At Hamster Towers there is something of a schizoid regime - mostly martinet efficient as regards Mrs HGBs routines, and considerably more loosey-goosey for mine. There is actually a reason though.
When eleven and a half years ago I was able to bring Mrs HGB home after her months in the hospital (trying to recover from God having decided she had too many brain cells so needed to lose some) I assumed the mantle of chief carer for her (and her mum in her nineties with dementua brewing nicely).
Quite simply without adherence to a routine I would have sunk without trace (nearly did anyway but that is another story) so with advice and guidance from some experts we settled into a mostly fixed routine. Obviously there were changes from time to time as I became more efficient, or we progressed from patient slings and hoist transfers to HGB muscle power, but for the most part there needed to be really really good reasons for the routine to change.
After the years in between the simple fact is Mrs HGB depends on the routine staying fixed and familiar even when there is no reason for it (for instance, Monday to Thursday we get an evening carer visit to help me get her changed for bed, and the timing of that dictates dinner time allowing the gap for teeth, meds, loo etc etc. Friday through Sunday the carer does not come so I do it myself admittedly probably less efficiently but the Lord help me if dinner is later than usual, even though it would actually make no difference.)
Not just timing - for instance if a coffee isn't exactly the same as always she gets upset. Not on purpose - she can't help it.
By contrast, I fit my own bits and pieces in as and when desire coincides with opportunity from doing a bit out in the garden at the end of a special cordless doorbell thingie, to torturing my captive musical instruments.
Other than that - like Alan I still can't find it in myself to forgo 'bulling' (some of) my shoes even all these years after leaving the services. Crosswords too, but I'm afraid that the whisky or whatever is a bit random depending on whether it is a drinking year or not!
Goosey's need for everything to be just so in the kitchen, fraid I also share that although I have learned to swallow my tongue if the boys are visiting and 'help' by washing up and putting stuff away, then once they have gone retrieving things from the bizarre places they have stashed 'em and putting them back where they belong.
Personally I think every way of doing stuff is normal, given that we all have a different 'normal'!
