This post is participating with Organizing Tip Thursday and Finding Freedom Friday. Join the fun!
I am a very organized person when it comes to the day to day stuff, but its the big organizational projects that I struggle with. Like organizing my holiday decorations, or my home school supplies, or storage in the basement! I do have a good method for planning out my week though and it has been very helpful to me. Now if I could just plan in some time to organize my basement, holiday decorations and home school supplies, it would be a perfect world!
I may not be the world’s best organizer on the big things, but I lost planning and I love lists! I also love the gratification of checking off those lists as I work! I am simply lost without a plan for my week. I thought I would share with you how I organize my planning for the week.
My weekly planning consists of making a menu, setting some goals, reviewing my calendar and getting my to do lists ready.
Typically on Sunday evening while we are winding down from the weekend, I take out my planning stuff and, well, plan! I usually make my menu and do my grocery shopping on Friday, so my menu plan is already done. I take some time just to double check it and rearrange things if necessary. I use this form to plan my menus.
Then I take some time to set some goals for the week. I set goals in the following areas: Personal, Spiritual, my husband, my children, my home and outreach. This helps me stay focused on my priorities for the week. I try to keep it simple, and list only one or two things in each section. This is the goal planning sheet that I use. I put a category in each box and write a goal below each one.
Then I look over our calendar for the week (I have an inexpensive weekly/monthly planner calendar I picked up at Walmart) and fill out as many of my daily to do lists as I can. You can view (and download to use!) my to do list planner page here. I have them all in order in my home binder and add to them as I need to. If I have a lot to do, I write out a brainstorming list to work from.
On Monday morning, I go over our home school plans for the week. I make sure we have any resources or books that we need, an overview of my plans and any copies made.
I mentioned before that I already have a cleaning schedule prepared (you can see it here and here), on Monday morning I am ready to go!
My planning time takes an hour or less, but saves me so much stress and chaos. It takes some discipline to stick to weekly planning, but I have learned that if I don’t, the week will just get away from me. I also plan my week for my blogging and business stuff, setting goals and a to do list for the week using another set of planning pages I created. This has helped me tremendously in remaining focused when I hop on my computer to write or work!
You probably noticed that I created most of my own planning pages myself. For a long time I would use store bought planning pages but they just didn’t work for me. If you can’t find the right page for you, create your own based on your needs! I added and deleted what worked and tweaked a few times to come up with a final page. Problem Solvin’ mom has a great post up explaining how you can create your own planning pages (I use MS Word though, I don’t have Excel). Feel free to use the ones I posted here as well!
Do you have a weekly planning day? How do you plan your week?
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I like the goal setting part. That will help me to move forward more mindfully, rather than having a far-out lofty goal. Thanks again, for your ideas! I’m going to add a link to this artice to anan upcoming post I wrote on hitting big projects.
Thanks!
I really like the time you take to set goals for your week. What a great way to keep up motivation and growth.
Thanks for sharing!
I’m amazed at how organized you are. I love lists also! They really are quite helpful. Thanks so much for sharing these…I’m terrible about just scribbling stuff on pieces of paper here and there!! You’ve given me lots of ideas.
How stinking adorable are those Wild Olive lists. LOL! You are motivating me to list today, I am goin gto try and knock out your “set”, menu plan, goals, calendar, a running to-do list.
I do something very similar. I have also found that using my own lists in most things is much better than the pre-packaged store-bought ones.
Love your system, I hope that I get things down this smoothly sometime in the near future. Thanks for all the linked resources and for linking up to Organizing Tip Thursday!
I try quarterly to write a list of objectives to help me with my longer term goals. That said, my system is definitely still a work in progress…
This is the exact system I’m trying to perfect. Lists are my best friend! I ove marking things off–even if it is just getting dressed!
Thanks for linking!
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