Peek inside my weekly routine as a work-at-home mom!

It’s a new year, new…schedule over here! 

During the awful month of January when my whole family was sick, my routines fell right to pieces. As is to be expected, honestly, when life serves up an exhausting surprise like that. But in the last week, we’ve all been doing better, and I’ve been itching to get back to a routine.

So, of course, I took this “fresh start” as an opportunity for a routine reset!

Last weekend, I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and started sketching out alllllll the things I need to do each week, both at work and around the house. And I created a new routine I’m really excited about! I’m sharing it today because I love reading about other people’s routines, and taking bits and pieces to help me in mine. I hope this does the same for you!

Dailies:

Every day I have 4 daily tasks that I have to complete. These are:

• Laundry
• Dishes
• Downstairs Tidy
• Customer Service Emails

When I’m able to get these 4 things done each day, our house AND my business run a lot more smoothly. The last 3 are pretty self-explanatory, but for laundry, I got even MORE detailed in my planning. 

Here’s my laundry schedule:

• Monday // Kids
• Tuesday // Towels
• Wednesday // Jon + Kayse
• Thursday // Towels (we go through a lot of towels)
• Friday // Sheets

I’m more excited about this laundry schedule than I should be, because I have admittedly been absolutely terrible at changing the sheets in our house, and this should help me do it on a weekly basis. And who doesn’t love fresh sheets every week?!

Daily Themes:

For the rest of my tasks, I divided everything up into Daily Themes. Kinda like the Theme Days strategy for Meal Planning that we use, except work + home focused. 

I like the idea of Daily Themes because I work better when I know an entire day is set aside for something specific. If I can get into the headspace of a specific kind of task, I’m way more productive, and I can get a ton done in a short time. (This is also known as the idea of batching, I just like calling it Daily Themes.) 

Here’s where I landed:

• Monday // Plan + Prep On Mondays, I plan out my work for the week, check in with my team, and prep our meals. I like to start the week kind of slow, as I’m generally switching back to work mode from the weekend, where I was in family mode! So planning is a great task for Mondays. Since I’m sticking to a pretty specific meal plan right now, it’s really helpful for me to prep food for breakfasts and lunches at the beginning of the week. I also do as much dinner prep as I possibly can. Interested in what I prep each week? Let me know in the comments and I’ll write another post on that, if it’s helpful!
• Tuesday // Meetings + Cleaning I try to schedule all of my meetings and membership calls on Tuesdays. Some days that means I have 3 meetings, some days that means just one! No matter how many calls or meetings I have, I find that I cannot get anything other work done when I know I have a meeting scheduled for that day. It’s ridiculous, honestly, but it’s like I just wait around for the meeting to start. So I figured that while I’m waiting, I can get some cleaning done! I really like to see what I can clean when I have a time limit, so cleaning tasks are the perfect companion to fit in around my meetings. What cleaning tasks, you ask? I created a cleaning loop so that I can just pick up where I left off the next time I have cleaning time! (I’ll share my cleaning loop below.)
• Wednesday // Writing + Content Wednesday is my big writing day. Writing on Wednesdays, isn’t that fun?! It’s when I get new posts, newsletters, and other emails written. Again, I work best if I can be in writing mode for an extended period of time, so this works well for me!
• Thursday // Rest + Catch Up One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that I need a catch-up day somewhere throughout the week. A day to tie off any loose ends, run any remaining errands, or even just read a book and take a minute for myself. That’s what Thursdays are for.
• Friday // Finance This is actually a routine I’ve had for a while now, so I’m just continuing it in my new “official” schedule. I use Fridays to focus on our finances. I categorize everything in ​YNAB​, balance the family budget as well as the AW budget, and go through the mail and pay any outstanding bills that we don’t have on autopay yet. At the end of the month, I enter all the final numbers into my two budgeting spreadsheets (one for family and one for the business), and am able to just make sure we have a handle on our money. This one weekly practice has been really helpful for our finances.
• Weekend // Family Time Weekends are for family time! I really treasure our weekends together, so I keep them free of work. At some point throughout the weekend, I do spend a little time prepping all of our family’s needs for the week ahead – specifically planning the week in my planner, planning our meals, and ordering groceries or making a list to take to the store. We often shop as a family after church on Sunday, so I just try to get these things done sometime Saturday, or even Friday if I have some extra time!

Cleaning Loop: I am trying out the homeschool looping strategy in my cleaning routine this month! I’ll check each thing off as I get it done, and then move to the next item. Some days I might be able to do three tasks, some days I’ll just be able to do one. Keeping them checked off helps me know where to pick up again the next time I’m able to clean! And working through the loop ensures everything gets done over time.

So. Where am I keeping this new schedule, you ask? Right inside my planner! I created a “dashboard” of sorts, kinds like a large bookmark, and put it right in the middle of the week in my planner. It has the days of the week opposite the planner, so when it’s open to Monday-Wednesday, for instance, I can see those days on my planner AND on my routine dashboard.

And there you have it! I hope peeking inside my routine has been helpful for you. We’ll be talking a lot more about this kind of thing in our upcoming workshop, ​Take Back Your Home​! I hope you’ll join us there! Snag your spot (for free!) right here >>> ​