a basic weekly organizational plan

This is the third installment of how I control and organize my household responsibilities, duties, chores, etc..  It’s not easy to balance everything and I know we all struggle with this so I hope this inspires you, even if you only take away one small detail that might help you or if you want to implement the entire process.

I shared an overview of my Control Tower Journal in this post, which was a broad stroked interpretation of the entire process.

ways to organize your life better

Then I detailed how my routines break down on the daily.

organizing my life with daily routines

Today I will explain how my weekly organizational plan works, assigning daily chores and responsibilities to any given day of the week.  Keep in mind you can adapt the process to do whatever responsibility|chore you wish on any particular day.  The key is to set up the structure so you have a plan to follow, which provides a guideline and prevents oversights.

Chores that I have to do every week but not necessarily every day include: laundry, watering the houseplants, dusting, cleaning out the refrigerator, changing bedsheets, vacuuming, washing|cleaning the car, etc.  Please understand this is not a comprehensive list but I just want to give you an idea of what I consider a weekly task.

I laid out the entire week, Monday through Sunday, assigning each particular task to a particular day.  So for example my Monday looks something like this:

• laundry

• menu plan

• grocery shopping

• water | fertilize indoor plants

• 15 minute current zone {declutter}

Most of the above is self explanatory but let me expand on a few points.  I am a firm believer on menu planning for the week, so at the beginning of the week I always write down our meals for each night of the week keeping in mind all family commitments {work, sports, meetings, etc.}.  Once the menu plan is set then I can create my grocery list and shop for most of the necessities with the exception of anything that needs to be super fresh like fish, which I buy the day of that meal.  Now understand some life circumstances get in the way and sometimes these plans change, but having it set helps me to be prepared and navigate through the process with the least amount of stress possible.

Now let me explain about the “zone”.  It will be a brief explanation here since I will get into the nitty gritty off this on my next post when I describe my monthly plan.  Basically my entire home gets broken down into “zones” and every week I focus on that particular zone.  So during the week some days are assigned to either declutter, deep clean, reorganize, decorate etc. said zone.

Remember sometimes life gets in the way and I might not be able to tackle a certain task that is assigned to a certain day but I just keep moving.  Sometimes I catch up with the task on another day and other times it just gets skipped altogether.  Stuff happens and we can’t beat ourselves up over it.

Also keep in mind I have something like a wild card.  What does this mean?  On Fridays I assigned time to focus on my room of choice, which is the perfect opportunity to catch up on something that might have fallen through the cracks.

On the flip side, I also to try to get a jump start on somethings if I can.  For example, if I have time on Sunday night I might start my menu plan and grocery list so it’s one less thing to do Monday morning.  Or I might throw a load of laundry in to jump start that process.

If this seems like something you are interested in, I would start by making a total list of all the things you want | need to do every week around the house.  Then break them out by the day of the week which would benefit you and your family best for it too get done.

Through the years I have assigned some of the chores specifically to the Masterpiece children, which has lightened my load in that respect but invariably I find something else to add for myself.  It’s the nature of the beast.  The truth is there are not enough hours in the day, but the trick is to maximize those hours so it helps maintain some sense of calm and well being within ourselves.

“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.”

~ Benjamin Franklin~