How To Set Up Your Week For Success

This post may contain affiliate links. Please view my disclosure policy for more information.

---

 

I sometimes wish I could be a spontaneous person who flies by the seat of their pants. But, that just isn’t me. If I don’t have everything planned, I feel anxious and am in a bad mood until I catch up. Knowing this about myself, I try to set up my week for success as must as possible. I don’t always complete everything but even having some of this done, makes my life a lot easier.

Having One Set Day For Planning

My planning day is Friday. I am off work that day and find that it works best for my planning needs. Pick whatever day works best for you. Preferably a day where you have a chunk of time to set up your week. I don’t complete everything on this list on planning day but I try to get as much as possible done. This saves me a lot of time on Sunday.

 

Brain Dumping

I must “brain dump” every day or I cannot sleep. Sometimes, I quickly scribble everything down in my bullet journal or in OneNote. Other times, I write it down on a post-it note and transfer it to my bullet journal later. If it gets out of my head in a way I can handle later, I am less stressed.

 

Planning Ahead Outfits

I am a big fan of planning outfits for both me and my daughter for the entire week. I don’t have a fancy way to store them, I simply push them to one side of the closet or in a separate dresser drawer. I lay out my daughter’s clothes each morning so she can start getting dressed while I am working on other things. Bonus: this avoids the last minute, middle of the night, laundry dash because you ran out of clothes.

 

Keeping Like Tasks Together

Keeping tasks that are the same together saves me a ton of time. Instead of running errands three days a week, I try to schedule them all for the same day. Instead of vacuuming my living room one day and the bedrooms the next, I do the whole house at one time. See what tasks you can put together to save yourself time and energy.

 

Utilizing Tools

I wrote an entire post on the tools I use to stay organized. One of my absolute favorite tools is Todoist (it’s a cross-platform app). I enter in tasks I complete every month and set them to repeat. This saves so much mental energy in remembering to refill prescriptions or pay a bill.

 

Meal Planning

I barely do any of the cooking in our house. I am blessed to have a man who loves to cook. But, I do enjoy meal planning, I found that it is a lot cheaper on our grocery budget to plan meals in advance rather than daily. Planning out a week’s worth of meals and making a grocery list only takes a small amount of time but saves countless hours of thinking. I cannot be the only one who has the “what do you want for dinner. IDK, what do you want” conversation every single night. I use PlanToEat to automate meal planning even further.

 

Freezer Cooking

During my meal planning, I try to include one of two dinners that can easily be double to throw into the freezer. I also prepare quick breakfast foods. Our favorites include: egg muffins, pancake bites, energy balls and breakfast burritos.

 

Music

I have a job where I can listen to music or audiobooks throughout my shift. On my planning day, I update my music playlists so I always have new music to listen to. I also make sure I have enough audiobooks to get me through the week. See this post on how I get audiobooks for cheap. This only takes a few minutes of my time but it helps me out tremendously later in the week.

 

Coupon Planning

I’ve recently eased back into couponing but I don’t have a lot of time to spend on it. So, I also will print and cut out any coupons I need for shopping during my planning day. I keep them in my purse so they are ready to go whenever I get to the store.

 

Clean Purse

I try to clean out my purse at the beginning of the week. It only takes a few minutes.

 

Clean Car

I am not a “clean car” person. I am the one who opens the door and has a pile of trash falling out. I *try* to stay on top of this by spending a few minutes at the beginning of the week removing the trash and wiping up spills. Maybe someday I will always vacuum it too!

 

What do you do to set up your week to be as stress-free as possible?

 

 

This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through affiliate links, I receive a small percentage back. This helps me to provide content at no cost. Thank you so much for your help and support!