Day 90: What About the Weekend?

It has been relatively easy (with a few bumps along the way) to schedule our weekday chores and changes and make sure they get done. The weekend is another matter. Weekends are supposed to be carefree and relaxing; that is their very nature. For me, weekends are a huge string of pearls – dots of time that I can fill with many more chores and projects than the weekdays can hold.

Or not.

As we tend to leave our weekends “unplanned,” we also tend to get sidetracked very easily and then all the things I wanted to do just fade into the background. Don’t get me wrong, we do manage to accomplish certain tasks and keep things in balance for the most part around the home, but we rarely accomplish all that I have imagined for the two days of “rest.”

I realize that in order to accomplish all that I want to in a weekend, I am going to need three distinct things:

1) A written plan. Believe it or not, I find that if it is written, I am much more likely to follow through. Hence the menus and the chore charts.

2) A set time to rise. This goes against all that I hold dear for the weekend. I spend most of my days waking at 5:00 and convincing myself that it is only X days until the weekend when I will be able to sleep late. Dangling that carrot all week works to get my tired butt out of bed on time. But on the weekend when I sleep late (8-ish) then there seems to be precious little time to accomplish anything and the day slips away before I know what’s hit me. There have been a few Saturdays when I have begrudgingly risen around 6am in order to deal with children – furry and otherwise – and I find that those days are actually my most productive. I rolled out at 8:30 today. Guess what that means…

3) Cooperation of the family members. Mostly, this will take some convincing on the part of the kids. Weekends are their chill time, too. No homework, lots of play time… Too much play time, in fact. We need a kid schedule for the weekends. Time to game, time to read, time to work…but I have to remember to allow some flexibility in there too.

Since Fall is fast approaching, I may start a two-sided schedule. One side for activities and projects outside if weather permits, and the other side for indoor projects if the weather keeps us in. Heh heh heh…just when I thought I’d limit my list-making…