Seasonal Affective Disorder and Me

Good Morning from Evans Homeschool Academy,

As the boys continue working on their mean, median, mode and range worksheets, I am forever resentful to the seasonal time change. I have always been a summer child. I’ve never cared much for the winter months. Yesterday, with the cloud cover, we had what I consider daylight for 1 hour! That is ridiculous. Granted, the clouds prevented the awesome sun from shining through, and I know the sun was there, but still, I yearned for those bright, blinding beams of warmth.

​As a child, I never paid any mind to the time change. It was something older folks worried about and tended to – as long as it didn’t impede on my playing in the upstairs attic. As a teen, I would find something to do indoors from November to March that kept my mind busy and that worked the majority of the time. But that was then. 

Now, as an adult, a mother, a teacher and a student, I am finding seasonal affective disorder to be the bane of my existence. I have never been diagnosed, but why should I? I already take a mild antidepressant and that seems to be working relatively well. But even before I was an adult, the winter months seemed to drag me down.
So, I have resorted to my old ways – Find something to keep me busy during the winter months that will *hopefully* bring spring a little closer. If you suffer from S.A.D., you might find that already do some of these things. If you haven’t tried them, maybe they will help. The following are ways that I combat the winter blues and steadfastly hold on to the vision of spring – Hey, it’s only 138 days until the first day of spring!

1. Cooking. The holidays are arriving soon and our appetites for holiday dinners are certainly awake and ready.
   1. Make a menu for Thanksgiving Dinner
   2. Make a shopping list for the week/month
   3. Take care of some last minute sewing and mending
2. Lesson Planning. I always find enjoyment in this. I can literally sit at the desk for hours looking up ideas and creating plans to encourage learning among my children.
   1. Create a lesson plan for our next unit study
   2. Look at 2016-2017 school year for field trip ideas
   3. Create a lesson plan for each of the trips
3. Winter Cleaning. I enjoy spring cleaning much more, but winter provides a great time to pull out those unnecessary items and store them away until spring.
   1. Clean out the clothes closet
   2. Clean out the linen closet
   3. Tidy up the pantry
4. Schedule Indoor Activities. Winter months bring many boring days for children. In order to keep them occupied, I am looking at various game nights, movie nights, and play dates for the kids.
   1. Movie nights (typically on nights in which I do not have homework of my own)
   2. Game nights (typically on Monday nights after dinner and Wednesday evenings before dinner)
   3. Play Dates (while all but one of my children are too old for ‘play dates’, getting together with friends would still qualify)
5. Rearranging the Furniture. As a dear friend said to me once, “You either have gypsy blood or Native American blood running in your veins!” I am limited on the number of rooms and ways in which I can rearrange, but changing it up (even if it is a repeated move) is still better than holding on to the old.
   1. Living room – make it close and comfy for the winter months to bring a feeling of warmth and closeness.
   2. Bedrooms – can’t rearrange the furniture, but I can change the curtains to provide a sense of newness in the room.
   3. Dining room – can’t rearrange per se, but I can put on a new tablecloth, create a new artificial flower centerpiece, add some taper candles and placemats to make it seem more inviting.
6. Fragrance. Nothing says the seasons have changed like the smell of falling leaves and a little mist in the air. But around here, our neighbors are somewhat oblivious to the enjoyment because they burn their trash at all hours. Thus, raising our windows to enjoy the smell of autumn is out of the question.
   1. Glade wax melts are fabulous for recreating an autumn scent. I enjoy the maple and the apple cinnamon.
   2. On a budget, you might also consider some orange peels, a couple of pieces of cloves or a dash of cinnamon, and water. Place them in a sauce pan and simmer it on the stove. In minutes, you have a fall fragrance that costs pennies.

I hope this little entry sheds some light on the subject of Seasonal Affective Disorder with regard to small ways you can combat this type of depression.