Guess what?? I bought an alarm clock!
I’m your typical smartphone user. Currently an iPhone 6s to be exact. Four “pages” of apps, many of which are condensed into folders for ease of finding what I’m looking for.
But I’m ashamed to admit I’m very addicted to it.
Waiting in line at the grocery store? Check Facebook! Feeding my baby a bottle? See what’s new on Instagram! Two minutes till the microwave is finished? Hey look I got an email!
Of course, my phone isn’t completely evil, it also provides great tools to make my life easier. We only have one real flashlight in the house, since our phones are always with us. I don’t know if I could find a calculator in the house (well, I know there’s one in my husband’s backpack since he’s a math teacher). And for the last five years, I’ve used the alarm clock feature daily during the school year.
When my oldest was about two, she started getting up in the morning WAY too early for my liking. I knew she was smart, so I took the digital alarm clock from my nightstand and put it in her room, covered the minutes with a sticky note, and wrote the number 7 on the note. I taught her that when the numbers matched (aka, it was 7:something), she could come out of her room. IT WORKED.
Fast forward five years, now she and her sister share a bedroom with that same clock. They both know they need to stay in their room until 7:00. Plus they use the “sleep” button for listening to the radio while they play.
They love my clock.
But do you know what I’ve realized about myself? If I use my phone as my alarm clock, next to my bed (even if it’s in do-not-disturb mode!), I will find myself scrolling Facebook “one last time” at night, or checking my email as soon as my alarm goes off to see if I’ve missed anything overnight.
Do you do the same?
We’ve all heard the research telling us how bad it is for our eyes and our bodies to be looking at screens right before sleep, not to mention how our brains and moods are affected. More than anything, I was convicted about how attached to my phone I’d become, and I needed to find ways to start distancing myself from it.
So I bought a real, honest-to-goodness, old-school, radio-alarm-clock. And now my phone lives in the kitchen overnight, charging, away from my curious eyes.
I now keep a book on my nightstand instead, and have started reading before bed (even if it’s only 10 minutes before my eyes get droopy). I’m able to get up and see my family out the door for work and school and actually WAKE UP before checking to see what I missed overnight. (okay, I’ll admit I push the little button once when I walk by in the morning, just to make sure I didn’t miss any emergency texts or phone calls)
Small steps, right friends?
P.S. I ended up not reading the fine print on the box of my new clock, and not realizing how GIGANTIC the number display was. I used it for one night next to my bed and actually had trouble sleeping. The next day I switched it with the clock in my girls’ room (on the other side of the room from their beds). And now I have my trusty old clock back again. 🙂
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