u/IamBogancs

Hi everyone!

I have a problem: I get home between 13:30-15:40, depending on the day. I then spend some time relaxing, usually watching yt, having lunch etc for like an hour. I've spent 7-8 hours in that prison aka school, I need some dopamine and other happiness hormons, cuz I haven't had any all day. Then I spend some time with my guinea pigs: petting them, spot cleaning the cage, letting them out in their playpen... Then I start tidying my room: making my bed, vacuuming, organising my desk and so on. By the time I finished everything, it's like 7pm. I need a rest, I've been walking around all afternoon. So I usually start studying at 8pm, when I'm both mentally and physically exhausted, so I can only focus for half an hour then I end up staring at my notes. And I didn't even do anything I like! I haven't read, drew, played Minecraft and many times I can't even go to training, because I haven't finished studying!

I'm in the 2nd year of high school and I know next year will be even worse, but I don't know how to change my routine. I can't study if my room's messy. I can't rest till I've taken care of my guinea pigs. I can't bring myself to sleep or just lay down and do nothing for half an hour when I get home, because it feels like a waste of time, watching yt for an hour somehow feels more productive.

I still manage to get good grades in general by studying between brakes and doing my homework right after it was assigned, but there are a few subjects I need to study more for and my grades started gradually dropping.

I'm awful at time management and schedules and I don't know what to do. I feel like a slave or a robot who's only task is to do chores.

I think most of us have seen/heard that guinea pigs have minimum and preferred space requirements. But personally, I never heard anyone explain the difference between the two. If it would be bad for guinea pigs, it wouldn't be called minimum space. And we all know that the larger the space the better and the best thing to do is to buy the largest cage that can fit into your room. I think it's because some guinea pigs are more active than others and the prefered space is when it's 100% that it's enough for them.

I also think that below the preferred, it's good to give them floortime more often, especially when the cage is like exactly as big as the minimum, even if the pigs don't seem stressed about it, a few hours every day or even every other day is always good.

But this is just my idea and I'm curious about your opinions or if there's an official explanation!