way less belongings at the beach than here. Come January 1 it’s time to purge. That means making a list of all the places we need to declutter and donate stuff or repurpose it. This also shouldn’t just be me doing it. We need to get everyone involved, including the kids.
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Get a routine like we have never seen before. I mean go crazy and post the routine to our chalkboard. Examples would be a weekly calendar with meals, gym days, bath days, playdate days, school schedule, and so forth. As a couple, Greg and I have been having some troubles communicating lately and as we have been talking it out we realize its because we are both trying to do a million different things. If we have a routine and get all those things accomplished then it gives us more time to be creative and do those “other” things.
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Learn to let go. This one is probably geared more towards me than Greg. I need to learn not to say yes to everything. We need to just be. That can sometimes mean just sitting down and reading a book or playing a game with the kids instead of constantly going and doing. It can also mean just not attending everything we get invited to. At the beach we seem to relax a lot and maybe that really is the ticket to a stress free life.