Sunday Night Preparations For a Better Week

I imagine this is true for every home that includes young children.

Or old children.

Or any number of humans dwelling within its walls.

Sunday night often determines the pace of rest of the week.

When I’m on my game, when Sunday afternoon is free and affords me time to look over my list and my lesson plans and my menu and our family’s schedule, then the whole week is better.

It’s an effort.  A decision.  A priority.

And sometimes it breaks down.

But when it doesn’t break down, when I make the effort, when I look ahead a few days – you guys – the entire week’s dynamic is visibly, tangibly improved.

For our house, the two biggest aspects of that planning involve our chore list and our menu.

The chore list is an outline of each child’s daily responsibilities for the week.

It’s written on the kitchen door on a chalkboard.

You can present yours in any way that makes you happy, of course.

Chalkboards make me happy.

The kids each have a few small chores.  The chores rotate every week so no child is stuck doing their least favorite task week in and week out.  (For the record – around here it seems that everyone’s least favorite tasks include chickens and top dishwasher.)

Included in their chores but unwritten are your bed, your bedroom and to put away items from the basin.

Every Sunday afternoon I shift the chores for the week.  Generally, kids are required to complete their chores before breakfast.

This routine is really quite enough to keep our home – certainly not spotless – but less cluttered and generally comfortable and mess free.

And now on to the menu.

We grocery shop as a family on Sunday mornings after church.  It’s been a fabulous routine that has allowed me to avoid mid-week grocery trips that interrupt the flow of our school week.  Usually I’ve planned our menu out on Saturdays before the weekly grocery excursion which includes Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods with an occasional visit to Publix where they carry Kevin’s favorite potato chip brand or the dreaded Wal-Mart where they carry the best little brand of affordable non GMO cane sugar.  (Can you believe that?)

And when we return home on Sundays and the groceries are unloaded and we’ve consumed our snacks that we call a meal, I write down the week’s menu on the dining room wall.  (And yes – part of our Sunday routine involves me not cooking.  I like to not exert any effort on fancy meal plans on Sundays.  We regularly eat snacks, leftovers and popcorn on Sundays.  It’s wonderful.)

And once all these tasks are completed, I feel prepared for the week ahead.

And really, neither of these take very much time at all.

(I add in the mix a quick looking over of our homeschool lesson plans which I have primarily planned as I went through the previous week.)

Somehow knowing the answer to the question “what’s for dinner?” supplies me with the ammunition I need to proceed calmly through the week.  And the kids having a steady routine of helping keep the chaos at bay allows our home to never quite reach the tipping point of mess so that a thorough vacuuming and sweeping job can remedy most situations when required.

Sunday night planning makes the entire week happier.

What sort of activities does your family do on Sunday that help to make your week run more smoothly?