If you want to have a stress-free, productive week, it all starts with your weekend. You can save valuable time and set yourself up for success by taking some time to prep for the week to come.
When you’re crunched for time you need to focus on the things that matter. Yes, you should probably dust your TV sometime, but that’s not going to help you lose weight or eat healthier tomorrow.
It’s also not going to make your house look any cleaner if your living room has piles of junk everywhere. I’m not saying that you should never dust your TV, in fact, it’s a great thing to do while you’re watching TV, but it’s not going to make or break your coming week.
The best way to ensure you have a great week that boosts your productivity is to prep for your week with a weekend routine. The 7 things you need to do to prep for your coming week are:
- Meal plan
- Grocery shop
- Meal prep
- Laundry
- Tidy house
- Money date
- Schedule review
1. Meal Plan
Look at Pinterest or your local cafe menu for meal and snack ideas. We’re looking for fast, easy meals. Preferably meals we can just pop into the oven or dump in the instant pot. Great things to search are “dump”, “sheet pan”, “slow cooker” or “instant pot”.
Make a list of meals and snacks for the week. Meal templates are a great way to meal prep too.
Try to find ways to re-use ingredients. You can do a stir fry or curry and brown rice with whatever vegetables you have laying around, and then use the rest of the brown rice for black bean and corn burrito bowls. Bake up some tofu to use in both meals.
If you’re not opposed to leftovers, I like to make a 4 serving recipe and eat it for lunches for the week, or just take leftovers from dinner. Or a combination of the two. It doesn’t have to be rigid.
I always have back up meals too, like bean and rice burritos, or a sandwich in case dinner doesn’t have enough for leftovers. Create a recipe arsenal that you can draw from without much effort.
I have some staples I always keep in my house that I can make easy meals from.
- frozen stir fry vegetables,
- frozen mixed vegetables,
- frozen peas,
- frozen corn,
- black beans,
- refried beans,
- tortillas,
- rice,
- pasta,
- marinara sauce,
- lettuce,
- cilantro,
- green onion,
- avocados or guacamole cups.
From just those simple staples I can make:
- bean burritos (tortilla, rice, black beans, and/or refried beans, corn, cilantro avocado/guacamole),
- nachos (baked tortilla, refried beans, seasoned black beans, corn, avocado/guacamole, cilantro, green onion).
- burrito bowl (same as a burrito, minus the tortilla),
- stir fry (frozen vegetables, brown rice),
- pasta and peas (pasta, marinara, peas),
- southwest pasta bowl (pasta, black beans, corn, cilantro, green onion, avocado/ guacamole),
- taco salad (same as a burrito, minus the tortilla and on a bed of lettuce),
- curry (frozen vegetables, rice, coconut milk, curry paste, cilantro).
That’s 8 meals I can just whip together without much effort. I keep a running list of these kinds of meals I can throw together, so the days that my brain is uninspired, I can refer back to it for ideas.
2. Buy Groceries
Now that you’ve planned what you’re eating for the week, make a list of ingredients that you need and note which ones you’ll need to buy. Make sure to do this at home, so you can check your kitchen and not buy duplicates.
Now, order your groceries!
I know what you’re thinking, really, Jo? Who’s lazy enough that they order groceries?
This girl right here! Grocery pickup is one of the best things invented. It’s right up there with robot vacuums.
It seems like an unnecessary luxury, but once you try it, you’ll never go back. I’m pretty fast at the grocery store, but I’m not faster than grocery pickup.
Plus, grocery pickup forces me to figure out what I’m eating for the week so I can order what I need, the app saves your frequently bought items, so you can quickly see if you’re running low on any of your staples, and it stops me from wandering around the store and making unhealthy impulse purchases.
I eat healthier, and it saves me time and money. How can you say no to that?!
For snacks, my go-to’s are fruit, bars, veggies and dip, trail mix, and nuts. It’s a bonus if they’re non-perishable and can live in my purse for when I get hangry.
3. Meal Prep
Okay, so now that we’ve planned our meals and picked up our groceries, it’s time to prep our food for the week. It helps if you have a block of time, but even if you don’t we can squeeze it in since we picked easy to make meals.
For breakfast, I either do oatmeal if the weather is cool or smoothies if the weather is warm. If I’m having oatmeal I cook up a big batch and divide it out for the week. If I’m having smoothies, I prep everything but the frozen foods in mason jars and store them in the fridge. You can also make bags of your frozen ingredients to store in the freezer, so you just dump your bag in, blend and go!
These are my two go-to breakfast smoothies:
Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie
Prepped in a mason jar
- 1c soy milk
- 1 Tb ground flax
- 3 Tb cacao powder (not cocoa, cacao tastes way better)
- 2 Tb natural peanut butter
- 3 pitted Medjool dates
- 4oz silken tofu (trust me, you won’t taste it)
Added the morning of:
- 1 handful of spinach/kale mix, frozen
- 1/2 frozen banana
- ice to desired consistency
Chocolate Berry Smoothie
Prepped in a mason jar:
- 1c soy milk
- 1 Tb ground flax
- 3 Tb cacao powder (not cocoa, cacao tastes way better)
- 3 pitted Medjool dates
- 4oz silken tofu (trust me, you won’t taste it)
Added the morning of:
- 1 handful of spinach/kale mix, frozen
- 1/2 frozen banana
- 1 c frozen mixed berries
To make the smoothies, blend what’s in the mason jat together first, then add the frozens and blend again. I will mention that these are not low-calorie smoothies, they are actually really filling and will keep you full for a couple of hours.
Chop any vegetables you need for the coming week and pre-cook anything you can. I go so far as to portion out my servings for lunch so I can just grab it out of the fridge and go.
I love this glass container set I picked up from a sale at Costco. It’s durable, doesn’t absorb smells, is super easy to clean and is watertight. I can literally put soup in it and throw it into my purse, no problem.
4. Laundry
You want to make sure your clothes are all ready to go for the week. There’s nothing worse than reaching into your dresser and coming up empty-handed.
The first thing we want to do is decrease the amount of laundry we need to do. If you work outside the home, I’m a fan of self-imposed uniforms. I’m a jeans and a t-shirt kind of girl, so my wardrobe is already pretty minimal.
But you’re not out of luck if you’re more fashionable than me. I would suggest making a capsule wardrobe. Either have a set of 10 outfits or 15- 20 pieces that you can mix and match.
I divide my dirty clothes into 3 piles- whites, jeans/dirty, colors. I use this awesome hamper tucked away in my closet so I don’t have to sort my laundry on laundry day.
I prefer to do all my laundry in one fell swoop, but you can also do one load a day, whatever works for you. I do 4 loads each week: whites, jeans & towels, colors, and bedding. I like to start either Friday night or Saturday morning. I’m a homebody, so it’s not hard for me to bust out all the laundry in a couple of hours while I’m getting other things done around the house (like meal planning and prepping!).
I like to work my laundry in between what I’m doing. If you have a tendency to forget your laundry in the washer or dryer, set a timer on your phone to remind you to keep it going.
You can either fold your laundry as it comes out of the dryer or collect it in a basket then watch TV and fold it all. I do both depending on the week. I keep the laundry basket of clean clothes in the living room, so I don’t forget about it though.
5. Tidy the House
If you’re short on time, you need to focus on the things that give you the most bang for your buck. For me, that includes making the bed, tidy up the living room and cleaning the kitchen counters.
Bonus if you have a robot vacuum that will do your floors for you. The rest you can get to later.
If you have more time to clean, then clean the bathrooms, bedrooms and work areas.
I try to set aside time once a month to dust and deep clean some of the more neglected areas.
6. Money Date
Sit down with your spouse or significant other and review your budget once a week.
I know it sounds boring and tedious, but make it fun! Have a special treat and go over your spending for the week, any upcoming expenses and check-in with how you’re doing in each of your budget categories.
The goal is to review where your money went that week and plan where it’s going the next week.
7. Schedule
And while you’re having a pow-wow about money, take a minute to go over everyone’s schedule for the week so you came sure nothing gets forgotten and you can work out any childcare swaps and whatnot that you need to be aware of.
And that’s it!
I try to spend Friday night and Saturday mornings getting everything done that I need to around the house, so then I can enjoy the rest of my weekend without having a Sunday night crunch. Since I’m a homebody so it’s not hard for me to run a couple of loads of laundry while I’m hanging out with my family and it gets the ball rolling so I’ll keep going with the rest of my weekend routine.
After you put the kids to bed Friday night, grab a yummy treat, curl up with your husband and review your money and your schedule for the upcoming week. And while you’re grabbing your treat, glance through your pantry, fridge and freezer to see what you need to use up in the coming week.
Since you’re already discussing the coming week, this can also be a good time to chat about what you want to eat for dinners for the upcoming week. Jot down 5 or so meals you want to make for dinner, something easy for breakfasts, lunches and snacks and get your groceries ordered! Then sit back and enjoy a movie with your husband.
Then Saturday morning you’ll just need to finish up any laundry, tidy the house, pick up your groceries and meal prep. You can easily finish up by noon and have the rest of the weekend to enjoy with your family, stress-free!
Just be flexible, every weekend is different so work around your schedule.
I cannot recommend a weekend routine enough! There’s nothing like starting your week off stress-free and ready to go! Don’t worry if you don’t get it all done the first weekend, just keep trying and you’ll get better and faster with practice.
Now, go start a Pinterest board to collect easy meal ideas to get you started on the right foot!