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It’s Wednesday. 6 pm. A greasy sheet pan sits in the sink unwashed, along with other remnants of a hasty dinner of frozen pizza.

I absentmindedly rummage through a bag of chips, slapping a handful of Lay’s into my mouth. I flick through shows on our Roku, leaning further back into the couch.

And I stay like this for three hours until bedtime.

I don’t think I’m alone in my nasty, sedentary habits. When the work day is done, all I want to do is collapse in a heap on the couch, demanding peace and quiet from the world. I don’t want to do anything except recuperate from my day.

It’s no secret that sedentary lifestyles cost us more money. It’s hard to get out of the “just leave me alone” mindset that comes with getting off work and relaxing for the evening.

But when did our idea of “relaxing” become synonymous with a lack of movement or function?

While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the occasional night of TV, it shouldn’t be my main weeknight pastime. I’m letting hours and hours of my life go by, all because I’ve convinced myself I’m too tired, it’s too dark outside, I don’t have enough time, etc.

It’s all excuses.

I wondered, “How could I do something more productive with my weeknights?”

I gave myself a Challenge. I assigned myself an active to-do for an entire workweek. Instead of planting myself on the couch for all evenings Monday through Friday, I would instead spend that time being productive.

And so, I introduce to you, my first-ever “Get Off Your Butt” Challenge! I assigned myself one productive thing to do with my post-work evenings. The rule is, once you successfully complete the task, you can spend the night however you wish. There are no time limits or minimums; just focus on completing the task. The idea, of course, is to get you away from the TV and moving for more hours of your day.

Who knows–maybe I’ll find a new weeknight routine out of the challenge.

Let’s see how I did. Take on the challenge yourself and let me know how you did in the comments!

The Get Off Your Butt Challenge

Monday

Goal: organize one set of drawers

Well, this escalated quickly.

My initial plan was to clean one drawer in my office. This quickly spread into a mad frenzy of cleaning not only the drawers, but also completely reorganizing the storage Closet, too. Two years’ worth of cat hair, dust, and junk accumulated in the closet and it was high time for an intervention.

I spent an hour tidying up, jamming out to my favorite tunes. What I thought was going to be a horrible, annoying chore turned out to be really fun! I felt great knowing that the closet was a little neater.

Bonus! While cleaning out the closet I found extra parts for the Roomba. After cleaning the closet, I did a little maintenance on our Roomba, because why not? Now it’s running even better.

Tuesday

Goal: vacuum/organize your closet

I had one hell of a day at work and did NOT feel like being productive. I feel like I spent all of my nervous energy on Monday night and today I was running on empty. But I reminded myself that I’d feel better if I got up and did something.

I picked up the broom and vacuum to clean out my bedroom closet. It took five minutes to sweep the bottom of the closet and vacuum the shelves. I’d been meaning to clean this for forever, and it felt so good to get it done!

Another bonus: this time I found a full set of travel toiletries and a door stop under my shoe rack. Woohoo!

Wednesday

Goal: prep a meal

Work was slower today and I was feeling more motivated. I decided to spend my Goybc time prepping dinner for Thursday. We planned to cook pesto chicken with a cold Italian pasta salad. I decided to pre-cook the Italian pasta salad since it needed to be served cold anyway.

I boiled the pasta and tossed it with chopped peppers, mozzarella, salami, and Italian dressing. It took 15 minutes and I had one less thing to deal with for Thursday dinner.

Thursday

Goal: work out

I was being foolishly ambitious with today’s goal. I told myself I would totally be in the mood for a high-intensity workout after a long day at work. Ha! Fat chance. Instead of doing a hardcore cardio dance routine, I opted to do yoga. Mr. Picky Pincher even joined in! We kept it cheap and watched a free yoga tutorial on YouTube. Yoga with Adriene is my favorite.

It was nice to move, but I think weeknight workouts aren’t my thing. I’ll stick to early morning workouts instead.

Friday

Goal: clean the inside of the fridge

I am SO BAD about cleaning out the fridge. That goes for both removing expired/old food and giving the fridge a wipe-down. After finding weird, sticky spots in the back of the fridge, I knew it was time to get off my butt and clean it. It took maybe 15 minutes to go through the fridge. I tossed expired food, which sort of sucked. The silver lining was that I saved any containers that I could; we like to use them to toss grease.

I will say it was nice having a clean fridge again. It’s one of those tasks that I always seem to put off, but no more!

GOYBC lessons learned

I learned quite a few things during this challenge.

You find stuff!

Who knew??? I used my GOYBC time to do a little more cleaning and organizing. It’s amazing what you find hidden in drawers, under furniture, and buried deep in a closet. I think it’s incredibly frugal to do this because you find lots of forgotten goodies. It helps you avoid buying items that you already have.

It’s infectious!

Here’s the funny thing about this challenge. I told Mr. Picky Pincher about it before I started. Now, this was so he would know what I was doing, and that he shouldn’t feel pressured to participate.

Even still, hubs enthusiastically participated in the GOYBC. He mowed the lawn, cleaned the kitchen, did yoga, and ironed his clothes. He really enjoyed how the GOYBC gave a sense of purpose to his weeknights. And I feel the same.

I’ve found that, when you’re surrounded by activity in the evenings, you’re more likely to be active yourself. This doesn’t really come as a surprise, since couples often feed off of each other’s activity levels. Anyway, if you’re participating in the GOYBC, don’t be surprised if others in your household accidentally participate, too!

Cleaner house

The great thing about the GOYBC is that I did a lot of nagging tasks that I normally ignore. How often do we deep clean and organize our homes? Maybe twice a year, or before family visits, but that’s it. GOYBC helped me keep my house a little bit tidier, which is always a win.

Less hectic weekends

I realized that I had been pushing off most of my less-fun to-dos for the weekend. Now that I’m doing these tasks during the week, I’m free to use the weekends as they’re intended: to have fun and relax.

The bottom line

Wowza! This challenge was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I admit some days I didn’t want to get off my butt, but I’m grateful that I found the motivation. I also had this blog and Mr. Picky Pincher as accountability partners.

I think I want to make GOYBC a regular occurrence in our home because we get so much done and feel a greater sense of accomplishment.

We want to know: Are you taking the “Get Off Your Butt” Challenge? Share how you’ll spend your weeknights in the comments!

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