a little step

I didn’t make any actual resolutions because follow through is not my jam.

Kidding.  Kind of.

Small steps, little changes, have generally had more longevity in my own life.

This is one of those.

Just a teeny tiny little thing.

I started putting this one into practice sometime in October.  I like to do that.  Not share with you guys something I have just decided to do, but instead share something I have already been doing.  

Because, follow through.   (I need to give it a few months to see if I will actually do it.)

This one is going to be simple, maybe a little too simple.

This is the door to my bathroom.

If you are a parent, sometimes the bathroom is a literal retreat center.  A hideout.  A safe zone.  A quiet place.  

If you are a parent, sometimes you abuse this system.  You stay in there longer than any task should take.  You turn on the fan and run the water so you can’t hear the screams gentle conversations of your toddlers or the bickering playful chats of your teens.

We all know this to be true.

And, if you are also like most parents – I mean, most humans – you carry something small and portable and time sucking into the magic space of the bathroom.

Yep.  Your phone.

That genius time saving and time wasting invention that none of us can actually live without any longer.

And in the bathroom, that ridiculous piece of plastic and who knows what else wastes more time than I would ever care to admit.

So this is the very simple step that I started taking a few months ago.

I do not bring my phone into the bathroom.  (We can all say how gross it is that our phones go into bathrooms with us, but if we are honest, we all know this happens all of the time.)

Anyway.  Here’s what I started doing instead.

I leave a couple of books in the bathroom.  They don’t come out and get put into the circulation.  They just stay in there.  (I switch them out when I finish one.)

And I read those instead.  (If this is all too much information, well then, I’m sorry.  Click to another post.  One that is not about the bathroom.)

It is shocking how much reading I have accomplished by NOT bringing my phone in.  I finished a parenting book and I’m more than halfway through this gorgeous book – Circle of Light.  I’ve read the Curly Girl hair method about three times.  (At least.)

Like I said.

This is not an amazing change your life sort of step.

But it’s a little step and it’s helped me and I find that the parental escape of the bathroom is way better served by digesting a few meaningful and helpful ideas from a book than scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and playing the inevitable comparison game.

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