190 | 3 Things I Do Every Weekend to Save Time & Prepare for the Week

[00:00:00] A few minutes spent planning and preparing for the week ahead, saves time, and it prepares the whole family for what is coming up. Doing the three things that i’m about to share in this episode has helped in my home for years

 When every single day is busy and you feel like it’s, packful your schedule? Has you going from one thing to the next, to the next to the next? And that’s just how most days flow. That means it is even more important for you to plan ahead being prepared for what is coming up next. not just that day, but preparing for what is coming up for the few days ahead and really the entire week that’s when it’s possible to enjoy more of what you’re doing and make things be as efficient as possible so that it limits last minute issues and problems that could potentially pop up. The time that I spend in [00:02:00] my home preparing for the upcoming week. Is one of the routines that makes my home function and the flow of everything happens with significantly less effort because we are in the groove with these routines and that routine that. Is similar to the most of the other ones that happened at a specific time of day. If you listen to a couple of weeks ago with the back to school series, where I went back and forth with the peace and productivity podcast, and we did. Every other day with a different episode, we talked a lot about the importance of routines. There’s bigger routines and they’re small routines morning, afternoon, evening routines. Those are the ones that we tend to focus on. But every part of our day has different routines. If you haven’t come up with an intentional routine, then you are in a sense, doing things out of habit. some of those habits can be helpful to you. You maybe have found some ways to save time and come up with these. Good routines that have turned into habits. But a lot of the times when we feel stressed and overwhelmed and like we are out of sorts and our days are kind of out of control, we’re just getting to the next thing. And we’re barely getting by. That’s because the routines that we have, we’re formed from habits that are actually bad habits. We can look at those as unhealthy habits or bad habits because they’re not serving our families. So we go back to, we have different routines. We have the routine that we do when we wake up in the morning, we have, oh, afterschool routine.

We have routines during the day. If you’re working outside of the home, you have routines all day long in those places, everything you do functions because of habits. And routines. But some of those have been intentional and they’re serving you. They’re helping you. They’re saving you time and they’re making you do things as efficiently as possible. And the other ones are not, they’re actually hindering you. We take those and we look at those big routines that are little chunks of the day. And then we also have [00:04:00] routines that are. Weekly routines or monthly routines or things that we do seasonally. Those are also habits and routines. Our evening routine helps us save time in the morning. With picking out clothing. Doing an evening pickup, even if it’s just a five minute pickup around the house. Making sure the dishes are put away that counter is clean so that you can walk out into a clean family room and a clean kitchen for the morning to start your day. The lunches packed. you’re preparing for next day, you’re essentially setting your tomorrow up with what you’re doing in the evening routine. And you’re also wrapping up that day in a morning routine. The morning is when we are starting off a new day. What you do in the morning sets the tone for the next, probably 15 to 20 hours. So if you start your day off, right. That it can get you out the door without any issues. And you can do things in this time. That makes sense for that part of the day. And to help with the, what is coming up in the next few hours. Little routines that we have, like placing keys and bags and backpacks on a hook by the door that we enter and exit the house with, or putting shoes away in a closet, or actually taking them to the bedroom or putting them on a shelf in a mudroom location or in a basket. Instead of leaving them out that saves time. And it helps with the clutter and the, just the general overall look and feel of the home because we always know where the shoes are because we spend the seconds putting them away or putting them in a basket by the door so that we can find them. So we’re simplifying so many things. And we’re hoping with that overall function and feel of our homes. All of those routines are just simple things that come up off the top of my head when I think about routines, but there are many other details that we put into routines when we’re coming up with intentional routines to save time [00:06:00] and to increase efficiency throughout the day. all those routines work together for the big outcome of your home, being a simplified environment that you can enjoy. Now the weekend routine that I’m going to talk about today, it’s not any different than those little routines. That happened throughout the day, the weekend routine will help get us through the week. It helps get us through each day without that feeling of being frazzled and running around and wondering what’s next and constantly feeling like I’m forgetting something or the, to do list is out of control and feeling bogged down and burdened by the fact that I have too much to do.

And I don’t know how, or when I’m going to get these things done and I’m always behind and I’m always stressed out. That weekly routine helps with the, those two dues. It helps figure out when you can do them. the task management is kind of solved in that weekly routine because I’m setting myself up to be to get things done and to make sure that we are doing what we needed to do to not only check things off the to-do list, but to have fun and to enjoy. that weekly routine that I’m going to talk about today. It sets us up for success in so many ways. And it helps to make sure that the regular two dues and the tasks of running my home get done. managing a family working all of the stuff that goes into a typical week. It’s. An overview during this time when I’m planning ahead and looking at the week that is coming up. So the first thing that I spend time on is let’s call this calendar time. I spend time either the Friday before, or at some point over the weekend to check, to see what is coming up. I get everyone on the same page.

I update the people in my family, and I might need to send a text or make a phone call or let outside people know that what is happening. Or confirm appointments or to check [00:08:00] Anything that’s out of our regular schedule. If I needed to pick up something or order something or any of that, all of this happens and can be put into the calendar. If something has to happen at a specific time, I put it into my weekly planner and just say, no. I use a digital calendar for appointments for everything, because I can go, you know, you can go years into the future with your digital calendar, but I also have a weekly planner where I can see every day of the week. And when I have this calendar time before the week starts, I plug in all of the to-dos that have to be done. And I plug in all of the scheduled activities or our general schedule that we follow in addition to anything extra that is happening that week. at a quick glance, On my desk area or an area in your home that you see on a regular basis. I have this out all the time. I even plug in work tasks and things that have to be done on the to-do section of each day. that is how I stay on track. There’s many ways to. Use a calendar or a planner. because our brains are all different, you might have a different system that works a little bit better for you, and that’s completely fine, but having a overview and spending time just a few minutes, this doesn’t take me more than five to 15 minutes, depending on the week and how sometimes the week is just a repeat and it’s the regular schedule.

And sometimes there’s a lot. That is different. so the many different arrangements or appointments or, or confirmations or different things have to happen. spending the time to do a calendar overview also schedule reminders in my phone or alarms to go off if there’s a different pickup time or if I’m traveling. And alarm for when I need to check in for my flight. Or a different pickup time or a meeting or whatever it is that I need that extra reminder. And it’s actually something that I can hear. I do all of [00:10:00] those things at that calendar time. The next thing that I do is prepare food for lunches or snacks or any meals that are going to have to be meals on the go. If we have those to go type meals. Then I prepare snacks and the food for that. And what I mean by that is washing the vegetables, cutting things, putting into individual containers. If I’m going to heat something up, I usually place that in its own container. So it can be warmed up and then put in the little thermostat or whatever that’s called.

And so it stays warm. That could be for lunches or Saks or whatever we needed to have that kind of food or even if it’s a day where we might come home after school and then have to get someplace quickly to prepare those kinds of things ahead of time. So you can just grab them and. I eat them or grab them and go if it’s a to go meal. Then that makes all of the lunch packing and even some of the dinner time prep. Much easier. You know, if you’re a longtime listener that I have a mule planning system that I’ve used, where I do create meal plans two weeks at a time. With a corresponding grocery list that are completely reusable. So I don’t spend any time actually meal planning or coming up with recipes because I did that years ago and I have used the same system over and over. If you want to do that too, you can go to the podcast description. And there is a link that says. The meal planning. master meal planning. It’s a mini course. It is inexpensive it takes you through an entire schedule audit, so you can find out what is realistic for you to. Plan and cook meals every single weekend. You are whole, and then takes you through the meal planning process where you end up with a two week meal plan with the corresponding grocery list that you can use over and over and over and over again. And the great thing about it is it’s letting you use meals and recipe is that your family eats, it’s not forcing you to use something. And that’s [00:12:00] why many meal plans don’t work because you think I’m going to purchase this meal plan. And now I know what to make for dinner. And now I know it’s to get at the grocery store. But it’s not customized to your family, the importance and why these things work is because you customize them to your family and what they eat and what you can have success with in terms of cooking. Uh, throughout a two week period. So if you have more information on that, it’s a master of meal planning, mini course. There is a link in the podcast description. I don’t have to do any meal planning during the week. Big or on my weekly prep because I did this many years ago and I can use this on repeat over and over and over again. And take that grocery list to the grocery store when it’s time for shopping. And to refill the pantry and refrigerator. And I don’t have to think about it because it was already done years before. So that has saved a considerable amount of time. But I do spend time each week. Cutting the food, washing the fruits and vegetables, preparing them in individual containers or to go containers. So they’re ready for the week and the activities that we have coming up. Then the third thing that I do is. Think of outfits sporting equipment supplies that we will need for all of the things that are coming up. If there is something where we needed to dress up, are those outfits clean. Do they need to be picked up from the cleaners or do they need to be steamed or iron or something like that? Is all of the sporting equipment ready or the supplies for big projects or things coming up. Do we have all of these things? If not, then I plug in on my calendar when I can go get them, or I placed the order for them at that moment. So they will arrive or I will pick them up before these. Projects need to happen or before the day of that practice or that event, if you have young kids, this is especially helpful. And with younger kids, I really recommend planning the outfits out by the week. So you can go into each child’s room if they’re really young and spend time with [00:14:00]them to pick out their outfits for the week. this hopes to not forget, like if they have a gym day. And there they need to wear athletic shoes, always on Tuesday and Thursdays. Then you can put those in to a little shelving system, even a shelving system that is temporary. You can get it for about $20 and they have five or six different shelves and they hang over the closet. Rod, those are great.

Each one of those can be designated for each day of the week. And you put Monday’s outfit on the top Tuesday, the next Wednesday, the next and so on. When I was a teacher, I actually picked my outfits out for a week at a time, pretty much every week. I’m sure there were a couple of times I didn’t do this. But picking them out each day of the week, that takes much less time. You could do that in the evening. And do that every single week. And I, before you go to bed, I usually do that now. If you are really pressed for time and you’re super picky in the morning and you’re tired and it seems like you can never find something to wear, then picking them out either the night before or for the entire week. You could do that on Sunday, spent, you know, give yourself 15, 20 minutes to do that.

Pick out the outfits for yourself right down to the accessories and the shoes. It again, depends on what you are doing. Are you working outside of the home where you have to dress up or are you able to be more casual and it’s not that big of deal, whatever season of life you are in, sometimes this makes sense to pick out outfits weekly sometimes the night before. Sometimes it doesn’t matter because you just throw on a t-shirt and leggings. If this serves you and will help save you time. this is something that I would do over the weekend, especially with kids with kids. This will always save time as they get a little bit older, they might want to do this the night before. This also helps you so that you don’t forget things like spirit day, or if you’re supposed to wear a special color to school, or if your kids have a field day or are going on a field trip where they have to wear a school shirt or something like that is required. When you pull [00:16:00] these things out ahead of time, you are less likely to forget. It’s less likely for something to slip through the cracks, then you won’t be prepared for that day, or it causes other problems for that day. The same as I do this with supplies or food items. it also applies to planning ahead and preparing ahead of time for clothing.

The other thing it does is it makes it so that you are checking ahead of time to make sure that everything that you need for the week is clean. You know, where it is, where it’s in stock, it’s available to use on that specific day. And that is really helpful to everyone. Now. These are the only things that I do each weekend. I do have a free PDF download that you can get. You can click on the weekly refresh and restock. It is a principle. It’s a couple pages and you can use that. So you can see the complete list of what I do. If you click on that link and download the PDF. it has a blank list. So you can use that on your own. You can put it on your phone to use, or you can actually print it out and use the, a paper and pen version if you want. complete those weekly tasks, or I like to call this Kind of the nickname I have for it is the weekly RNR, because you are refreshing and restocking. Really. And if you think about really what is RNR, you’re going to rest and relax. when you refresh and restock, it lets you have minutes back in your day so that you can rest. So you can have some downtime. kind of a little, a double meaning there, but you can get that weekly refresh and restock.

that is one main thing that I attribute to a. smooth running day or the weeks coming together nicely. And those are also as smooth as possible. Of course, the daily routines work together with the weekly routines and you can develop those one at a time and be up to date with what however you need or whatever it comes up for your family. So that it’s not a surprise to you.

[00:18:00] And there’s not last minute problems and big issues all the time. You’re limiting those when you plan ahead and you are prepared for what is coming up. grab that free principle by clicking on the link in the podcast description. I would love to know if you do anything on a regular basis. That is. A healthy routine or a great habit. That’s working for your family and like, oh, weekly refreshed and restock. If it’s helping you keep your sanity during the busy weeks, let me know, send me a message on Instagram or Tik TOK, or post it in the Facebook group and share that information in the intentional edit Facebook group.

what you are doing that is working and if there’s something that is extremely helpful in saving time for you and your family, share it with me. And we can incorporate that in to some of the weekly or daily. Planning and preparing other people might find it helpful as well If you came to take the time to implement these routines, whether it be daily routines or the weekly things that I talked about on this episode today, or even somethings that you know will help with in your family. It takes time to create these not too much time. It takes a little bit of time and effort. Once you create them and implement them, it saves you a huge amount of time and helps you feel less stressed. And like you are more prepared because you are, you’re more prepared and you have planned ahead for what is coming up with this week or each day, depending on if you’re doing the weekly routines or the daily routines, if you want more help with those, grab the weekly refresh and restock.

The link to that is in the podcast description. you can click that and download the PDF with the list of things I do each week and even a little monthly refresh and restock as well. And then it also has the blank templates that you can use in a digital format or print them out and use them on paper. The other thing that I’ve mentioned in today’s episode is the meal planning or usable meal plan and corresponding grocery [00:20:00] list that I’ve come up with. There’s also a link for that. If you’re interested in that there is a link in the. Podcast description for that as well. Thank you so much for listening. If you have questions for me or want to get in touch, send me a message on Instagram or tic-tac you can find me at intentional edit or ask your question in the intentional edit Facebook group. I will be happy to. Help you come up with a solution or steer you in the right direction of resources that can help you as well. I’ll see you back here next week for the next episode