Nothing makes me happier than coming home at the end of a hard day and seeing my wife and daughter. We really have a lot of fun together.

But when I get a chance to have the house all to myself for three days, I’m not going to turn that down.

Maria and Bridget went to visit some friends last week, leaving me to my own devices.

Their visit took place during the middle of the week, which meant I had to use my secondary system of solo survival. I wanted to take some time off work, but I had a day off at the end of the week to go away with Maria and two co-workers already had off. I couldn’t afford to “get sick.”

That meant I had to pack all my fun into just a few hours each night. Luckily, I have a few time-saving devices which guarantee that I don’t lose any valuable time and can watch as much TV and play as many video games as I want.

First off, I don’t make the bed. This might sound simplistic to some people, but when I only have 12-13 hours at home and need to get at least six or seven hours of sleep each night, every second counts.

If I made the bed, I would lose about two or three minutes of sleep each morning. That’s close to 10 minutes of my temporary bachelorhood. I can’t cut into my time playing the Wii with bed making.

My second strategy involves the dishes. Basically, I wait until the absolute last minute to do the dishes. With only one person, there is no way I will go through everything in our kitchen. So why bother cleaning up unless I have to?

I typically washes the dishes every night during the week. I don’t have as many to do when I’m home alone so just knock them out in one session on my last night alone. That saves precious time.

I wrap up my good use of time by cooking almost all my meals on the grill. This serves a few purposes for me.

When I cook outside, I don’t need a lot of time to prepare my meal. Once I bring my stuff home from the grocery store, I just need to fire up the grill and slap the chicken or sausage or whatever on the flames.

Using the grill for dinner also gives me the opportunity to cook up a whole mess of food for future meals. In the two nights I cooked last week, I made enough for more than two weeks worth of lunches. That comes in handy.

But the best part of grilling alone is that I can stand outside and calmly enjoy a beer before tearing into a piece of charred meat while watching TV and not worrying about whether I have barbecue sauce on my face.

Moments like that make my stress melt away. That is until I have to do the dishes and make the bed.