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I transitioned to working graveyard shift a few months ago. I had previously done overnight shift work as a doula, but that didn’t require me to flip my sleep cycle entirely. Here are a few of the night shift essentials that I’ve learned along the way.

Blackout shades that attach to your windows

I already owned blackout curtains, but these ones that attach with Velcro to my windows changed my life. They make it PITCH BLACK in my room, which is really important when you’re trying to sleep. On my off days, they’re easy to remove, so I don’t feel like a vampire.

Stay up until at least midnight on your weekend

My goal on all of my weekend days has been to stay up until at least midnight. If possible, I try to make it until 2am and sleep until 10am. I find that an afternoon nap on my first day back to work helps me to make it through the whole shift without getting too sleepy.

Meal prep

One big downside to working overnight is that there’s almost nothing open in my town. Without prepped meals, I would’ve been starving.

I almost always bring some kind of yogurt parfait/overnight oats/chia pudding. I don’t really follow a recipe and I just use the ingredients that I have on hand. I typically dump in about a half cup of oats, enough Greek yogurt or milk to cover by about an inch, and then stir in some chia seeds.

After that, I top it with whatever fruit (fresh or frozen) that I have in abundance and maybe add some nut butter or coconut. If the fruit that I have is crunchy (like an apple), then I’ll cook it down to make it soft before I add it to my jar.

My second meal at work is usually some kind of more “dinner”-y food. Last week I made a big batch of butternut squash soup and sourdough bread. The week before, I made black bean enchiladas. If I don’t feel like cooking, I’ll get the ingredients for a fruit/cheese plate, and just make that up.

A heated blanket

This will depend a lot on your work environment, but I find that I get quite chilly around 2am. I’m sitting at my job, so it is nice to have a heated blanket. I went for this one, but I’ve found great ones at Costco before too.

Vitamin D supplements

A coworker recommended this, and I feel like it made a HUGE difference. I won’t lie. I went for the gummies, and that has made it way easier to make sure that I take them every day.

White noise

My house is loud, so having white noise was very important. If my teens suddenly break into song, I need to be able to turn up white noise and not hear them. Any white noise machine will do. If you have Spotify premium and a phone with a good battery life, you can even use one of their white noise playlists.

If you’re on night shift, I’d love to hear what has worked for you! The transition was much easier than I expected, but I feel like these items all made a huge difference.

This is hardly a revolutionary idea, but it really hit home for me over the past year. My ex moved out with hardly anything. He took his personal possessions, a few rooms of furniture, and a few condiments(?), but he mostly decided to buy new for himself.

On my end, I was looking at a house partially stripped of furniture, but otherwise filled with items that have accumulated over the past 25 years of marriage.

My first instinct was to get a dumpster. I decided that his old things could easily be tossed and it’d just feel nice to get them out. Because my property includes outbuildings that had things in them when we moved in, I had no trouble filling the dumpster with random crap that I definitely didn’t need.

Once I got past that initial purge, I realized that I have a lot of stuff that is still very usable. It’s just going to take time and intentionality.

Some of these items are easy to use up (shampoo, dried beans, lightbulbs), but many of the items require a little creativity.

I’ve been really proud of a few of my upcycling projects. I made an outdoor compost bin out of a mix of old wood and gates. I made a trunk bag for my commuter bike out of a rejected backpack. And, to that note, I basically upcycled my entire old gravel bike into a commuter bike. It did require a few small purchases, but I was mostly able to put it together with items that I had on hand.

As I go into the second half of the year, I’m trying to be mindful of the balance between minimizing for speed (to just get it over with) and mindfully using what I have unless it really can’t be used. If I can save an item from going to the landfill and save some money, I definitely want to go that route.

How about you? How have you found the balance in life?

It’s been a long time, but I’ve really missed blogging.

My life has changed dramatically in the past year. I’m now a single mom. I started a new career. I graduated college. I’m making my life into what I want it to be. I learned a lot of lessons in the first half of life, and I hope to use them in the second half.

I have a million things to talk about, but I thought it might be nice to do a series on small changes that I’m making. Some are completely new, but many of them are more about re-embracing things that I used to do.

In the past decade, I’ve let a lot of things drop. Some, like Evangelicalism, were overdue to be ditched. Others, like my commitment to sustainability, just felt like too much to carry when I was also dealing with a failing marriage, pandemic life, working and being in school full-time, and raising teens/tweens.

As my life has started to get a little space in it, I’ve spent a lot of time considering what I miss and what I don’t. One thing that I really missed was my connection to the natural world around me.

As part of my divorce, I ended up with our little homestead. I’ve always loved this property, and he was never very enthusiastic about it, so it seemed like a good solution. Still, there’s a lot to care for and it’s just me, so I have to be patient. Projects take time and I can’t really rush through them.

Just before Covid (maybe 5-6 years ago?), I started planting one tree a year on my property. I’d pick it out in the spring and plant it just before the summer heat set in.

I started with an apple tree, then I added a cherry tree. My now ex-husband decided one year to include an apple tree as an anniversary gift. After that I added a peach tree and another apple.

I announced my divorce and the anniversary apple tree died an extravagant death. It never even leafed out. I yanked it out and put a nectarine tree there.

The peach tree and apple trees are now probably about 10-15 feet tall. What started as a small project has now completely transformed my front yard.

This year, I decided to add a maple tree. I wanted a tree to give shade and a little more privacy to the front of my house. I found one that I loved and saw that the scientific name for it was the same (oddly spelled) name as the street that my younger two kids were born on. Perfect!

One thing that I love about small changes is that they kind of creep up on you and one day you realize that you’re closer than ever to the life you want. The opposite is true in life, too. I think I’ve felt both of these in recent years, which has really helped me to appreciate the good ones.