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Embracing the Fall Shift

Now that Fall is here, I’m going to tell you a little bit about what we have going on and why this season feels a lot different to me. I’m sure you’ve also felt the shift. With my kids back to school it’s the before-school routines, after-school routines and bedtime routines. These consume our time during the day and that structure feels great. There’s also a lot less freedom, compared to what we were experiencing in the summertime. 

Balancing Work and Home: Adjusting to My New Routine

Another really big part of what’s been happening is I decided to take my work outside of the house for a little while. I’ve always gone and worked at a cool co-working space. I have now decided to go there regularly and see if it impacts how I’m able to get my work done. This means I’m having to pack lunches and I have a longer commute. There are now so many other things that I have to take into consideration. I’m literally going to work every day. I no longer have all of the extra time that I was spending on doing house things (when I should have been working). I now need to do that at other times of the day. 

Even though I’m not at work 40 hours a week there’s still so much more for me to consider now that this is the season that we’re in. I’ve noticed that on the weekends, I’m really ready to dig into the house and get some serious work done. This isn’t just about 100% resetting the house. I’m sharing eight things that feel really good. I’ve been really consistent and I have a burning desire and an urgency to do this.

Building Your Home Management System for Success

There’s one big contingency here that you have to understand. You have to have a whole management system in place in order for this post to work for you. So in order to reset something, you need to have already established it, right? If you haven’t established these things, you can’t reset them. So that would definitely be the place to start. 

If you don’t have a management system in place you need to go set up these eight systems first before you reset them every week. Then you can figure out how to reset them. 

Balancing Family Time and Weekend Resets: My Approach

I don’t do it all in one day, because it ends up being too much time. Some of these resets take some dedication and some focus and I like to still be present with my family. There are certain parts of the weekend, whether it be after the kids go to bed and Blaine and I sit and chat or maybe during the day when they’re having independent play. Maybe it’s in the morning before they wake up, etc. I’m using that time and the time during the day. Obviously we go and we play and we do fun things on the weekend. But sometimes we’re also just very much at home because we’ve been on the go all weekend and I take full advantage of that opportunity. 

I try to make sure that we are at home about 75% of the weekend. If you look at Saturday and Sunday and consider two main sections of Saturday and two main sections of Sunday, the whole AM before lunch, and the whole, OM after lunch are two different sections. With Saturday and Sunday that creates four sections. I make sure to prioritize focusing on these resets during at least three out of four of those sections.

Weekend Reset #1: Google Calendar

I reset my Google calendar every weekend before Monday morning. My goal is to do this before Saturday. I reset all my appointments and fundamental needs. I recently shared 3 things to add to your Google calendar that can help you create more time and less stress.

Weekend Reset #2: Paper Planner

The second thing that I am resetting is my paper planner. I get out my time blocks and and insert them into my fundamental needs, along with my tidy cues, setting up the entire system. It’s all layered in every intention that I could potentially ever have. There are four layers that go inside of your paper planner after you’ve reset your calendar for the week. Every single student inside of System Your Life gets the template of the exact four layer process.

Weekend Reset #3: Meal Planning

Meal planning is a hard non-negotiable and is more than a fundamental need. It involves essential tasks like grocery shopping, cleaning the fridge, and preparing various food items, including grapes, hard-boiled eggs, vegetables, snacks, and protein.

Right now what we have is just a dry erase board for our menu board meal planning system. I’m using the front of my refrigerator which is actually a dry erase board. That’s where I’m standing and writing out all of our dinners. I put the days of the week to it. This is where I plan our weekday breakfasts and lunches, track macros for myself and Blaine. I do this every single weekend on the refrigerator.

Weekend Reset #4: Laundry

It has been really nice to start the week with this taken care of. Everyone has their clothes put away. No one’s laundry baskets are full. We don’t have to wonder where anything is. And I know what I’m going to wear for the week. Having a laundry system really helps.

It has also been great being able to throw in the towels and all the extra linens that we have. I think substantially more than other people. I have quite a few kitchen linens, and ensuring that the napkins are always washed and the unpaper towels are consistently cleaned, folded, and put away has been really satisfying.

Laundry Ritual: Finding Solace and Selflessness in Folding

I’m loving the process of actually sitting and folding. I use it as a time to pray over my family and myself. Being able to provide and cook meals for my family is something that I know is a huge act of love. Sometimes consistent acts of love take a lot of selflessness and it’s really hard. If I’m being honest, even though I superduper love it, you know that there are times when it’s like “Can someone please just cook me a meal?” So sometimes I need a little pep talk.

Then I pray some pep talk into all those kitchen linens. It helps me whenever I pick up that linen that I folded and prayed over, that when I go to pick it up and I use it if I’m having a hard day it reminds me of that. I have been just really appreciating that practice on the weekends a lot. It has helped me to change my thoughts and my feelings around laundry.

Weekend Reset #5: Business Workflow

Resetting my workflow for my business over the years is something I’ve done from around six months into my business. I started using a very specific type of workflow that turned into a constellation of workflows, that is now a full borne, fleshed out operating system to run a full fledged or small company. That requires me to go in every weekend and set up a few things. This way when I go into work on Monday through Friday, I know exactly what needs to be done for me and for the team. It’s the greatest feeling on the planet.

I don’t honestly want to touch it on the weekends. But only once I understand what my personal life looks like, can I reset it. It’s like this incredible harmony, the way these two things work together. And so as I mentioned earlier, if I don’t have that calendar and paper planner reset, my workflow has to come after that. It does have to come in sequence. I’m often left waiting to reset my workflow until those other things get taken care of which is not a bad thing. I just love knowing that I can completely unplug from work for at least two days of the week and just pour into my personal life.

Weekend Reset #6: Random To-Do’s

Number six is a reset of my random to-do’s.  There are normal, what you call “to do’s”, but they’re actually the tasks that are fundamental in your life. They are also likely part of your routine stacks that you just are unable to identify on your own. I am not talking about any of the repeat stuff. I’m talking about random things. I just look at what I got done last week.

Most of the time, it’s nearly everything. Because there’s only three or four things on there if that, and then I reestablish what needs to be done this week. I check if anything new came up.  This could be  phone calls, errands or anything random.  For example this week, we had to go get a bigger violin. That’s not normal or something we need to do regularly.  Running errands for the kids in general is not something that we always have to do. That was very much a random to-do for the week. 

Weekend Reset #7: Goals for the Week

Number seven is something that motivates me, my team, and my family, and I believe it can encourage you too: set new goals every week.  Both for myself and the entire Chelsijo.co team, we make it a point to define our goals for the week. It’s really cool how we just get to encourage and support each other. It’s a beacon for what we’re doing which is incredibly systemized and we know what needs to be done. 

Outside of that there are certain goals that we’re trying to reach. I always make sure that I write these in my planner and communicate with my family. I ask the kids what they’re hoping to accomplish for the week. This has become a normal part of the way that I think. It’s the way that I move from what I’ve done or haven’t done in the past week to prepare myself for a clean slate. Resetting goals provides another opportunity to go make a great impact, shake up a few stones and maybe move a mountain someday. 

“Resetting goals provides another opportunity to go make a great impact, shake up a few stones and maybe move a mountain someday.”

Finding Purpose and Progress

You are entirely capable of doing the same. This may involve changing a generational pattern that you’re tired of witnessing or breaking free from an addiction in your life. It could be as simple as decluttering, improving your relationships with your children and yourself, losing weight, gaining muscle, or any goal that holds personal significance for you. These goals can be very, very simple and don’t have to be complex. You don’t have to be firing on all cylinders at all times.

I believe that resetting your goals for yourself each week serves as a source of encouragement and hope. Don’t let it become a place of discouragement. You shouldn’t look back at the end of every week and say ‘Oh, look what I didn’t get done’. Instead, it’s about asking yourself, ‘How hard did I try?’ I like knowing that I’m shooting for something. I don’t like walking around aimlessly every day. That’s why I’m very systematic.

Weekend Reset #8: Finances

A financial reset is something that we are actively working on right now. We are shaping and molding what this looks like for us. For a long time we’ve been managing our finances weekly. However, we often ignore it far too often. This is one of the systems that we have had in place the longest. But with that being said, there’s been a little bit of formality lacking that I would love to have. 

This one specifically depends on not just me, but on having my husband involved because we are very much a joint in everything that we do including our finances. When we sit down to reset it, we do have a system in place that I could just go in and reset quickly. Sometimes though, there are decisions that need to be made. It’s not about the willingness of either one of us but rather the timing of it. We have to make sure that there is time for both of us where the kids aren’t asking for us. We’ve been working really hard at sitting down every weekend and making sure that we are sticking to the budget that we agreed we would stick to. 

Implementing a Budgeting System

The financial system that we use is the one that I created. It’s a hybrid budgeting system based on the knowledge that I have from paper envelopes, and Dave Ramsey’s teaching. I literally merged it with Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First teaching. I realized this needs to be used in the same fashion for home.

This is actually what I teach and you get access to this if you decide to join and become a student of Systemize Your Life. The home management system that you’re getting also comes with our budgeting system. The spreadsheet is already pre formulated for you. It breaks everything down, and we guide you through it, so that you know how to use it. Randomly throughout the year, we’ll have workshops on this for people to come in, that are in the community and kind of learn how to use it a little bit better. It’s just something that’s been just so helpful.

Transforming Financial Harmony: From Stress to Empowerment

Blaine and I never really argued about finances at all but it was something that was really stressful when we first got married. We were trying to figure out how to do it in a way that was meaningful to us where we were stewarding our money the way that we should be.  Now we know what that looks like. It’s just a matter of sitting down on the weekend to reset it.

This way you know you have X amount of dollars for food for the entire week. That means you can’t blow it all at the grocery store or eating out.  This is so unbelievably important, encouraging and even  empowering whenever I go to the store or do anything. Now I know exactly how much money I can and want and should be spending when I go through that darn dollar section.

Embrace the Weekend Reset: A Path to More Fulfilling and Organized Living