I’ve done a few of these “Week in the Life” at different stages in my life. I’m in a funny stage right now. During the pandemic years, I finished studying, my 2-day staff position at my previous church finished, and as we moved, all my volunteering finished too. My hours at work have also reduced, as I finished a significant project, and we’ve changed some aspects of the business that have reduced my workload. My youngest child finished school, and our daughters are now in a place of their own. All this means that my weeks are fairly open regarding time allocation. This won’t last forever as I reassess and decide what I want to do next, so I thought I might make a record of what my life looks like right now.

6:53 Woke up. Since I don’t usually have a particular time I need to start my day, I let myself wake up naturally most days. Last night was not a great sleep. I log it in the Wild.Ai app as “poor” and “mild insomnia”. Lie in bed and do my Lectio365 morning devotion, and then use the Inner Room app to pray for friends, family and the world. I like this one because you can enter things you want to pray for and it will randomly prompt you to pray for things from your list for whatever time you set. Mondays are the only day that my husband doesn’t get up at some ridiculous hour to run, so once I’m finished, we chat for a while.

7:49 Get out of bed. Set the steam oven to heat up. Get dressed. The current temperature is 9.9C Today’s forecast is for a top of 18C, partly cloudy, and a chance of showers in the evening. I make porridge and put it in the oven. Set the timer for 10 mins. Read bible. I’m starting Ephesians to prepare for a new small group study. Once the timer goes off, I eat breakfast while reading a book. My current morning read is “Imagination in an Age of Crisis: Soundings from the Arts and Theology.” It’s a collection of essays and today I start one about the Chinese artist Ai Wei.

8:33 Morning planning. Monday planning is usually more involved than other days because it’s the start of the week. I make the menu plan and transfer my running from my spreadsheet to ROAM research, where I log and plan everything. I don’t quite finish it before my alarm goes off to go and meet Geoff after his gym session.

8:47 I clean my teeth, grab our coffee cups and take Riley with me. At the shops, I get some food for dinner, and we pick up our regular coffee order—two oat lattes. Since Riley had been vomiting the previous day, we decide not to mix with other dogs at the park and go to the beach.

10:01 Arrive home. Finish planning. Check Email. There is nothing urgent for work so today I’ll be cleaning and working on other personal tasks. I have a list of weekly cleaning tasks and deep cleaning tasks that I tackle for each room every five weeks. I usually start with these on Monday’s and work through them over the course of the week.

10:24 Get Hubby to help me strip the bed and turn the mattress 180 degrees. We got a new mattress a few months ago, and it needs to be turned fortnightly. Put clean sheets on the bed. Put on the washing. My son is now out of bed. I chat with him. Clean our bathroom. I love our bathroom tiles; they are so beautiful and, being a sandstone colour, rarely show any dirt … the problem with that is it’s also hard to tell whether they are clean.

11:34 Write my start-of-month blog post. This takes a while, as I usually use this process to decide my priorities for the coming month. Chat with my son again. Try to get him to clean up his room. He’s not starting work until 4 pm. He works in production for a major events company, and so works odd hours.

12:24 Tidy living. Dust bedroom. Bring in yesterday’s washing. Hang out the washing. I usually try to sandwich working on the computer with more active tasks, so I’m not sitting for hours at a time.

13:06 I feed Riley a small lunch. He normally only eats twice a day but with the vomiting we didn’t want ot give him too much food at once. Make and eat my lunch—scrambled eggs on toast. While I eat, I read and comment on some blogs.

13:55 Now, it’s time to run some errands. I decided to walk since the weather was good. I’m crossing the road, and I hear someone calling my name. It’s a friend from school’s sister; we usually run into each other at the coffee shop but haven’t seen each other for a few weeks. After some quick banter, she continues driving. My first stop is the library to drop off some books. While there, I pick up some travel books to research for our October trip. In the gardens outside the library, I hear another person calling my name. It’s another friend who I worked with at my previous church with her husband and gorgeous toddler son. She is now part of a church plant not far from us. We have a good catch-up before they run off to do school pickup. I head off to the shops, browse a few clothes shops and then go to the butcher to pick up meat for dinner.

15:59. Finally home. I make a green tea and sit down to tackle some personal admin. Email small group. Pay bills. Book my flu shot.

16:45 I Sort the washing and put away my clothes. Clean kitchen. Prepare dinner. Tonight is family dinner. The girls are coming over, but our son will be at work.

17:48 Once dinner is in the oven, I go and do my foam rolling, which is the habit I’ve decided to build this month.

18:09 Finish off cooking dinner and clean up the kitchen. I have a spare 10 minutes and read some of my book “How Bad Are Bananas.”

18:30 Eat dinner. Roasted Chicken with Clementines and Arak (but I sub in Ouzo). Everyone pitches in to clean up.

19:11 Watch Citadel. We save this to watch when the girls visit.

19:52 The girls go home. I do the NYT puzzles.

20:24 Read some more of my book.

21:57 Put Riley to bed. He sleeps in the laundry. Our son arrives home, and he tells me about work. He was opping for a function tonight, so they provided dinner. I know this will be controversial to some readers, but I have a bath. I’ve found it’s the best way for me to wind down for bed. I read my current fiction book “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”

22:27 Lights out until Riley starts making noise. I check on him, and he’s being a bit silly. Managed to get him back to bed and myself back into bed at 11:15.