How To Plan Your Week: 6 Things That Reduce The Chaos

Reduce the stress and get more organized for the week with a solid Sunday night organizing session.

There’s something so satisfying about starting your week off well.

No matter what’s on your schedule for the upcoming week, a little time getting organized on a Sunday evening can pay massive dividends.

Here are 7 things that can reduce the chaos in your home during the work and school week and increase your productivity.

These are reasonably simple tasks, that once done, prove an enormous help to your future self in the coming week, no matter what life throws at you.

1. Review what’s on

First things first. You need to know what this coming week is going to throw at you – well as much as you can reasonably know.

Grab your calendar, bullet journal or family schedules and work out what’s going on this week.

What events are on? Who will and won’t be home? What meals are required, etc.

Some things that always trip me up, are:

• Kid’s school events and dress-up days
• Permission slips that need returning
• Coordinating work schedules, after-school activities and day care pickups with hubby
• Having the exact cash required for school activities, donations, school trips etc (as I barely keep cash on hand these days)

Once you look at once you’ve got going on this coming week, it makes a huge difference in what else you need to get organized.

2. Meal Plan

Meal planning may seem a little boring, but the benefits far outweigh the potential boredom, for example, it:

• Reduces the time spent grocery shopping
• Reduces money spent on food, as you avoid those costly multiple grocery shopping trips
• Reduces wasted food (particularly those well-intentioned vegetables spoiling)
• Increases the chances of intentional eating
• Reduces decision fatigue, especially after a long day of work and taking care of kids

So, save the spontaneity for the weekends, and aim to plan at least 80% of your household meals each week.

Your wallet and future self (who will be far less stressed) will thank you for it.

If it’s a really big adjustment to make for your household, you could try it out by aiming to meal plan 3 meals per week and see how it works for your family.

3. Grocery Shop

You may want to avoid the supermarket altogether on a Sunday, and perhaps you have a better time to do it during the week?

But what you can do on Sunday, is to use the above meal plan and use it to build your grocery list.

The key is to plan not only the dinners required for the week, but also the breakfasts, lunches and snacks also.

That way, you’re left with a grocery list that fits your family grocery needs to a tee, no unnecessary extras and no missing items.

An even better time saving hack is to try online grocery shopping and have it delivered first thing Monday morning, before the chaos of the week starts.

4. Meal Prep

Now that you’ve planned your meals and done your grocery shop, have a think about any meal prep that you can do now to make it easier during the week.

Are there lunches and snacks that you can arrange ahead of time, for example: salad jars?

Can you meal prep a few dinners so that you only have to add them to the slow cooker in the morning?

Trust me, during the week you will be so grateful for any meal prep that you managed to do.

5. Clear & Tidy Laundry Room

Some people like to ‘shine their sinks’ each morning & night as a marker that their home is in order.

I get this same feeling when I have a clean and organized laundry on a Sunday evening.

I aim to have all the clean laundry put away, the bench-tops clear and the basket empty (the ironing pile is a work in progress, but the aim is to have this done on a Sunday night too!).

It never stays this way long, but for however long this ‘laundry eutopia’ lasts, it’s pretty darn satisfying.

Related: ​How to Single-Task Your Laundry – Best Laundry Hacks Ever!​​​

6. Clothes for the week

As you’ve looked at your upcoming schedule for the week and you’ve cleared your laundry room, you should be able to easily work out the clothes required for your week (a quick check of the weather forecast helps here too).

It doesn’t have to be complicated or extremely planned out, but I mentally do a scan of what outfits I need and for which days.

I then group them together in the closet, which takes away a lot of morning stress each weekday.

My kids are still small, so I also set out 5 outfits for each of them (including underwear and socks etc) and put them into a handy clothing shelf.

It takes away a lot of the chaos in the mornings and the 2 eldest know exactly where to look each morning when it’s time to get dressed.

7. Bags and equipment required

Another massive time and stress-saver during the week, is having all necessary bags and equipment ready to go.

Work bags, gym bags, school bags, dance shoes, football boots, sports uniforms, lunch boxes, shoes and hats…. all have the ability to disappear in our home!

A quick check on a Sunday night makes sure that all required items are clean, ready and set aside to be able to grab and run during the week.

Related Posts:

• 7 Good Habits That Are Easy But Powerful
• ​​How to Single-Task Your Laundry – Best Laundry Hacks Ever!​​​
• ​How To Set Up A Cleaning Schedule & Tracker​​​
• 7 Hacks to KEEP Your Home Clutter-Free

These are the 7 simple things that I have found  help me to plan the week and make sure it runs as smoothly as possible. Chaos can still happen of course, but I’m always thankful for these little things that have been taken care of already.

I would love to hear of other ideas for weekly planning so let me know in the comments below!