The first step, if we want to try to have the Ramadan that we wish
for, is we need to free up, you know, as much time as we can for
Ramadan beforehand. So you need to plan ahead, ok your goal must be to
plan ahead. And to free up as much time as you can, you need to think
ahead of what's going to happen in Ramadan and what are the things
that you can maybe do now to get them out of the way so that you
have more time in Ramadan. So what does that mean? It means anything
you're able to drop from your schedule that you can get rid of
things that's not really that necessary. Those are the things you
should be trying to drop out of your schedule to free up your time,
appointments postpone them if you can, you know if you like if you
possibly can cut down on your work schedule, like if you work if you
can possibly take a bit more time off or cut down your work schedule,
anything that's not necessary for you try to get it out of the way or
postpone it like same thing with assignments. If you've got
assignments due you know they're due in Ramadan, you try to get them
do meaning you're trying to get them done before Ramadan another
very important point that really helps and that is if you can
possibly spring clean your house before Ramadan comes this is also
one of the things is gonna save you a lot of time when it comes a lot
of people as you know they tend to spring clean their house before Eid
they waste many many days in the Ramadan spring cleaning the house
where that could have been used, you know doing revision of the
Quran reciting the Quran revising. So they they burn up that time
instead. So that's why if you can possibly spring clean the house
before Ramadan comes because that way is this is the first day of
Ramadan comes. And all that's required from you is to sit down
and start open up your mushaf and start reciting because you know,
everything's done, you feel your mind is free because you know
you've done everything you need to do for the house. So you're going
to do is focus on your Ibadah. So that should be what we should be
aiming for. Another thing as well here is the is the Eid shopping. My
advice is listen you've got a week and two days or three days, it's
probably cheaper to get the clothes now that it will be after when it's
Ramadan. So quickly go out, hit the shops and get those clothes now. So
you save all that time and frustration at the end of Ramadan
looking for all those clothes and matching shoes and all of all of
that what you know people do. So let's talk about how we can
simplify our Ramadan for ourselves let's simplify first of all our
food. We don't need to have 10 dishes on the table, we're not
going through a famine, we're fasting Ramadan, you know, like
Okay, the first day you might feel a bit hungry, but by the third day,
you don't, you can hardly you can hardly feel your stomach because
it's shrunk. So you really only like for the family, you honestly
only really need one dish, we don't need to do more than one dish.
Okay, we've gotta really change this mentality. Like look at Subhan
Allah, may Allah protect our health, a lot of us are studying,
you know, a lot of the community suffers from health problems from
over eating. So if we can learn to eat like the Sunnah, which is to
feel the stomach only 1/3 and to drink, you know, the rest of the
stomach your next third for your drink. And the last third is huge,
you know, to breathe. Another thing is to try to cook for two days you
know, while some husbands are fussy but in'sha'Allah, your husband
isn't so you can cook for two days, that is ideal, because then you
only have to cook for what like you cook once and then the next day,
that whole day, you just got to recite Quran, do whatever Ibadah
you want to do. And you don't have to worry about preparing the food,
all you have to do is heat it up, put iftaar on thats it. So try to
do that as well. So that's your you're cooking then besides that
your routine, you need to try to cut corners with your routine.
There's a lot of extra things we are pacing ourselves, we don't
really need to do for example, you don't need to polish your TV every
single day. We need to polish every single piece of furniture in your
house every single day. You don't need to scrub the bathroom down
every single day. You know, some of us we go crazy with our cleaning.
We've got OCD. So let's all just calm down and realize we need to
just step back slow down and start to give to ourselves in Ramadan.
That should be our main focus. All right, we can always go back to
scrubbing the bathroom every day after Ramadan. But how about
Ramadan? We just you know we can you know it's not going to harm us
if we have a few bits of dust lying around when nothing's gonna happen
inshallah. Okay, so just whatever you can do to cut back for
yourself. That's what you should be doing to make yourself feel more at
peace. In Ramadan instead of feeling this stress that many
people are feeling