Episode #149 - 🎙️ The Sunday Checklist: Setting Up Your Week for Success

Welcome to Organizing with Ease, where we simplify and organize our lives for the better. I'm Diana Moll, your host, ready to lead you on a journey towards a more organized and enriching life. Together, let's explore practical strategies, inspiring stories, and expert advice to simplify every aspect of our lives. Let's declutter our spaces, free our minds, and cultivate genuine happiness. Are you ready to embark on this journey with ease?

Let's get started. Sunday is the perfect day to reset, refocus, and prepare for the week ahead. Welcome back to Organizing with Ease. I'm your host, Deanna Moll. And today, we're talking about one of the best ways to prepare for a smoother, more productive week, a Sunday checklist.

If this is your first time tuning in, I welcome you. And, of course, for my longtime listeners, it's always great to have you back. You know, that feeling when Monday morning rolls around and suddenly everything feels chaotic? You're scrambling to figure out your schedule? Your kids are you kidding are you getting your kids ready?

Finding something to wear, or you realize you, oh my gosh, had that moment of, did I buy my groceries for the week? That's why having a Sunday checklist is really important. It eliminates the stress of last minute planning, so you start the week feeling calm and in control. Some of you might think, well, maybe not a Sunday, but hear me out. Sundays is that when you have a well structured Sunday routine, it really does help reduce the stress for Monday.

So there's no, you know, no Monday morning stress as much. It does eliminate those last minute scrambles, which I've had as well. Trust me on that. I can tell you. Rest assured, I've been there.

It does save you time throughout the week because your meals, your clothes, and your to dos are already set. And it also helps you stay on top of home organizing and having your personal goals. Here's a stat. Listen. This is from the Harvard Business Review.

People who prepare for the week on Sundays experience 35% less stress and report being twice as productive. So for today, I figured we were going to cover the what a Sunday checklist is all about and why it works, a step by step breakdown of tasks to include, how to customize it based on your schedule and needs, daily organization versus weekly planning, and what's the difference? And at the end, of course, I'm going to give you a challenge to help you try it out for the week. Let's get started. I'm excited.

So what is a Sunday's checklist? Think of a Sunday checklist as your weekly reset button, a system that ensures your home, your schedule, and most importantly, mindset are ready for a smooth week ahead. It focuses on three main areas. You ready? Home organizing, it's a quick tidy up to start the week fresh.

It's also a focus on schedule and planning, where you're reviewing appointments, your meal plans, and you prioritize your tasks. Also, it's a mindset and wellness. It's a mental refresh to focus on goals and, most importantly, self care. People who do a weekly review and planning session on Sundays are 50% more likely to complete tasks on time and 40% less likely to experience midweek overwhelmed. Have have you even did you even realize that that actually existed, but it really does, that midweek overwhelm?

And that is from the Journal of Organizational Behavior. The key to success is to start before you're ready. Doesn't that sound good? I think that's a good one. Now, here we are, the step by step ultimate Sunday checklist.

You don't need to spend hours getting ready for the week. You really don't. But if you have a well structured checklist, it can be done within sixty to ninety minutes of the day. The key is to focus on small actions that make the biggest impact. So here we go.

I'm gonna give you a couple of I'm gonna give you steps. And then in each step, I'm gonna share with you the minutes that it should take. Home organization, between twenty to thirty minutes. Okay? Hear me out.

You're gonna tidy up the high traffic areas. You're gonna focus on your kitchen, your entryway, and your living room. These are the spaces that get used the most. Now that my kitchen is ready to go, and it's in full swing now, I can tell you that it has now become back to where it was before, a high traffic area. Don't deep clean it.

Just put things back in place and wipe down the surfaces. And then you wanna declutter those key zones. Do a ten minute, you know, declutter sweep. Walk through your home and put misplaced items back. Studies show that homes with a weekly ten minute decluttering routine are three times less likely to experience clutter build up.

And then you want to prepare your bedroom and your closet. You want to put away the laundry and lay out your outfit for Monday, if if it's possible. But it actually gets you going, so that Monday morning start is easy. Research shows that starting the day in an organized space boosts productivity by 30%. Then we're gonna do a weekly planning, twenty to thirty minutes.

We're gonna review your calendar and your priorities. You're gonna look at your schedule for the week, appointments, meetings, kids' activities, and errands. You wanna identify any prep work needed. Do you need to buy any gifts for a birthday, possibly? What about a preparation for an event?

What about you have to go to attend networking events? Is there anything that you need to do, bring? Are there marketing materials that you need to do if you need to promote your own business? You also want to make a to do list, but you wanna keep it really simple. Choose big three, I say, quote unquote.

Three key priorities for the week. Studies show that people who set weekly intentions complete 50% more tasks than those who plan daily. So that's actually quite interesting. Weekly, setting weekly intentions complete 50 more than those that do the planning of the daily. So either way, you we do need to to actually make this habit a routine.

Are you hear me? Are you with me on this one? If you're sidetracked, come back, listen, because I'm still got more to share with you. Now we're gonna go into that meal planning, that grocery list. We want to plan three to five meals for the week, honestly, including quick dinners for busy nights.

Prepare something. Put it in the freezer. Put the date on it. Write on it, so that if you're out and you have family members that need they need to be eat have food for dinner, you can say, listen, in the freezer, there's this. These are the instructions.

Here you go. And it's all done. You wanna also check for your pantry, your staples, and write them down with your groceries to buy because you definitely don't wanna make sure that you have it all down. I had a client of mine who used to go grocery shopping multiple times a week because she didn't plan ahead. But once she started using a Sunday checklist for meal planning, she cut her grocery trips in half and saved an average of three hours per week.

Goal without a plan is just a wish. Meal planning saves time by making it easier to prepare for quick and easy meals. It's also healthier eating. You know, when you meal plan, it can help you eat healthier and make sure you're getting the nutrients that you need. It's also you're avoiding food waste, stress reduction because you are taking the guesswork out of what are we going to be eating tonight, or for the morning.

Right? And this also increases productivity. Meal planning can help you be more productive by making it easier to get healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now, here, I'm gonna break down just a little bit. So, for some of you on how to use a meal plan, you wanna start three day like, do a three day healthy meal plan.

And then for, you know, if you're doing family meal planning, I would do seven days. It's something to think about, something to start. Why not? You'll be surprised the benefits that you and your family will see. And at the end of the day, you'll be pleasantly surprised that this little prep work done on Sundays makes a huge difference.

Now, you're probably asking yourself, well, how did that work for you? So for me personally, it did take some time. It was a lot of getting used to getting my head wrapped around using one day to prepare for the entire week. But what I did was I wound up getting my family involved, and I said, hey. Listen.

You know, I'm I'm getting ready for the meal for the week. Please give me some insights. Are there any recipes? Because if you are planning on cooking certain foods or certain dishes, make sure that when you do grocery shopping, you have those those ingredients because sometimes you might not have them readily available. So that's why the grocery shopping is important as well.

Quick recap. Meal planning can help you save time and money by mapping out a week's worth of healthy, yes, healthy, delicious meals for you and your family. And if it's just you and your partner, that also makes a big difference. It also helps you stay on budget at the grocery store by building your shopping list. It minimizes cooking time by prepping some of those some of those ingredients in advance and reusing leftovers.

This is also a really good way for you to learn how to stock and inventory your pantry and your freezer. And why not? Why don't you get your kids involved? Like I said, I do that just so that I can get these recipes and meals meals that they're actually going to eat. So meal planning can be fun.

It's a learning experience. Trust me when I say this over and over. It did not happen overnight. It did take some planning, no pun intended, in regards to getting this set up for the house. But once I did get that rolling and everyone is on board, now they're asking, oh, so what are we doing for the week?

You know, you can do meat, meatloaf Monday, taco Tuesday. Right? So you can actually use each day of the week for a specific recipe if you would like to make it fun, especially if you have young younger kids. If not, just go with it. Make a great meal planning with, you know, tips and tricks that work for you and for your family.

Step three, ten to fifteen minutes mindset and wellness. You want to reflect on the past week. Yes. What worked well? What didn't?

And what do you want to do differently? You do need to ask yourself those questions. Write down one thing you're grateful for. And, you know, practicing gratitude does increase happiness and productivity by 20%. I have taken on being that doing my gratitude and also my journaling and my meditation.

Did that hope it happened overnight? No. It did not. Is it step by step? Absolutely.

If you try it, just try it out. You'll see the difference. You wanna set weekly intentions. Ask yourself, what is your main focus for the week? People who set clear weekly intentions are 80% more likely to follow through.

Now that's a good one. I like that 80%. I hope you're gonna be part of that 80% too. And, you definitely have to schedule for some self care time. Even ten minutes, ten minutes daily can lower stress and improve focus.

So, what do you what is your self care? Share. Think about it. Okay? Daily checklist versus weekly planning.

Why you need both? A Sunday checklist gives you that overall big picture plan of what's coming about, But a daily checklist keeps you on track. Think of it as like a team. The daily checklist is the five to ten minutes of tidying and reviewing the next day's schedule, see what's going on, making sure that, you know, you have everything, you know what's coming up. Then your Sunday checklist, you want to look at it as a weekly planning session to refresh your home, your schedule, and most importantly, your mindset.

Homes that incorporate both daily and weekly planning routines experience 40% fewer clutter related stressors, and that's from the Journal of Home Organizing. Are you hearing how the statistics are really saying to us clearly that if we do these things, that it actually will help us in the long run? I do have a daily, weekly, and also monthly reset checklist, which I will actually attach to the show notes. It actually breaks down each of the areas within your home and areas of targeting so that you can use the daily and the weekly as the big picture. Right?

And making them both as a team, as I said. I'll give you a good example. I always like using the kitchen. It's because, again, it's the heart of the home. But if you do have a morning and nightly routine daily, it makes a difference for the week as well.

I, of course, do not like to have dirty dishes in the sink, so my nightly is to clean all that out, wipe down the kitchen counter. Again, it's not even five to ten minutes. Right? But then for the weekly within my kitchen, I do try to go through my refrigerator and my pantry because why? Because I've started and I'm implementing my meal planning.

So I need to create my grocery list. I need to shop and I need to do my meal prep. I prep my food. I wash and I chop my, you know, my vegetables and my fruits so that, you know, for the week ahead, all it's a grab and go out of the refrigerator. So these are the small things that one does that does take a little bit of time, but actually save time in the long run for the week ahead.

Challenge of the week. I want you all to try a Sunday checklist. Choose three things from today's episode to try this Sunday, and I'd love to hear from you. So please, if you can, send me a fan email. I would love to hear from you.

If not, you know, on social media, of course, at d's declutter, or send me an email. Love to hear from you on that. Diana, d I a n a, at d's declutter dot com. Again, that is what we are looking for and hearing from you so that you can get excited. I actually gonna throw in a book recommendation.

It's a twelve twelve week year by Brian Warren and Michael Lendleton. This book teaches how to plan and execute your goals efficiently using short structured timelines instead of waiting for New Year resolutions. Here's a final thought. A Sunday checklist isn't just about getting organized. It's about creating a weekly rhythm that makes life easier.

Small, repeatable habits will keep you feeling in control and not overwhelmed. So, for next week's episode, organizing for busy weeks, how to stay on track when life gets hectic, and we're going to be talking about how to stay organized even during those busy weeks. We're going to get some simple systems, and we're going to try to avoid that burnout feel. Until next time, step by step, little by little, let's keep making progress. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe to Organizing with Ease podcast on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review.

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