Okay, let’s talk about preparing for the week ahead.
I’ll share what I do and hopefully, that sparks one or two ideas for you too.
My weekly prep actually happens in 3 parts:
1. Decide on personal and business goals for the week ahead.
This step happens on Thursday evenings when Beth and I have our accountability chats.
I started a new step to this process about 3 – 4 weeks ago where I actually write those individual tasks in my notebook so I know when I’m supposed to do them over the course of the week.
This sounds terribly obvious but sadly, it wasn’t… and I’d always realise I had outstanding things too late to do much about them.
(30 mins with Beth, and 5 minutes to write the tasks spread over the week)
2. Weekly menu planning and grocery list
I usually do this section on a Friday night/ Saturday morning so that Dion can do the shopping sometime on Saturday.
The key here is to first check the freezer and pantry to see if you can make anything with what’s there, and then to decide what you want to eat, and add the missing ingredients to your shopping list.
I advocate loose menu planning where you have five meals with ingredients ready… but feel free to have Monday’s meal on Wednesday and bring Thursday’s one closer, as you feel led 🙂 I will say I feel particularly satisfied when a week goes by and I actually stick to the menu plan and cook all 5 meals! Go me!
Once every 4 – 6 weeks, I like to completely clear out the freezer (not of incidentals, but of main meal food). This is good for three reasons: you save money and you get to exercise your creativity in the kitchen. Some of our kids’ favourite meals happened as a result of me getting creative (pasta with chicken sausage and sweetcorn).
(10 minutes)
3. Physical getting ready
I check the schedule to see if anything out of the ordinary might be happening, like events at school, socials, and so on.
I had 5 tops left for work after I used the Konmari method. This weekend I bought two more tops, so YAY – seven! Colleagues will now see me in the same top only one in 8 workdays as Fridays are casual. Based on the weather, I like to have a rough idea of what I will wear on which day.
I prep cereals for the week (actual measuring out of cereals) and two lunchboxes with bread. And then I pack my lunchbox with everything imaginable, and on Sundays I also pack a clean water bottle to use for the week ahead.
(15 minutes)
That’s it – 1 hour a week (and I don’t think I should count the full 30 minutes with Beth in here but let’s be conservative) – and my life runs smoothly.
Do you do weekly planning?
How long do you estimate it takes you?
(I have just started to think about next year’s Let’s Do This workshops. Make a quality decision now to join me for one of those, and we’ll talk more about weekly planning then)
[…] has always been a good thing for me. I do weekly planning and to fit in a weekly photo project seemed like an easy […]