Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey, and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life. Toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this! Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom Show, episode 463. We’re in our summer series here, and today I’m talking all about how you can have an evening reset in your routine to end your summer days on a calm note. I don’t know about you, but summer days and evenings feel like they drag into the evening.
Cara Harvey 00:01:02 Or roasted marshmallows. We’re coming back from the beach. There’s camp bags. There’s dirt everywhere. And often, if I’m not on top of it, the piles begin. Okay. Have you ever been there? Right. You get to 9 p.m.. The whole day feels like it slipped by. Either because it was fun or because it was super busy, or because you had a lot on your plate, or you didn’t do anything, and you still are like, why is everyone melting down, right? Including myself. I want to give you some tips today that can help you instead end your summer evenings with like calm, right? With a reset, with connections, with some space for you. Because an evening reset is the key to having summer feel very smooth, very calm, very enjoyable. Summer can bring out a lot of feelings. Most days I’m loving it. I love the different pace. I love the time with my kids. I love the slow, but then sometimes slow leads me to having a lapsed routine which leads to dishes piling up, which then in turn intern adds to my stress, right? We’re going to talk about how you can combat that today.
Cara Harvey 00:02:03 Show notes are going to be at a purpose driven podcast, 463 over 460 episodes of the show. Thank you so much. If you’ve been around from the beginning or if this is your first episode. I hope you get some great tips and advice and things that really help you today. As we go into the summer. Now, evenings matter more than you think, and I actually have said multiple times over the past almost eight years of doing this and coaching moms. Your evening routine is more important than your morning routine because your evening sets your mornings up for success. Okay. Summer. It throws the routines out of whack whether your kids are in camp. Like, I’ve had summers where my kids were in camp from 9 to 3 every single day. So it was basically just like the school year. I’ve also had summers where every week is a little different, or we have weeks off. That’s like this summer. Sometimes we’re at camp, sometimes we’re home. It leads to that later nights, that looser structure.
Cara Harvey 00:02:55 Right? But the evenings will set the tone for your next day When you close out the day with intention, your morning is smoother. You have less guilt, you’re yelling less. There’s less nervous system high because everyone needs to get their bathing suits. And did you not pack an extra thing of clothes to go to the pool? And where are your, you know, sneakers and your water bottle for camp, right? Your burnout starts to shrink because you have a rhythm. Now, I want you to just take this because it’s summer. So I know a lot of times we’re like routines. You don’t need a rigid nighttime routine. Okay. We’re going to talk about this in the terms of a reset rhythm. It’s going to help you feel in control. It’s going to help you feel more on top of things. And it’s going to help you enjoy more of your day. Because isn’t that the point, right? The point is not that we just rinse and repeat the day. The point is that we’re enjoying ourselves.
Cara Harvey 00:03:47 We’re enjoying our time. And yes, we’re working on our goals. And yes, we’re having fun with our kids and spending time with them and making connections. It’s all the things in one. Keeping your routines in the summer is going to be important. And I’ve done episodes on this and I will continue to do episodes all summer about this. Don’t drop your routines just because it’s summer and your kids aren’t going to school, or because the activities are lesser because it just looks different. Keep your rhythms flowing and you will actually give yourself an easier back to school season as well. All right, so let’s talk about what an evening reset can look like. Simple simple. This is the keyword. This is not your 90 minute routine. This is 10 to 20 minutes where you are just realigning. I like this word realigning things to to feel good. Right. Now when I think of an evening routine, I think of three parts. And then I also can think of three different resets. Okay. So I’m going to talk you through first the three parts that I suggest you do.
Cara Harvey 00:04:45 And then we’re going to also walk through the three resets the three parts of a really strong evening rhythm. Our word right. Our word of the day. Something to close out the day. Something to set up tomorrow and something for you. All right, so let’s talk about what this can look like. Something to close out the day. I highly recommend if the only thing you do in your evening rhythm and routine is a 15 minute pickup, you do it. If you’re like, I don’t know where to start. It’s putting on a timer, telling everybody in the house, we’re taking 15 minutes to pick up, putting things back where they belong. Just the simple act of putting the shoes in the shoe bin and not in the middle of the floor, picking the laundry up. If you’re not sure how to teach us to your kids, do it that way. I did this with my daughter yesterday, remember, for my kids to get more time on their tablets, they have to have their room cleaned and she was huffing and puffing about cleaning the room.
Cara Harvey 00:05:34 I don’t want to clean my room. I don’t want to clean my room. And I said, all right, we’re going to do it in stages with the timer. And so I started with one minute. I said, here’s the trash kit. I want you to take one minute, go into your room and anything that’s trash or looks like trash for an entire minute goes in the can. She filled that up. Great. Now we’re on minute two. Minute two is your clothes. Any clothes that are not in your hamper need to go. I’m going to put a one minute timer on. I had her put that. all right. Step three that’s stuffed animals. So then I pick whatever the biggest thing is. That’ll be the biggest bang for our buck. Because at this point she’s throwing away trash. She’s put the clothes away. Now the stuffed animals, they have a hanger behind their door and then they can or they can put stuffed animals in their bed. But when they make their bed, they have to move them.
Cara Harvey 00:06:13 So it’s their choice where they want them. All right. Great. Now let’s go ahead and put your stuffed animals away. Once that’s done, like the room isn’t that bad. So then we move to different sections. She’s got a little corner. She’s got a doll house books. So we start with books. Books have to go. And then she gets very mad about the books. But I know how will I know what to read next? She loves to read, so I’m like, we’ll just put them in the bin. It’s fine or on the shelf, and you kind of go through do the same thing with the routine. Start with trash. If everyone’s like, I don’t want to help pick up, okay, we’re going to do 15 minutes of cleaning up. You can either zone it. Everybody gets a different room. You could all do one room. Most of our happenings is on the bottom floor. We have two floors in our house and it’s just like the living room, family room, kitchen.
Cara Harvey 00:06:52 Right? So it’s all dining room, like, all of that is just like our dumping ground for things. So we could just say we’re going to do just the downstairs, or we could pick one room. When you’re doing your evening reset, give directions to your family and end to yourself. Give yourself some structure, because sometimes even saying like, I’m gonna spend 50 minutes picking up feels overwhelming. So you could either start in a corner, right? And so we’re gonna work our way around the room, or you can do a by thing. Okay? We’re gonna take five minutes. Everybody has a small trash can, and if you have a ton of small trash cans around your house, whatever. And we’re gonna pick up as much trash as we can find. All right, so let’s start with and I would couple trash with dishes, trash and dishes. So if you see any dishes that need to go into the sink and any trash, put the five minute timer on. That’s about one song, right? Put on a song by the time the song is done.
Cara Harvey 00:07:34 There we go. If you are a mom who wants to start a business and you need help, and you want to go from chaos to clarity, I want you to go over to a Purpose Driven Mom planner and get my new Ultimate Digital Planner for business owners. I’ve got client profile pages, business breakdowns, promo planners, goal setting, social media and more. You can take that overwhelm that is planning your business and get all of it in one place. You can make a binder, get your things together, and get on track with your business. I’ve got 13 different planning worksheets you can choose from goal setting sheets, project planning, product planning, client profiles, financial templates, and more. Go to a Supermom Planner and you can also get this bonus social media content pages where there are over 20 different options for you to lay out your social media and get it done. Go to a Purpose driven Rom-com planner and grab yours today. All right, well, now we’re going to move to the next five minutes.
Cara Harvey 00:08:36 And you choose. I would pick maybe laundry or shoes. Okay. So if you and I don’t know, my kids laundry just gets everywhere, right? Shoes get everywhere. Especially thinking about the summer. I would do like, laundry, shoes, maybe backpacks, right like that have gotten everywhere that need to be reset for the next day. So we’re going to do laundry, shoes, backpacks. If you see any shoes in your section, you’re going to put them in the shoe bin or in the bedroom, whatever your system is in your home, if you see any laundry, it’s going to go. Honestly, we just throw everything in the washing machine. If we’re up in their room, it goes in their hamper. If it’s downstairs, we just put it in the washing machine, right? And when the load is full, I start the laundry. We’ll do that and backpack stuff. Right. Okay. This is a good time then to, you know, make sure if you’ve got wet stuff, especially if you don’t have a routine yet.
Cara Harvey 00:09:16 By the way, for like when your kids come home from camp or the pool, I really recommend you do that as well, because I can’t tell you how many times before we had our routines, I would open up a bag to wet bathing suit clothes, things like that, and I was like, oh no, those have to go somewhere, right? So do that. Then the last five minutes it could be toys, miscellaneous, anything that has to go into your bedroom, anything that doesn’t belong in this room. That’s three songs. It’s easy and it’s fast. I really recommend reset. What are some other things you could do to close out the day? You could load the dishwasher. You could sweep the floor, take out the trash, run the vacuum, write anything to kind of close out the space. Then I’m going to recommend that you do something to set up tomorrow. This is also important because this is where it makes your morning easier. If my kids have camp and I have to pack lunches, I’m 100% packing lunches the night before.
Cara Harvey 00:10:02 I don’t know why lunch packing takes not even ten minutes, but just doing it the night before feels like it saves me an hour. There’s something about it. I just like to make less decisions in the morning. If my kids are going to camp, this is when they have to go pack their bags. All right, tomorrow, let’s look at the calendar. They go to a nature camp two weeks out of the summer, and two times a week they have water play, right? So they gotta get their swimsuits and their water shoes and all those kind of things. All right. Grab those things. Put them in the bag. Those are really good ways to look at your calendar. Now this is another really good one is to look at your calendar for the next day, especially in the summer when things are a little different. I will review the calendar with the kids and I say me with the kids. I also will like confer with my husband. But because and sometimes my husband is home in the summer.
Cara Harvey 00:10:42 But the program he works is a at a university, and it is for high school students to come to the university to do stuff, so it’s heavy. He’s at the office, if you will like, on campus during the summer, whereas during the school year he works home from home a lot. So I say me because I’m typically the one managing the day, right? But whatever your situation is in your house, I look at the kids and I’m like, let’s look at what we have tomorrow. And I might say, okay, cool. Now, normally my kids go to the same camp. There’s two weeks out of the summer where they go to different camps because my daughter is at an overnight camp. So I have a different camp for my son, obviously. So typically they’re the same schedule, but maybe yours don’t. we also don’t do sports or activities formally. So my daughter’s gym, she does cheer. They might have a tumbling clinic or something once a week or something like that.
Cara Harvey 00:11:25 We might do privates. So those are might happen, but we not we don’t do formal sports. We did that one summer. My kids joined a bowling league. I wanted them to pick something a little different, and we just found like showing up every Tuesday in the summer. It just wasn’t it. Like, what if it was nice out and they wanted to stay in the pool? So we stopped doing formal activities in the summer until and I say that now until August, because my son does tackle football, which starts the first week in August. So anyway, so look at your activities. Okay, guys, we got camp tomorrow. You’re going to be over at the nature center. Here’s what the choice boards are. So this camp gives them choice boards and depending on the order, they get to pick. So I like to review the choices with them so they can start thinking about their first and second and third choice. This is what lunch is at the camp tomorrow because they provide lunch.
Cara Harvey 00:12:05 Or you could pack who wants lunch? Who doesn’t? or if they’re home, I might say, okay, so tomorrow is Tuesday. Mommy has work calls in the morning on Tuesday, and we have, like a visual schedule and I’ll say so from 9 to 12. During this block of work, mommy’s going to be doing some work in the office. Now we have a system in my house opened or closed, or if the door is closed in the office, off limits don’t come in. If the door is open, you’re more than welcome to come in here. My kids like to sit on the floor, color, do their crafts, just be on their tablet. Just be near me. If anyone else knows their kids just like to be near you, in the summer. And so typically, if I have my 10 a.m. Tuesday call, which is a standing call that I have, I will typically also work from 9 to 12. Like I’ll take that for hours, and that’ll be the only four hours I work out of the day.
Cara Harvey 00:12:46 When my kids are home, my kids are camp, I work the whole six hours or whatever math is to me. So I’ll say, okay, so mommy has one closed door meeting on Tuesday. Otherwise, I’ll be doing open door work in the office. Okay. So we go over. So during that time, what are some things you want to do? Normally my kids can, you know, they have a whole activity list. They are allowed tech if they get their outside play done. my kids thankfully like, love to play outside, so that’s an easy one for me. they’re not allowed to go in the pool unless, like, I’m not working. So they have to wait for that. So I might say, okay, once we get them, I’m done with my pools. I’ll make lunch. And then it’s going to be really nice out. You guys want to go out to the pool afterwards? Awesome. So then we’ll spend the afternoon at the pool and then whatever our evening is.
Cara Harvey 00:13:31 So reviewing that schedule is also really helpful. That third part of that routine is going to be something to take care of you. And this is going to really help you kind of recharge. Okay. Asking yourself, what’s my emotional reset? Like, how am I feeling about the day? What did I not get done? What’s still like running circles in my head. What do I need space for tomorrow. And then I highly recommend you create a wind down routine for yourself. So at the end of the night, I need to do something for me. Especially in the summer when the kids are home more often I am on all day, right? Like from the minute my feet hit the floor. So this might be especially in the summer when it’s like a lighter out. You know, it doesn’t get dark till like 830. If I’m doing my evening routine and I and I say this to a lot of people think, oh, my evening routine has to happen after my kids go to bed.
Cara Harvey 00:14:22 Mine happens while my kids are awake because they help, right? I have the hours my kids go to bed at nine during the school year. Probably let them stay up till 930, but honestly, nine is good for them. They still need to get sleep. And also I would like some time with my husband and if they don’t go to bed till 930, I like to be in bed by like ten. We wouldn’t have any time together so I like to do it during that time. So while they’re playing or whatever they’re doing, you know, they’ll watch a show. I might go for a walk. I might take myself for a walk around the block. I might go read my book outside for a little bit. You know, my husband’s home now, so we’ve kind of traded off a little bit so he can take some of the emotional labor of the children. Things like that. Have something for you. Just to decompress Journal. Listen to that podcast again. If it’s nice out, I highly recommend doing whatever you’re doing outside.
Cara Harvey 00:15:06 I’m a big outside person. I love being outside. I love being in nature. I like being in just the space. It makes me feel refreshed. So if I can just go sit on our patio with my book for a half an hour, I feel like I’ve gotten to recharge and I’m ready to conquer the day tomorrow, even if the laundry still needs to be folded and the dishes still need to be done right, I do those three things. Something for today, something for tomorrow, and something for me. And then I go back to the start. Then I go back and I’m like, all right, well, I didn’t get the dishes loaded or the vacuum run, so I’m going to go do that real quick. Those things help the next day feel a lot smoother. And I want to point out again how key it is to review the next day schedule when you have unpredictable schedules with your kids. If your kids are going to the township camp and it’s 9 to 3 and it’s every day and they’re it’s just like school, you don’t have to do this as much.
Cara Harvey 00:15:58 But if you have a schedule like mine where every single week is different, every single week, they’re either at a different camp or they’re home or we’re going on a trip or we’re camping, whatever. Going over that with the kids really not only helps you be like, okay, this is what’s happening tomorrow. Let me wrap my head around it. Now, let me make a little bit of a plan. I might be like, oh man, we were going to go to the beach tomorrow, but it’s going to rain. What’s our backup plan like? I give myself space to think about it before the day starts, but it helps give them some predictability. It helps them like, feel safe because they know what’s happening. My daughter especially, she’s harder to get up in the morning. So I like to tell her like, okay, well, we do have camp, so we have to get up at this time for camp, but next week we don’t. So I, you know, we won’t set an alarm for you.
Cara Harvey 00:16:39 Those things are important for the kids as well. Take a quick second. I want to invite you to join. One of my new favorite apps is called Brand Club. I am all about trying to get my side hustle on right. And one of the things I hate doing is taking money out of my pre-planned budget for tiny things that pop up, like the snack stand during football season, or the $10 you have to Venmo somewhere else because you need it for school. And I found Brand Club to literally fill that gap for me. Here’s what I do with it. Every single day I go in, I earn between a dollar and $1.50. It takes me two minutes and I just fill in some surveys. Super simple. Very easy. I also will link it to my Amazon, my Walmart and my target account. So when I buy things anyway, I get cash back. It takes me about ten days, but I earn $10 and when I get my $10, I cash it to my Venmo Girl math.
Cara Harvey 00:17:24 I’m using it all the places I want to share with you a $3 code to get started, because you need $10 to cash out. So let me give you $3. I’ll get $3 if you sign up. I really appreciate it. Go to a purpose driven romcom club, do it on your phone because it’s going to bring you up to the app so you can download it. It’s a really easy way to just get some side money going, so you don’t have to take it out of your regular budget and make some money for yourself. That’s a purpose driven romcom club. I want to throw a bonus in for my work at home business mamas like me who are working in the margins, right? I mentioned in the summer when my kids are at camp, I will work the whole time. They’re at camp 9 to 4 or 9 to 3, whatever. It looks like. I am working when my kids are home. I’m still working, but it just looks different for me in the summer. So I have a call every day but Thursday.
Cara Harvey 00:18:11 Thursdays is my off day where I don’t schedule anything on my plan. I will most likely do some computer work, but I take one day off a week. I’ve done that for the past two years. It’s really nice. It’s like when I go have coffee with my friends. It’s when I can take my kids to the beach for the whole day. We can go visit family, right? Because my day is not truncated, because I know I have a call every other day. Thankfully, my schedule is set because I make it in a way that is chunked. It’s not like I have a call at nine and a call at one Mondays. I have calls from 9 to 12 Tuesdays I just have a 10 a.m., Wednesdays, a 130 Fridays at 12. So you see how it’s like, it’s not like the morning and the afternoon. So what it looks like for me is I’m getting in work light when their home because I want to spend time with them. I crave time with my kids, especially after just the the year we’ve had.
Cara Harvey 00:18:58 It’s been a struggle. We’ve had a really challenging year and I’m excited to like, slow down. And, you know, my son is always like, play a game, play a game, play a game. And my brain is always like, oh, I don’t have the time. I can’t wait to tell my brain to be quiet and remind myself that I have the time. I saw this TikTok the other day. I saw my husband. We went for a hike yesterday. It was Mother’s Day and I’m recording this in May. But we went for a hike and I told my husband how I like that we’ve been hiking more because what hiking does is it helps them grow their outdoor stamina. And I say hike or exploring like we’re not doing anything too, too hard. The one we did last year is pretty, is challenging for them, but it wasn’t like too bad, but it grows their stamina. I’m tired, I’m hot, my legs hurt, right? But it also grows my outdoor patience.
Cara Harvey 00:19:38 And it lessens my outdoor anxiety because sometimes I want to be like, oh look, we walked. Like. For me, walking has always been purposeful. We walk and we come back. For my kids, taking a walk in the woods is about the adventure. They wanted to go in the creek yesterday. They want to skip rocks like they want to do all these things. So it actually like forces me to slow down. And that was the TikTok I shared. My husband I saw and it said it had someone baking. They were baking with their kids, and the picture said something like, you know, I want my kids to help, but it’ll slow me down. And then the next slide was like, but isn’t that the point? And I was like, oh, right. Like that got me, because that is the point. The point is that I want to slow down and my kids force me in a much needed way to do that, and I’m so thankful for it. So the point of that is, when I have my work day, I try to work late, but I do need to work right.
Cara Harvey 00:20:29 It’s how I make money. I you know, I love my job, but I also need to have an income to, provide for my family. So it’s not like I can just take the entire summer off. So I work late, but I make sure I do a couple things I recommend. If you have a business or you work for yourself, you have an evening reset specifically for your business that you do during your evening routine time. Because again, even when my kids are at camp, I’ll work 9 to 3. I stop at three. I don’t come back, but maybe around 839 before I go hang out with my husband because that’s our time together. I will close some loops right? I have less mental clutter in my brain. I’ll just go through emails real quick. I’ll just check a couple of things I’ll prep for the next day for sure. Asking myself like what didn’t get done today? What needs to get done? Does this have to get done tomorrow? What does my work day look like with my kids around? I always recommend making a list of things you can do with your kids around.
Cara Harvey 00:21:20 First things you need quiet time. So if I look at when I do my weekly planning, I might have like this is just a post-it, but I might have a sheet. And on one side it’ll say, which by the way, is this if you’re watching on YouTube, if you’re listening on the podcast, come watch it on YouTube. But I’ll say, okay, like today, I wanted to record this podcast. This is something I prefer to do when my kids aren’t around. So it’s one of the reasons I’m batching this summer. Right now my kids are in school. My goal is by the time they are done school for the year. I have the entire summer June, July, August already recorded. That’s the plan. So I’m batching a bunch of episodes. I want to do that when they’re not here. Now, what can I do with my kids around? Okay. I wanted to work on this new printable. I could do that with my kids around. Do I prefer to do it without them? Yes, but I can.
Cara Harvey 00:21:59 All right, so this helps me feel more in control, less reactive. I really suggest having a mini end of day like CEO checkout and asking yourself like, what is one thing I need to make sure I focus on for tomorrow? Now an evening reset is going to make your summer feel nice. Don’t feel like you have to say no routines like I want to throw everything to the wild right now because I’m stressed. I’m tired of schedules. I’m tired of all of it. But if I throw all of it out, I’m going to be working so much harder in August to get it all back. Don’t worry about making them perfect, just intentional. Write something to close off the day, something for setting up tomorrow and something for you. All right. I want to invite you to try one right now, this evening that you’re listening to this episode. Get your family involved. Tag me on Instagram. I’m at a purpose driven mom, and I want you to do a little reset. It will feel so much better.
Cara Harvey 00:22:48 The outer clutter makes us very anxious. Just by picking things up, you will feel light. Show notes are going to be a purpose driven romcom podcast for six three. If you try this, please tag me. I’m excited to see it. Have a wonderful day and we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcast. Hit that five star and leave a review and a rating. That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an Make sure you come over and tag me at a Purpose Driven Mom on Instagram and share it with your friends. The best way for us to get this message out there, of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality, is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.
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