I love life’s little routines:

Things like eating three meals a day. Not so much for the sustenance, but the meals somehow divide the day into manageable breaks. Without regular meal breaks a day can seem endless.

So too can a week. Some of the little rituals Paul and I have are as follows:

Monday,Tuesdays,Thursdays and Saturdays: As we’re aging we’re realising the creep of old age decrepitness is approaching at more of a gallop than a creep. In an effort restore some flexibility, or at least slow it’s loss back to a slow creep, we’re trying to establish yoga as the ideal start to several days a week. The more we stick to the routine days, the more we realise how important it is. So, four days a week we try and do our little yoga routine upon rising first thing in the morning. If we leave it till later, it inevitably doesn’t get done.

Wednesdays and Fridays: I start my days with a walk with a local women’s walking group. I love those days. Paul starts those days with a cycle ride.

So, that’s the routine parts of our weeks that ensures we at least do some exercise. We try and fit in a few additional walks along the beach in the afternoons. All to often though we forget, or allow something else to take precedence. Perhaps we’ll have to allocate a few more days to those walks, make them routine, ritualise them…. It would ensure fewer things intervened.

Then theres a couple of weekly food rituals.

Friday night is still a hangover from our working days. When we were working we always tried to get started our weekend as soon as possible. Fridays we celebrated the end of the working week with a couple of drinks, and dinner was always some sort of finger food. Knives and forks were banned. It could have been pizza, or burgers, or fish and chips, but it was never purchased take away. Part of the ritual was cooking for ourselves foods typically associated with take away. Sometimes we only had a good bread, cheese, pate’, and some cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices and grapes on the side. Other times we went all out and had a selection of tapas, cooked and eaten over several hours. We still stick to our Friday night ritual as much as possible. It keeps us aware that the working week is over for our families.

Sunday is cooked breakfast day. We look forward to our bacon and eggs on a Sunday. Not only do we enjoy the meal but it reminds us that shopping hours are reduced, and some shops aren’t open at all. Additionally, not always, but Sunday is still our preferred day for cooking a roast. I don’t know why – it’s a ritual that’s been with us since childhood, and somehow still feels right.

That’s just a few of our little daily and weekly rituals. Without them, I doubt we’d know what day of the week it was. I’d love to hear what your little rituals are? Do you still have rituals even though you’re retired? If you’re still working, do you have rituals that end your working week, or set you up for your working week to begin? I’d love to hear about them.