Weekend tips

 Happy Monday, friends!  Today instead of sharing a weekend recap I thought I'd share some of the things that I do on the weekend to get control over our week before it starts.  I don't pride myself on being busy - I would MUCH RATHER be in full sloth-mode but I'm pretty much out of the house from 7:00 a.m. until 4:00 daily and so I'm busy out of necessity, not choice ;)  

The very first thing I do on Saturday mornings is meal plan for the week and order groceries.  I'm not in any sort of head space to make these kinds of decisions on Friday afternoons, but Saturday mornings seem to work really well for me.  I'll sit down with our calendar, look at what we have coming up the next week, make a plan and then get everything ordered.  I do the bulk of our shopping at Costco.  Some of our favorite items are from Costco (hence, all my Costco favorites posts!) and with the amount of food our family goes through it's the most convenient and best way we've found to shop.  I'm able to have Costco delivered through Instacart and while there's a yearly fee associated with it - you get additional discounts and I feel like the time and money I save by not going into the store make it worth it.

Whatever additional ingredients I need for the week I'll order from Walmart and have those delivered as well.  For example, this week we're having French dip sandwiches so I ordered the cans of beef consomme, French onion soup, etc.  Dave will typically go to the grocery store on Mondays (one of his day off) to pick out produce and grab anything I forgot.

This also allows me to order other things we may need (this week it was shampoo, deodorant for the boys and dividers for school).  

For a really long time meal planning seemed like a lot of work, because I felt like planning meant I had to do full meals (you know what I mean... like more involved things) daily but I've since gotten over that and am not above literally putting hot dogs on our meal plan.  It's more about taking the daily "mental load" off my plate when it's 6:00 pm and I've worked all day and everyone is hungry and asking me what's for dinner.  It somehow seems "better" if I'm not throwing hot dogs or grilled cheese sandwiches out there as an 11th hour hail Mary, but instead have planned on serving something super simple. 

This may not be an issue for y'all AT ALL but it was definitely a hangup of mine that has been freeing to let go of!

I talked about using and sharing Apple Calendars in this post and it's by far the easiest way for us to keep track of everything including dinner plans.  All of these calendars are shared with Dave, Luke's phone, and Mason's iPad and I love that everyone can add things and see "the plan" as well as everyone else's schedules.  Dave and I definitely share "duties" and tasks and he's one of the most hands-on dads out there but when I'm stressed out or feeling overwhelmed it's typically because I feel like I'm the one carrying the "mental load" of family life and so sharing calendars and to-do-lists keeps Dave and I on the same page and really helps me feel like I'm not the only one who knows that we need a birthday present for a party on Saturday or that we're supposed to bring dessert to the teacher luncheon or that a kid needs a certain item of clothing for a practice.  

I still love my paper planner and keep mine stuffed with handouts from school, bday invitations, etc. but the shared online calendar is what everyone refers to the most.

Dave and I also share "task lists" on Apple and use them CONSTANTLY.  We both love checking things off a list and while some things are person specific (i.e. Dave can't send my school emails) by putting things on there it allows both of us to help the other one out and know what they think is important to get done.  

 

Another prep we do is restocking "snacks"...

... and putting crackers, cookies, etc. into small baggies to make them grab and go for the next week.  Pretty much anything I can do to make mornings more efficient I'm going to do!

Some weekends if I have the time I'll prep things like pasta sauce or a chicken spaghetti and pop it in the fridge for later in the week.  This Saturday morning I got ground beef from Costco so I pulled what I needed out for that night, packaged some up for use later in the week and then went ahead and prepped a meatloaf...

... so all I have to do is pop it in the oven when I get home from work. 

In our garage fridge I have an acrylic bin that I put all of the proteins in for the week.  If I'm thawing something from the freezer or if it's fresh from the store it all goes in that acrylic bin so I know that I have those ready to go because there's nothing worse than having a plan and then getting home and realizing that your chicken is still frozen.

This week is a teacher luncheon and I signed up to bring a dessert for high school and taco meat for middle school.  I went ahead and made the cake...

... and got it all ready to go for Tuesday and then pulled out all the meat I need to brown and season on Monday.  I love being able to help out with these meals and hate when it becomes a burden during the week so, if possible, I'll try to prep that ahead of time too.

We stay pretty on top of things during the week but on the weekends the kids do room "resets" where they have to at least vacuum and dust.  Our general rule is that mornings are "theirs" (sleeping in, lounging around watching whatever, etc) but they have to get their list done before getting on any kind of device in the afternoon. 

I typically don't love bringing school stuff home on the weekend - I try my hardest to keep school at school but sometimes it's unavoidable and is worth the time on the weekend to keep my sanity during the week.  

This weekend that looked like working on a video and newsletter and accompanying parent email after ordering my groceries on Saturday morning...

Recruiting Dave to help me on Saturday night while he watched football (cake helps!)...

... and then cutting some things while watching The Sandlot with Griffin on Sunday afternoon.  

On. Sunday nights I will get my slides together for the next week (I'll do the dates, attendance questions, etc. and then add what I need as the week progresses), double check my lesson plans, answer student emails, etc.

I'll also gather up and pack everything I need to take to school with me and, if I have time, will sometimes run stuff up to my classroom on a Sunday so I don't have to mess with it Monday morning.

Other things I do to try and make our weeks go smoothly are...

- laundry daily (we do one load start to finish every night)

- blog post "batching" (where I try to sit down and write 2-3 posts ahead of time)

- prep amazon returns on the weekend and Dave drops them off on Monday

Phew! There you go!  I try to keep in mind that one day I won't need to be meal planning or snack prepping or schedule coordinating - but for the season that we're in this is what works and helps make things run as smoothly as possible.  

If you have any weekend tips or tricks I'd love for you to leave them in the comments!

HAPPY Monday, friends!