How A Television Show Is Sabotaging Our Be Intentional Schedule

Yesterday’s Be Intentional Challenge was to “Have A Family Meeting To Review, Discuss and Figure Out How To Solve Obstacles Preventing You From Doing Challenges #1-#10.”

So we did this last night at dinner.   We discussed what it was the was preventing us from fully being able to complete the steps #1- #10.

As a review, here’s those 10 Steps:

1. Set and Be Strict About Bedtime
2. Work Towards Waking Up At The Same Time Everyday
3. Making Your Bed Everyday
4. Get Dressed To Shoes Everyday
5. Hydrate Yourself
6. 5 Minute Stretching and Breathing Exercise
7. Implement a 20 Minute Quick Clean with You and Your Family
8. Menu Planning
9. Dinner by 10
10. Take Your Vitamins

Alex and I are having a hard time getting to bed on time, or more specifically getting too wound up to be able to settle our minds and bodies to get to sleep on time.  We normally recognize that we need to stop watching television about 1-hour before bed.  We also only usually watch a few 30 minute shows per week in total, so we try to reduce our overall television time throughout the week.  But, we use our Roku to watch those shows so that we can decide when we want to watch them.

Well, that all went out the window when we came across a new show called “Storage Wars.”  It sounds like a silly show, but it has become one of our favorites.  It is essentially entrepreneurs that are at a storage locker auction (storage units where the contents inside go up for auction after a tenant doesn’t pay for their storage rent for 3 months) and then whoever wins, you get to see what they paid and what treasures were hidden in that storage locker.  They often win these storage lockers for around $1,000 and often come out with profits of several thousand…but sometimes it is a total dud and they make nothing.  The buyers range from antique gurus looking for that one thing to make a buck, thrift store owners looking for second hand items to fill their shelves – just a bunch of entrepreneurs, etc.

Alex and I use to do something similar when we ran our Ebay business back when we were in our $100K consumer debt as one of many ways that we were making extra money.  We never went to Storage Auctions, but this company that had pallets of stuff in a big warehouse and you did a silent auction on the whole pallet of stuff. We won quite a few pallets over the year we used this method to get products to sell on Ebay.  It was really, really fun as we wouldn’t know exactly what we got on that pallet as you couldn’t go through it – just bid on what was visible.  We ended up with a big box of model BMW’s (probably about 100 of them) and paid right around $50, we had new sports equipment, etc. literally all kinds of things.  We had pretty decent profits, but it was also a lot of work as you had to sift through the pallet of stuff, decide what to list, take pictures, do the listing with care, ship the item, etc.! But it was what we needed to help us and it was fun – but we were glad to move on to the next entrepreneurial idea.

So this show has us really sucked in. It is very entertaining.  We realized that this is sabotaging our Be Intentional Steps. So we came up with a solution that worked beautifully this morning! Instead of watching them at night, we decided that we would watch 2 shows during our a.m. 60 minute workout.  Well, today it worked well and was one way of watching this show that is new to us and get exercise in! Plus it gives us a bit more motivation to wake up at 5:30 am to watch our favorite show 🙂

Another thing sabotaging our steps was that we are struggling to get the kids in bed.  When they don’t go to bed as planned, then it seems to mess things up! So last night we told them that there will be lost privileges and consequences for not going to bed.. even if they can’t get to sleep, they need to lay there and read.  The other part to this was, since we homeschool, I am pretty flexible about wake-up time and let them sleep in as much as they need, figuring that they need that sleep and their bodies will wake up when they are rested.  Now while it sounds like I am being reasonable, I don’t think I am. Because as time goes on, their internal clocks were shifting and they were staying up later and later and up later and later. So, they now have a new early wake up time.  Last night, they had a hard time going to sleep.  This morning, I woke them up early and it isn’t going great today as they are cranky, irritable and groggy.  BUT…. that means that they will want to go to bed and to sleep on time.  So it may take them time to adjust, but in the end…. it will all work in harmony!

Once we get the sleeping thing back under control, it makes numbers 3-10 pretty slick and easy to accomplish!

How did your family meeting go and what have you identified as the problem areas and what solutions are you going to try?

One final thing….. we also have a Facebook Group where you can engage in discussions, receive encouragement and talk to others that are participating in the challenges too for more ideas! Head to the Be Intentional with The Thrifty Couple Facebook Page HERE and ask to join us there! You can also invite friends and spouses too!

Photo Credits: AETV.com, SmartGirl.org