Working Mom Weekend Routine: 5 Habits That Give You Your Weekend Back
If you’re like most working moms, you feel like you’re living for the weekend. You spend all week working your demanding job, and of course, the most demanding one is being a mom. But what’s the point of living for the weekend if you’re just going to spend the whole weekend cleaning and running errands? Here are some strategies and ideas to help you get your weekend back. Because weekends are for rest, not for chores.
Strategy One: Don’t spend all day doing the laundry
Follow the one-load-a-day rule. Doing one load of laundry every day (washing, drying, folding, and putting away) will save you hours on Saturday. Laundry is easier to handle when you break it down into small loads. Who wants to spend six hours on Saturday washing clothes when you could’ve broken it up into an hour a day throughout the week?
Strategy Two: Your daily evening reset
Every evening, I wash the dishes, and my husband cleans the kitchen counters. When we check the mail, we look through it and clear it out. I love waking up to a clean kitchen, and you will too. If you clean it every day, you won’t have to worry about doing anything extra special on Saturday. Also, in the mornings, I unload the dishwasher and put away the dishes. It’s become a habit of mine, and it just feels good not to come home to have to unload the dishes. It feels good on Saturday morning not to wake up to a sink full of dishes.
Strategy Three: Revamp your grocery shopping
I have previously spoken in-depth about meal planning and grocery shopping. You can check out my previous blog post here.
One quick strategy I invite you to try is this: instead of doing all your grocery shopping on Saturday, when everyone else is shopping, try placing an online grocery order on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Then schedule pickup or delivery for Thursday or Friday evening. That way, the fridge is already stocked before the weekend, and you’re not out there with the rest of the crowd on Saturday.
As for meal prep, you can micro-batch during the week. That means you can chop veggies and fruits. You can also freeze parts of your meal so they’re ready for the day you serve them.
Strategy Four: Micro cleaning or zone cleaning
Instead of doing all your cleaning on Saturday, break it up into zones or sections. For instance, you can clean the living room on Monday, the bathrooms on Tuesday, the bedrooms on Wednesday, and wash sheets on Thursday. This way you don’t have the overwhelming task of cleaning the entire house on Saturday. Like, seriously, when would you relax if you had to clean your entire house in one day, do laundry, and go grocery shopping? This can lead to exhaustion, and everyone needs a day of rest.
Strategy Five: Stop being so hard on yourself
You know the saying, “Done is better than perfect.” You can clean out the refrigerator and throw away expired food, but you may not have the time or energy for a complete deep clean. Well, that’s okay. You don’t have to do everything at once. You can always come back later to deep-clean when you have more time and energy.
It’s okay to occasionally use paper plates because you don’t want to do the dishes. Dinner is still being served. It’s okay to just straighten up the living room and decide you’re going to vacuum another day. You don’t have to be a Stepford wife in order to manage your home.
Build a Working Mom Weekend Routine
Audit your weekend: What chores have you been doing? Can you break those up during the week?
Practice your daily reset: Some of these tasks should be done during that reset. Read more about your daily reset in this blog post here.
Share the load: Ask your spouse or partner to help or even delegate some tasks to your children. If you are a working mom, the chores should not fall solely on you. Everyone can do their part.
Remember, rest is a part of productivity. You need rest to re-energize and to keep moving forward. You’re not the Energizer Bunny; you’re a human.
