Saturday, 7:50 a.m. Greg is on his second cup of coffee in the recliner, the furnace has just kicked on, and Biscuit is on the windowsill in the living room staring at a cardinal on the fence as if it owes him money. Nobody needs to be anywhere until Monday.
For about 25 years, that sentence would not have been true on a single Saturday.
What Saturdays used to be
I found an old Saturday list in the back of a cookbook last month, from around 2015. It said: "Josh soccer 9:00 Springboro. Em work 10-4, needs ride. Kroger. Bank. Dry cleaner. Laundry x4. Pick up Mom's prescription. Pizza?" That was a normal Saturday. The question mark on pizza meant we would get pizza.
Saturday was the day everything that did not fit into the week got shoved. Greg worked early Saturdays on his route for years, and I ran the house. By 4:00 in the afternoon I was more tired than on any school day.
When Josh moved out full time in August 2024, I kept running Saturday that way for months. I would get up at 6:30, start laundry, make the Kroger list and drive to the store by 8:00 as if somebody were timing me. Except there were two loads of laundry instead of four and a cart half full. I would be done by 10:30 and then stand in the kitchen wondering what was wrong with me.
It took practice
I do not think anyone tells you that resting is a skill. When I left my job at the school last June and started bookkeeping part time in September, my weekdays got looser, and somehow that made Saturdays harder. If I could do errands on a Wednesday, what was Saturday for?
So this winter I tried an experiment. Three rules, written on an index card on the refrigerator:
- No errands before 10:00 on Saturday.
- Groceries move to Thursday afternoon, when the Kroger in Springboro is half empty.
- One thing on Saturday that is not useful.
The first two were easy. The third one took about six weeks.
What a quiet Saturday looks like now
Greg's route moved to weekdays only a few years ago, so he sleeps until 6:00 on Saturdays, which he considers sleeping in. I get up around 7:00. We have coffee in the living room, two cups each, with no television. He reads the sports section and complains about the Bengals' offensive line. I read a library book. Biscuit claims whichever lap is less fidgety, usually Greg's.
Around 9:00 we make breakfast together. Eggs, toast, sometimes pancakes if it is cold. It is a small thing, but for 25 years breakfast on Saturday was a granola bar in the car.
After that, the not-useful thing. Some weeks it is a walk, if it is above 25 degrees. Some weeks it is a puzzle on the dining room table. Last Saturday it was driving to Lebanon to look at an antique mall and buying nothing. I used to think that was a waste of gas. It was 18 miles round trip, maybe $2.50 in fuel, and I came home in a better mood than any errand has ever left me.
What it saved, oddly
I did not expect the money side. Moving groceries to a planned Thursday trip, with a list and no rush, has trimmed our grocery spending from about $590 a month last fall to $540 in January. I think the Saturday trips were impulse trips. Tired, rushed, hungry and grabbing things.
And it has helped in a month that needed it. The cold snap in the middle of January sent our gas bill to $286, the highest we have ever paid, and the green notebook goes back to 2003. A slow Saturday morning in a warm living room is about the best use of that money I can think of.
I still miss the noise sometimes. A Saturday morning used to sound like cleats on the stairs and somebody yelling that they could not find a shin guard. Now it sounds like the furnace and a cat chattering at a bird.
Next week I turn 56. Greg asked what I want to do. I told him: nothing, on Saturday, with coffee. He looked relieved. That was the easiest birthday request I have ever made.
