5 Tips for Getting to Bed Sooner

Image source, Via

I love my bed. I love sleeping. It feels so good and so nice. Bedtime is, hands down, my most favourite time of the day. Yes even ahead of 5pm when it's going home time. Or dinner time even!

But being a morning person means I don't have the staying power that some of my friends have to stay up until 10/11 o'clock every evening, and come 9:30pm I'm sometimes struggling to keep my eyes open. But I appreciate that I'm 34 years of age and by spending so much time in bed asleep I'm "wasting" so much of my evening, every evening, every week.

And so I have a rule that I try not to break very often. And the rule is that I won't allow myself to go up to bed/start getting ready for bed before 9pm, thereby giving me more of an evening (*life*).

Now there are some days when I'm literally counting down the minutes until 9 o'clock so I can drag my half-asleep self upstairs. And there are other days when I am so incredibly tired that my rule gets broken and even though it's only 8:47 I'm already on my way upstairs. That may or may not have happened last week!  :-o

But is there anything worse than being so tired but it dawning on you when you're halfway up the stairs that it'll be another 5 minutes (at least!) until your head will be hitting that pillow thanks to the nightly "rituals" you need to perform? I hate that feeling and I sometimes find that, by the time I've done everything that needs doing before bed, I'm not even tired any more!

So here are my 5 top tips for getting between the sheets quicker.

1) Make-up

If you know you're not expecting visitors that evening or you know you're not going out again once you get home from work (or wherever you happen to have been) take your make-up off as soon as you get in.

Not only will this benefit your skin because you're removing your make-up sooner and are allowing you skin to "breathe" for longer, but it's one thing less for you to have to do before you can get into bed.

Who's guilty of going to bed without taking their make-up off due to sheer tiredness? I'm guilty! But if you take it off as soon as you get home you don't have to worry about not-being-bothered later on. Win-win, right?

2) Jewellery

I didn't used take my jewellery off until I was getting into bed; it'd be one of the last things I did. But some days this was just a drag, especially if I was layering my necklaces that day and stacking bracelets/bangles. It just felt like it was taking forever to take it all off.

So now, once I'm home, my jewellery comes off and is put away and it's one thing less for me to
have to do before I can get into bed.

3) Cushions & Pillows

I love a scatter pillow/cushion and my bed has no less than 10 on it. Luckily they can be taken off the bed in as few as three separate "lots"; two lots of 4 and one lot of 2, so it's not too bad :-)

But when you're desperate to get to bed and fall asleep, the last thing you want to be doing is worrying about taking the cushions and pillows off your bed and making sure they stay in the right order ready for them to be picked up in the same 4,4,2 formation the next morning!

The only time I used to "allow" the scatter cushions to be off the bed was when I was in it. Now however I'm happy for them to be off the bed once I'm home from work - even though it looks ugly and the bed looks bare :-( - because I know I'm saving myself a few precious seconds later on in the evening when all I'll be wanting to do is get into my bed!

4) Clothes

Once you've changed out of your work outfit, don't leave the clothes in a pile on your bed.  Hang your jacket up straight away. Ditto with your scarf or pashmina. Put your dirty clothes in the washing basket. Otherwise, come bedtime you'll need to spend time putting them where they need to be just so you can get into bed! (or maybe you'll just chuck them on the floor ready to be dealt with in the morning!)

5) Water

If, like me, you're prone to waking up in the night with a raging thirst you'll need a glass of water
next to the bed.

Why not bring the glass of water up to the bedroom with you once you get home and are going upstairs to get changed?

If you don't like the idea of the water "sitting" there for the few hours between you getting home and you going to bed you could just take it up at some point during the evening rather than going up to bed, realising you've forgotten it, and having to go all the way back downstairs just to get it!

I know these sound like really silly, minor little things but when you have to do all of them before getting into bed, the 5 minutes or so they take can feel like an eternity.

Do you have any tips for getting to bed sooner? I'd love to hear them!

xx