Stressed out, overwhelmed moms share many of the same struggles when it comes to managing home and schedules – this stress often comes from the day to day tasks more often than the big events in life. This episode explains the concept behind a weekly refresh and restock so that you can reset and prepare for the week ahead and stay on top of the tasks that currently have you frustrated and irritable.
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Full Episode Transcription (not edited):
Stress out overwhelm. Moms share many of the same struggles when it comes to managing what is happening in the home and with the schedules, calendars, activities, and all of that stuff. This stress often comes from the day-to-day tasks more often than the big events that happen in life. On this episode, I’m gonna explain the concept behind the weekly refresh and restock so that you can reset in your own home and prepare for the week ahead and stay on top of the tasks that are currently frustrating you and making you irritable. Hey moms, welcome to the Intentional Edit podcast. Do you wanna stop feeling overwhelmed and finally get your home organized? Do you find yourself up late at night worrying about how you are going to get everything done and not drop the ball? You are wondering where to start and what to do. There is never enough time in the day the piles of laundry are building up and it’s already time for after school activities, homework, snacks, and carpool.
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Again, I’m Lauren. I too want an organized clean home where my family can make long-lasting memories and be present in the moment. Feeling like there is never enough time to complete all the daily tasks is exhausting. Simplicity all around a healthy meal on the table at dinnertime and a family that contributes to the chores really is attainable. Stop telling yourself that you have to do it all or it will never get done, or that picky eaters will never allow for a complete free dinner. In this podcast, you will learn exactly how to declutter, implement systems and maximize routines that remove the overwhelming unorganized parts of life, bringing simplicity to your life and home. Come on, it’s time to create a life you love.
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A week or two ago I, I shared some things that I do to streamline everything in my home, to really keep our house tidy and picked up and to keep the organization going and everything along those lines when I talk about like organizing systems and making a home function better so that I don’t have to think about everything that needs to be done and everything that is hanging over my head. And in that episode, I gave a couple examples of the things that we do in my home. That was episode 1 42. If you are wanting to hear that, go listen to episode 142. Whenever I share personal things about how my home is organized or products that we use or pictures on social media, I get a lot of messages. You guys love to hear that stuff. So I shouldn’t have been shocked when I received a ton of dms about wanting more information about exactly what I do in my own home and how we do certain things.
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This episode is geared towards that. You wanna know what happens around my house, and I’m going to share with you one of the things that is truly essential. It’s a routine or a system that I have had in place for many, many years. I mean, going back, I don’t even remember when I started doing this because it’s just been something that happens to keep everything functioning going from one thing to the next easily. So one of the things that I do and the thing that we’re gonna talk about today is having some type of weekly routine and even a monthly routine. We have routines in every part of our day. You can listen to many different episodes where I’ve talked about good systems, good routines, and why we wanna do that because we want them to become habits so that the things that we do are effortless.
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And one of the routines that is crucial is not just a daily routine, but it’s a weekly routine and then also a monthly routine goes along the lines of this too. And I like to call it the weekly r and r. It’s really a time where I reset everything and the r and r stands for refresh and restock because that is what I’m doing during this time. And you don’t have to do a weekly refresh all at one time. You might do a little bit on Friday and a lot of it on Sunday. A lot of people like to do it at the end of the weekend or at some point over the weekend and really knock out a lot of these tasks on the list so that you’re prepared for the week ahead. But there are not any rules that say that you have to do this on Saturday at 10:00 AM or at Sunday at 5:00 PM or anything like that.
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Just like everything that I teach here, you fit this into your schedule where it makes sense for the season and the stage and the phase of life that you are currently in. You have to customize things for you so that they work the best that they possibly can for your family. So in terms of making sure that we are staying current on things that need to happen and we’re up to date on maintenance around the house or setting up appointments when they need to, just anything that needs to happen, that’s where the weekly or the monthly R n R come in to play. I talk a lot about the baseline of our homes or that status quo in our homes. That is where we as the homeowner or the person in charge, the CEO of the family, get to decide what feels comfortable. What do you want your house to look like?
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How do you want it to function, how do you want it to feel? Those are all part of the baseline. It’s different for every single family, but it usually has a lot of the same moving parts to make it happen. Most people don’t want their homes to be cluttered and have junk all over the place, but what we determine is picked up and what feels good will be a little bit different from one person to the next. I might want a kitchen counter with absolutely nothing on it. At very minimal. You might want a kitchen counter with just a couple things on it and your sister or your best friend might want a kitchen counter or might be comfortable with a kitchen counter with a little bit more on it. Things that have been placed there with intention. So again, this is different for every family, but you want to have a baseline that feels good to you, that makes sense for your family and that makes it so that you don’t feel overwhelmed in the fa the space and that you can function with ease, that things can happen easily and that the looks and the stuff that is out and about in the rooms of your home are not causing you stress, they’re not adding to the overwhelm of your life.
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So that’s all we, what we’re gonna refer to when I talk about that baseline. Whatever the baseline is that feels good for you, this weekly routine can help you keep that there. Now of course we have daily routines too. Daily routines. Usually the big ones are a morning routine, evening routine, bedtime routine after school routine depending on the ages of the people living in your home. But those are the big ones that I like to talk about. And then we can break that down again depending on what is personally going on in your life and who is in your home, who needs to be part of these routines. So the daily routines are for things that have to happen every day. We like to put things into our evening routines that set us up for success for the next morning and the next day. And the weekly and the monthly routines are similar to that, but they have different things in them.
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So the weekly r and r, the weekly refresh and restock that I do in my home has things that need to happen that set us up for success each week. Things like meal planning, grocery shopping, lunch prep, the the big lunch prep where I can take baby carrots and put ’em into individual packages. So we have those for all days of the week. Those things don’t need to happen every day. I’m more efficient when I get that kind of stuff done in one sitting. This usually happens on a Saturday or Sunday for the week ahead. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a long time, you know that I have a meal planning system that is a two week reusable meal planning system that makes it so that I don’t have to spend more than one minute grabbing a meal plan. And when I get it, because it’s reusable, it’s already created, I know what dinners we will be having and I have a corresponding grocery list for that.
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If you want more information on that, go down to the podcast description and you can click on the meal planning link and you can sign up for that mini course. It is so easy, it gives you the framework to create the reusable meal plan, but on my refresh and restock each week there is a a bullet point that says meal plan and grocery. And if it’s not the week that I’m supposed to do that, I just skip it over because like I said, I do my meal planning and grocery shopping for two weeks at a time. The other thing that is on there is outfits. And depending on the ages of your kids, picking out outfits for the week is a huge time saver. Sometimes you do that daily and it’s just the night before. Adults oftentimes wanna do it daily, but even adults could have success picking out their outfits as part of the weekly plan.
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When you are getting ready for bed the night before, the week’s going to start, you can go into the closet and pick out your five outfits or six outfits for the upcoming week and you are set depending on whether you’re working outside of the home, what you have going on, that might make sense more so than if you are in a season of life where you’re throwing on leggings in a t-shirt and tennis shoes and you’re in that more typical mom uniform. It depends what you need to do, what will save you time and what will reduce the stress. These are the things that we add to the weekly and monthly refresh and restock. Checking on supplies. What do you have coming up? One thing is a family. I call it the three C’s. Check in calendar and communicate. Check in with your family, check the calendars for everyone.
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Communicate what is happening for the week ahead. That is one thing that happens in this weekly routine. And once you know those things, you are all, you’re looking at the calendars in the schedule, you’re preparing for the week that is coming up. And then you can see, do we have projects or supplies or anything extra or outta the ordinary that we need to make sure that we have something for that is not in our home. And then you can quickly place an order or get those before you need to, and it doesn’t have to be last minute. So you’re checking to make sure what do you need? What are the additional supplies, what are the additional snacks? What are those things? And then you can get them after you check and you stock them up. So you check and you stock. You also restock things like your purse, your diaper bag, work bags, school bags, backpacks, activities, all of those things.
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What supplies have you used from those? Were there outfits or different pieces to uniforms that were washed and need to be put back or uh, PE uniform that was washed and needs to get returned to school? Those things are looked at and you make sure that you’re prepared for what is ahead and then you restock those things. If you keep snacks in some of those bags, restock the snacks. If you have protein powder that you want in your gym bag and you need to replenish that each week, these are the things that happen. Then there’s also simple things like do you have one of those little robot vacuums like the Roomba, empty the vacuum? Those things get overlooked all of the time. So this is a great thing to add to this time where you’re preparing and you’re planning for the week ahead. Take care of some of those little maintenance things too.
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Empty out the vacuum at that time. What are any of your house plans at that time? Make sure your errand list, your to-dos, your reminders, your alarms, all of those things are set for what is to come and you will be prepared for the week ahead. This makes the what happens during the week easier and much more effortless. So that was the weekly one and the monthly one is very similar. It has different things on it like cleaning or maintaining appliances, refilling the soap dispensers in the bathrooms around the house if you have to iron something or take any dry cleaning to be dropped off, things like that. Seasonal upkeep is a big one. So you can stay on a track with the changing seasons and what you need to have if you switch out things in your garage from winter to summer and so on.
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Those are things that happen on the monthly refresh and restock. So the monthly one is not as lengthy, but sometimes the things on there can’t take up a lot of time and sometimes the monthly refresh and restock is very basic, just depending on the season it is or just depending on what really needs to be done, then you can do what needs to be done. So occasionally, a couple times a month, a couple times a year, the monthly r and r will might take you a couple hours, but the rest of the time it doesn’t. And if you are, have things in your home, our appliances all need regular maintenance and most people are guilty of not keeping up. But that. So if you can run a cleaning cycle in the washing machine or the dishwasher or maintain your water heater or anything like that, when you are being proactive and approaching something, maintaining it, taking care of it before it has a problem, you are prolonging the life of these things.
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You’re making them last longer and you can get more use out of them. So a few minutes here or there is so much better than a broken appliance that could put you out for weeks and have major problems and major interruptions to your day-to-day life. So that’s a a brief breakdown of how the weekly refresh and the monthly refresh works. If you want to get the worksheet that I use, it’s kind of like a checklist. That’s actually exactly what it is. Click on the link in the description wherever you’re listening to this podcast, go down to the description, click on the link. It says weekly refresh and restock. You can download that and then you can use it yourself. Skip the ones on my list that don’t make sense for you or your family or your house. Add what you need to to it. Once you get your daily routines really dialed in, that usually means that what you do on the week is shortened.
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There won’t be as many things there and those things on the list might only take a few seconds or a few minutes each. So don’t look at this list like you’re trying to accomplish all of these things that you haven’t done for years. That’s not what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to set yourself up for success for the week ahead. So if you want that, you can click on that link, download it, and I have included the examples of what I do. And then also a blank sheet so that you can use it to make your own weekly and monthly r and r. You can print these or you can just take a screenshot. You choose, do you wanna print it and have a pen and paper version and use it like that, or do you just wanna take a screenshot and then keep track of it on your phone?
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Either way is perfectly fine and you can even make one on your own. But this one is available to you if you want it. It is in the podcast description and all you have to do is click on that link, the you download it and you can use it for yourself and for your family. Everything that we can do in our homes to make the day-to-day stuff like the chores, the busy mom tasks, all of those things, anything we can do to make that stuff easier is a bonus. And what happens when we have that bonus is that the routines get the stuff done for you because good quality, intentional routines simplify absolutely everything and they make life easier because they remove that decision making fast factor. You have to make so many decisions every single day, and when you have the good routines, those routines become habits.
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So these are things that you’re not even thinking about and they don’t take a mental effort to get done. Go ahead right now, grab the r and r in the description and start using it to incorporate this weekly reset in your home. You can start it as soon as this weekend and it will start to simplify the things that you need to get done and help you feel prepared for the week ahead. Go ahead and do this week after week, and then you will really start to see after you’ve done it for 3, 4, 5 weeks, you will really start to see the big impact that it’s having and making on simplifying everything that you do and helping you to be more prepared for what is to come to where you’re not running out of things. You always have what you need and you don’t feel that constant chaos or the last minute rush to go grab something or buy something or get something that you don’t have.
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Things along those lines. The weekly r and r can really help you out. So download it if you are interested, and I will meet you back here next week for a Tip Tuesday episode. Thanks for listening. I’m happy to have you here. Thank you for listening to the Intentional Edit Podcast. If you found today’s episode valuable, tell your friends about it by taking a screenshot, sharing it on social, and tagging me at intentional edit. I’ll be back soon with another episode. In the meantime, find me@intentionaledit.com and be sure to follow intentional edit on social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. To ensure you catch future episodes, click the subscribe or follow button now. I’m grateful for a five star rating and review from you. Be sure to let me know what you liked about this episode and what you want me to cover in the future.
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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!
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I’m Lauren, and I’m passionate about being organized and efficient and making spaces beautiful at the same time. I hope to inspire you to live your best organized life.
