If you are someone who likes nothing more than to get into bed by 10 pm and hunker down, ready for the next day, you might be losing out on a number of ways to maximise your nighttime routines. The nighttime should not necessarily be something that stimulates us, but we could use those few hours to our advantage a bit more. In terms of your home, what are the two best things you can do to make the most of the nighttime and reap the benefits?
Powering Down Your Utilities
You might be working at home and therefore using a lot more electricity during the day so if you want to watch television and have all the lights on at night, this can add a pretty penny to your utility bills. Therefore, it’s worth thinking about ways to ensure that your energy consumption goes further without costing you an arm and a leg.
This is where something like solar power could make a massive difference because you can use the electricity generated by the solar panels to power your property at night. And furthermore, adding a solar battery to your system means you can store excess energy to power your washing machine (or your Netflix viewing habits).
Practising a Good Bedtime Routine
It’s something we should all incorporate into our lives, but of course, watching TV tends to take priority. However, implementing a bedtime routine is not just a way to ensure you power down ready for bed, but you will reap the benefits in so many other parts of your life. A bedtime routine is important because we are creatures of habits, and having a routine where we perform the same activities in the same order every night helps our brain come to see these activities as the precursor to sleep, which can help to reduce any racing thoughts or anxiety that can keep us up at night.
If you are someone who has developed insomnia for whatever reason, or you don’t know why you’ve suddenly stopped sleeping, having a routine that you can keep doing is going to give you a solid foundation for your overall health. Whatever that routine is will depend on your personal preference, but you can take part in calming activities such as reading, meditation, or listening to your favourite podcast. Just make sure it’s a very simple thing and doesn’t require a lot of effort. And if you can incorporate mindfulness into your life in some way as part of your nighttime routine you should see the benefits in the long run.
It’s important for us to maximise nighttime at home, not just so we are feeling our best selves come morning, but so we can tackle the day with a lot more energy and enthusiasm that can be very difficult to muster. Ultimately, the nighttime is the right time, and so many of us are not using that time to our advantage. Plenty of people use the nighttime as an opportunity to do more, when in fact, we should be learning how to maximise our lives with some simple solutions.
