Creating a Minimalist Weekly Rhythm |How to Easily Manage Your Home Part 4
Welcome to part 4 of the series How to Easily Manage Your Home!
In this post, we will be switching gears a little bit.
Previously in our series, we have focused mainly on Daily Routines:
- In part one, we talked about How to Create Your Daily Block Schedule
- In part two we talked about Tackling the Two Biggest Time-Suckers for Busy Moms.
- In part three we talked about setting up morning and evening routines for moms and kids.
The reason we wanted to start with the daily routines is that the weekly routines tend to change from day to day. So we want to make sure that we have a solid foundation for the daily habits before we move onto the more flexible rhythms.
(Remember to grab that Easy Home Management Checklist if you want to follow along and make sure you are setting up every routine along with me!)
But now that we have those systems under our belt, we are ready to start talking about the week as a whole.
This post will be focusing on creating your weekly routine, or schedule, or rhythm, or any other name you want to give it!
No matter what you call it though, the basic goal of our weekly rhythm will be to provide some structure to our week and keep us from overwhelming our kids with busy schedules.
Let’s get started:
1) Grab Your Tools
If you want to create your routine along with me, grab your pen and notebook so we can get started.
And if you are using the same templates that I am using, grab your Autopilot Workbook.
If you are creating your own template, you’ll want to turn your notebook or piece of paper horizontally. And your template should look something like this:
2) Write the Days of the Week
Just like the sample shows you above, go ahead and write the days of the week across the top of your template.
3) Write the Names of the Blocks
If you are using the Autopilot Workbook, fill in the names of the blocks in the coral ovals on the left-hand side of the template.
If you are creating your own, you can just write the block names to the left of your columns.
4) Decide on Simple Days and Busy Days
I originally got this idea of creating a weekly rhythm from Kim John Payne in his book Simplicity Parenting (which I highly recommend if you want to raise your children in a simple way).
In the book, he recommends not having too many “Busy” days in a row because it is hard on children if they are running from activity to activity all the time.
It is very overwhelming for children if they don’t have any downtime, much more overwhelming for them than it is for us.
So I decided that I wanted to build my week around this principle to ensure that I gave my children plenty of time to just be children.
5) Decide on Weekend Labels First
Since weekends tended to be our busiest days, I first chose one weekend day to be Busy and on to be Simple.
On the Busy weekend day we would be able to go do things, skip naps, see friends, have late nights, and just enjoy the day.
On the Simple one, we would stick closer to home and give the girls a chance to catch up on naps, get to bed on time, and just have a more relaxing day.
For us, this naturally made Saturday our Busy day because that is the day we go to church. After church, we often hang out with friends, go on hikes, and play board games in the evenings.
6) Decide on Weekday Labels
Now obviously there aren’t an even number of days in a week, so you will have to decide if you want to have more busy days or more simple days in your week.
I recommend, especially if your children are young, to have more simple days (4) in your week and less busy days (3).
So when I was deciding when of the Weekdays would be Simple or Busy, I first wanted to look at my absolute busiest day of the week and make sure it was surrounded by Simple days.
Like I already mentioned, our business day is Saturday so I wanted to make sure that Friday was a Simple day.
Then I just alternated Busy and Simple throughout the weekdays.
Now, this obviously leaves me with two Simple days in a Row on Sunday and Monday. But that actually works really well for us because it gives the girls two days to relax after the busy weekend.
Wednesday is a bit of a hybrid day right now because we do have music lessons on Wednesdays after naps, but I try to keep it simple in the mornings and make sure they still get good naps on this day.
So once you’ve decided on your labels, go ahead and write them down on your template.
7) Fill Out the Blocks
The last thing that you want to do is fill in the blocks on the template.
As you can see in the example, I am just writing about general types of activities and not specific times and appointments.
That is because this template is just to give the week a structure and let me know when I do need to set appointments which blocks will be best to put them in.
Here is the example again for reference:
And if you want to see the current weekly routine that we use, check out this video where I update my weekly rhythm.
8) Print Additional Pages for Your Planner
Once you have your overall routine for the week in place, print off several additional sheets of this template, three-hole punch them and put them in your binder (or make your own if you are doing that).
Then you can use these as your weekly planner and keep track of all of your appointments and your actual schedule from week to week.
That way you can easily see each week at a glance and can ensure that the proper activities are going into the proper blocks.
If you want any more information about weekly rhythms and why you want to do this when you have kids, check out this post.
Ready to Start Easily Managing Your Home?
If you are ready to get organized and make a plan that will help you run your home without stress, check out my course Put Your Home on Autopilot!
This course walks you through the steps to get your home practically running itself!
In Put Your Home on Autopilot, you will learn how to set up effective cleaning systems, set up your day for success, and start making time for the things that matter most.
In just one month you will go from feeling overwhelmed to in control. And if you have any questions along the way, I’m only an email away!
I hope to see you inside the course!
(Or if you are more of a do-it-yourself kind of gal, you can just grab the Autopilot Workbook and work through it yourself. 🙂
