Back to school… back to normality?

With back to school comes back to normality…well sort of!

Most of us would say our lives have been far from normality for the last six months - but as the kids return to school and many of us are starting to head back to our workplaces; now is the perfect time for us to get ourselves back into a routine. Routines help our mental health by reducing our stress levels and improving the quality of our rest time as well as making you feel better about yourself.

Here are our top five tips to help you get back into some form of routine:

• Meal prep - eating regular healthy meals is a great way to make us feel better but cooking can sometimes be a chore and it’s often much easier to grab a sandwich for lunch rather than preparing something in advance. However a home-prepared lunch can not only be tastier and healthier, but it’s usually cheaper too, so try preparing packed lunches for you and the rest of your family the night before. A great idea is to double up on the portion for dinner and then take the leftovers the next day - leftover chilli is always tastier the next day!

• Stick to a set bedtime - with the kids off school and with us working from home or being on furlough, we’ve naturally stayed up later, or maybe you've had a little longer in bed the next morning. With kids to get to school and the morning commute to do, this is no longer possible, so make sure you get back to going to bed at a reasonable time to allow for a good night’s sleep.

• Get organised - as well as prepping meals, you can also get organised for the next day by deciding what you’re going to wear the night before, or ensuring that the shirt is ironed before you get into bed.

• Write lists - are you fed up of thinking you’ve got so much to do that you just never get around to doing it all? We’re all guilty of this, when in reality, if we just got started, our jobs would be done and out of the way in no time! Write a list of what you want to achieve every day and tick them off as you go.

• Make time for you - with our busy lives returning, we all need to ensure we make time in our routines to relax. It could be a half an hour soak in the bath, or 30 minutes reading before bed - anything to give us the chance to clear our mind and rest our body. With the lockdown ending, we all need to be careful we don’t suddenly rush back to our normal busy lives, let's use this as an opportunity to change something for the better!

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our tips on helping you create a routine. Let us know if you find them useful or if you have any other tips we can share by emailing marketing@whh.co.uk.