Pre Ramadan practical planning

a) Get Your Eid Clothes and Eid Gifts Ready NOW: You should have them before Ramadan begins or on their way. Don’t waste even a single minute deciding what to wear on Eid day. Go shopping now and get all the gifts shopped, packed and labeled for Eid.

b) Plan Your Menu: Plan your menu for Ramadan now. Shop and store all dry items that you will need. This will save you time and energy.

  c) Analyze Yourself and Your Routine: Understand your routine, the times of the day when your energy levels are high and low, the times in the day when there are some errands that you have to run, like helping your husband get ready for work, or when your kids will need you. Optimize your high energy levels (which are normally after Fajr) for reading Qur’an. Start staying up after Fajr from now so that it does not become too difficult when Ramadan starts. Think of what you can do when your energy levels tend to drop.

d) Organize Your Dua List: Mark and gather all the duas that you want to make in Ramadan. If they are not in one book, then create Word documents and get print-outs. Mark out the ones you will read after each salah, before breaking the fast, after Taraweeh and in your Tahajjud. Make separate copies and label them. You can also start memorizing some duas from now. Make a list of people you want to make duas for: some friends from long ago that you remember fondly, relatives etc. Keep your dua list or books right next to your prayer mat so that you don’t get lazy reading them if you are very tired.

e) Increase Your Stamina: Start eating less from now. Train yourself to stay hungry for a little more time each day. Exercise to increase your stamina. With the long fasting hours, small children running around and no family to help out, tempers rise very quickly on empty stomachs. Train your stomach and your anger controls of the brain not to work together.

f) Make a Goal List: Make realistic goals of how much Qur’an you want to read in a day. For example, if you aim for finishing one juz’ a day, then break it into 4 parts. Start reading it from before Fajr and end it by Asr or before Maghrib salah. Do dhikr when you are doing “anything at all” like doing your normal chores of getting ready for work, driving, cooking, cleaning etc. Eat a light meal at iftar to be able to perform Taraweeh.

 g) Try to declutter and deep clean your house so that the minimum cleaning will suffice during Ramadan. Also, a cleaner more organised environment can add to the peace and calm.

Remember this is the ONE month, we Muslims yearns for, a precious, special and blessed month.

May Allah subhana wa ta’ala grant us the ability to received this blessed month with open, devoted hearts, ameen!

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