Some evenings disappear. After dinner, you may decide to clean up a bit and look through your phone for a moment, and before you know it, hours have gone by. You’re left with the noise of the day still echoing in your head when instead you should be feeling well-rested.
A relaxed evening routine can help. It doesn’t have to be a harsh skincare routine, fancy products, or an hour of meditation. A handful of simple habits will suffice to create a clear separation between “the day” and “time to wind down.”
Give Your Evening a Proper Start
Self-care is easy to put off when you don’t assign it a top priority. There’s always another email to check, another area of the house to clean, and another thing you just remembered you need to do. We’ve spoken before about how taking the time for yourself should always be prioritized, and the same goes for the end-of-the day routine.
Pick a time that you know your evening winds down to a close. It could be 45 minutes prior to sleeping or even earlier if you have the time. You don’t need to adhere strictly to the clock every single night. What matters is just establishing a routine. When that time does come around, leave everything else that can wait until the next day at the door. Try not to think of anything that’s pressing that you need to do before going to sleep. There’s more than enough time for that in the morning.
Turn Down the Lights
The atmosphere around you can have a real impact on your mood as well as your sleep routine. If every single light is left on in the room late at night, your environment is still going to feel the same. Try turning out the lights and opting for a lower light source instead. This could be another small lamp or even a candle if you’re using caution with it.
It may seem like a small change, but it actually works well. You don’t need to change up your evening entirely. Just making the swap can make the room feel a bit more soothing and give your routine the proper wind-down it needs. Practicing it at the same time every evening is great to establish as a routine that signals it’s time to slow things down.
Add a Comforting Scent
Scent has the power to transform the feel of a room, not to mention it can become an essential part of a personal evening routine when it’s one you simply enjoy. There’s no need for an occasion or for anyone else to smell it.
A warm perfume can make an evening just a little more lenient, especially when the scent reminds you of familiar comforts. You can go for a gourmand perfume for a nighttime routine. Gourmand perfumes often carry notes such as vanilla, caramel, toasted sugar, coffee, and tonka bean, all of which create a rich and sweet scent.
Keep your perfume within reach so it is easy for you to remember. Whether it’s on your dressing table or on the side of the things that you’ll need prior to sleeping. It’s simply to have that small scent as a signal that “the day is done.”
Give Your Phone a Break
We all know this one is a big ask. It’s easy to tell yourself that you’ll just take a look at one message before bed. What ends up happening is that one message becomes a social media post, which turns into a video that just makes you feel good, and before you know it, half an hour has gone by.
Try putting your phone down for the last 30 minutes of your evening. You don’t need to ban all screens from your night entirely. Just establish a break between it and heading to bed. Read a few pages of a book, stretch your muscles, and make yourself a cup of tea. Sit somewhere comfortable and do nothing for a few minutes. This relaxes your mind and prepares it for sleep.
Clear Tomorrow’s To-Do List
If your head becomes active with thoughts as soon as you hit the pillow, try writing it all down before you go to bed. There’s no need to write a detailed journal for tomorrow. Just write down the one thing you need to do most. If there are a couple of other things you just don’t want to forget, add those in as well. Once they’re down on paper, you don’t have to keep rehearsing it in your head. That little bit of mental housekeeping can help you to leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.
Let the Routine Stay Simple
An evening self-care routine should not feel like another bullet point on an extremely busy to-do list. There may be nights you spend an hour doing it and other nights it’s just 20 minutes or so. That’s fine. What matters is having a couple of key habits that help you to change gears. Start your self-care at the same time daily, turn down the lights, enjoy a comforting scent, put your phone down, and clear your head before going to bed.
Keep the bits that make you feel better and forget the rest. After all, the point of an evening routine is to give you a little breathing room before tomorrow begins.
