I have just spent a weekend at a retreat learning that life is what you make it. That sometimes you have to make a bit of an effort to either take a much needed break or to have some fun. Or just to put the to do list to one side, put your feet up and spend time on the sofa with the kids watching a cheesy film or having a bit of a snooze. Or that bedtime on a Saturday night just once in a while be preceded by an epic pillow fight.
The sad thing for me is that those times are all too rare, there really is always a huge to do list to crack through and I don’t make an effort to put it all to one side and have some fun with my kids. And added to which my kids put themselves to bed now, generally a good few hours after I have put myself to bed.
Which is why when Slumberdown asked me to share some research they had done recently I was all over it. It also coincided with a competition they were running where the prize is your housework done for a year. Oh hello. I am actually a bit reluctant to share the information with you on the competition because I want to win it myself, but as I love you so much dear reader, here you go:
Win your housework done for a year
Having my housework done for a year would free up at least an hour a day for me to sit and read a book, finish a magazine, stare out of the window, have a snooze so I can stay up later and not go to bed so early. Who knows. What I do know is that when we walked back in on Sunday afternoon the kids had built a duvet den for me to climb into with a book so I could pretend I was still at the retreat. Or Mr B could and pretend he wasn’t having to listen to the X Factor results show. It had never really occurred to me before to have some fun outside of the bedroom with duvets, or indeed pillows, but Slumberdown had asked me to get involved with their campaign about exactly. Seeing all the bedding arrive just before we left gave the kids the idea to get involved without me so they ran with it before I got home!
I quite liked the idea of having a jumbo pillow fight or surfing down the stairs but our front door is right at the bottom so that might not end so well. The idea of a reading duvet den though was so sweet of them, I loved it, as did Mr B.
Oh and the dog. Ellie and Jonnie both sent me some pics ofthem building it on Sunday afternoon and all I could see was Cheeky getting in on the action!
It was lovely to collapse into it on Sunday night and hear what the two of them had been up in our absence and I was a bit sad when I had to dismantle it to carry it all upstairs.
It made me realise though that bedding is so important and should be something we think more consciously about. Making sure it is right one for us (hypoallergnic / memory foam / hardness / feather / natural fibre / size / tog) is key. As is thinking outside the box a bit and having a bit of a laugh with it every now and again.
He soon got turfed out so we could reclaim our new reading den. But how about you, what would you do if you had an extra hour a day to do whatever you liked? What would you do?
