Summer rhythms are saving my sanity

3 down, 9 to go.

Sometimes I love the long summer break we have, but most years by the time we reach August I’m very ready for my husband and kids to get back to school. The predictability of the school-year schedule is comforting.

Last year I found myself stressed and floundering to accomplish things during the week. Most of the summer, each day consisted of “whatever we felt like or needed to do.” I know some people enjoy and flourish in that kind of spontaneity, but not our household. A “summer of Saturdays” is destined to leave us all cranky.

So this summer I decided that we needed some sort of schedule. Nothing too strict, definitely not an hour-by-hour plan (I tried that once. It didn’t go well). Just a couple of loose expectations — I love the concept of “rhythms”. Here’s what we came up with.

 

Morning & Evening Lists

There are definitely some things that I want accomplished every single day for general cleanliness in the house. My big girls are 8 and almost-6, and these are habits I want them to get used to (not just for summer).

Morning:
1. Make bed
2. Get dressed
3. Dirty clothes in laundry basket

Evening (after dinner) :
1. Dishes
2. Sweep
3. Living room picked up (where most of the one-year-old’s toys are)
4. Play room picked up

 

Monday = Food Day

I got this idea from Kendra, aka the Lazy Genius (do you listen to her podcast?? you need to!!). For some reason Mondays are a great day for my brain’s ability to plan ahead, and I have lots of ambition to accomplish stuff. So on Mondays we

1. Meal plan through the following Sunday
2. Create the grocery list
3. Go grocery shopping
4. Prep food for the week — bake bread, cut carrot sticks, hard-boil eggs for snacks, etc.

The kids are involved in this! I often ask what they’d like to eat during the week, I’ll take at least one of them shopping with me, and my middle daughter LOVES to help in the kitchen.

 

Wednesday = House Day

I’ve been doing all of my laundry on Wednesdays since about January (thanks again to Kendra for the inspiration), so House Day naturally became an expansion of Laundry Day. It’s the one day a week where I ask my kids to do more chores than their usual daily stuff, but when you know it’s only expected once a week and you get to play play play the other days? It sure helps MY motivation, but we’re still working on theirs. 😉

We have a detailed checklist of everything that needs to get done (windows, bathroom, dusting, etc), and the big girls are able to pick and choose what they would like to do. We’re also working on getting them to do their own laundry from start to finish.

 

In addition to these rhythms, I also put in four hours of work at church each Tuesday and Thursday. Friday is loosely called “Outing Day”, which has so far only included a trip to the library. I’m hoping we’ll be able to take a couple of day-long trips to places an hour or so away, maybe we’ll even be ambitious enough to try an overnighter somewhere.

That’s it! Just a few expectations laid out every week, and so far it’s been working out great. Yes sometimes the rhythms get off — we had Vacation Bible School last week, so we had to spread the laundry and other household chores out over a few other days — but at least we have something consistent to fall back on.

Do you use schedules or rhythms to make your summer more enjoyable?