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 of Mom Show episode 468. This is a part two of an Ask Me Anything that we did, so if you missed part one, you can go back to last week’s episode or check out the show notes at a Purpose Driven Mom podcast for 67.

Cara Harvey 00:00:57 The show notes will be at a Purpose Driven Mom podcast 468. I had asked in my Facebook community group people to tell me, what’s a struggle, what do you want to pick my brain on? And so last episode and this episode are really answering their questions on things that are top of mind. And if you don’t know, I have a Facebook group. It’s absolutely free. You can come join to search Purpose Driven Mom community and come hang out with us there. I’m going to jump into some of the questions today. I’m going to kick off with Stephanie’s question. And this is a decluttering one right. So she said I’ve got some moving decluttering thoughts. And she really wants to know how to get kids on board with decluttering when they are highly sentimental with everything they’ve ever owned. I have a system for decluttering that works, and I’ve taught it when people are moving, and I think it could help to with the kids. This is a really hard one and this is also a really hard one for us.

Cara Harvey 00:01:46 Now, I know there’s different decluttering thoughts on doing it with your kids without your kids, I always give my kids the option. For example, my kids room is an absolute disaster right now and I said to them that they need to help clean the room, right? That’s like part of their contract on their tablets if they want to. I said I could do it for you, but do not ask for extra time this upcoming weekend because I’m the one who cleaned the room. Then I also tell them, like, if I do it without you though, I kind of get the say I want stays and what goes and that tends to keep them in more involved. But sometimes I do it when they’re not around. One of the things that has helped me, though, when it comes to getting rid of my kids things, is using a holdover bin. I also do this for myself with my clothing, with my kitchen utensils, things like that, and it really, really helps. A holdover bin is essentially it’s a waiting area, if you will.

Cara Harvey 00:02:32 I went through and I decluttered my kitchen, and I had all these kitchen utensils and things that I wanted, and I was like, oh, what if I need it one day? What if I need it one day? So I created a box that I kept, you know, in the office, and it had it in there. Those things, those I don’t use these on a regular basis, but will I need those things that box in particular I kept for, I think I kept for a full year because I was like, I want to see if I’m going to use it within a year. And anything that I realized I needed, I could just go get out of the holdover bin and take. And anything I didn’t use after a year was like, you’re not making this right, like you’re not going to. I think the other piece of this is that mindset of scarcity. Well, what if I get rid of this thing and I need it again? You can get it again.

Cara Harvey 00:03:12 You know, I know it stinks because we’ve spent money on things or we got them as a gift. But depending on the price point, especially a lot of the kitchen things, I’m huge on the thrift store. I’m like, I can I can get it again. So I love a holdover, but I do this for my clothing. One of the ways that I declutter my clothing is I take everything out. I actually just did this. I take everything out and I hang it on like another area I have in my bedroom. It’s like a shelf sort of thing, and I work backwards. So instead of taking things out of my closet, I put things into my closet for the quarter. If at the end of the quarter I don’t use them. Then they go to the donate or the recycle because I’m not going to use these clothing items, right. I find that I also am like trying on the same shirt like three times, trying to make it work and trying to get myself to love it.

Cara Harvey 00:03:55 And if I don’t love it after three tries, it goes in the donate. Do this for your kids things as well. You can give them a hold of resection if they don’t ask for it. So this is I will say if you’re decluttering, maybe without them. Let’s do stuffed animals for example. Your kids love all the stuffed animals. You do the declutter. You take a couple of them, you stick them in a bag, a trash bag, and you put the trash bag in the attic. If your kids do not ask about it or do not, where is that toy? After like 2 or 3 months, you’re probably safe to get rid of it. The other thing that I think is really important, and this helped me teach my kids how to declutter their own things, is the container concept I learned years ago from Dana White from A Slob Comes Clean. She talks about this container, right? So instead of just saying I’m going to declutter my books, I create a container for where my books are going to live.

Cara Harvey 00:04:43 The bookshelf, right? Or my kids have book bins, things like that. Stuffed animals. We have a stuffed animal holder that goes behind like their door. Okay, once those are full, we’re done. You can’t keep anymore. And so we essentially did like a stuffed animal draft. I let them each go back and forth. My kids share a room. Currently. We’re going to be changing that this summer, but my kids share a room and they each went back and forth and they were able to, one at a time, put what stuffed animals they wanted in the holder. Okay, they each got the same amount of space, but sometimes the animals are bigger whatever in the holder. Once the holder was full, they had to look at everything they had left and make a decision. These things do not fit, so they need to go to the donate. Do you want to swap them out for anything else you already put in? My daughter made a swap or two. My son was like, I’m good and we’re able to get rid of a few things.

Cara Harvey 00:05:29 Do that for all of your things because what it’s doing is it’s allowing your kids to make a choice. Now, when it comes to moving your boxes, your container. Right. This is the box we have for this type of toy. This is the box we have for books. Once it is full, it is full and the container is done. So you have to make a decision. I’m not getting rid of all of your books. I’m just saying that this is the space we have for it. And I want you to pick your most favorite ones. You can take anything that doesn’t make it to round one draft, and you could put it in the holdover bin, right, and then rotate it out. You could either donate or use a toy rotation, right. You can have Book Box A and then B, and then C rotate it through. I think the other thing about, especially kids who have this sentimental ties to things is just asking, do you want to take a picture? We do this a lot with things.

Cara Harvey 00:06:18 Now I have two bins or behind me over in the office where I’m sitting with my kids names on them, and that’s where we keep things that they want to keep, like sentimental, etc.. Sometimes, though, what I’ll do is I will ask, do you want to take a picture? And we might put it on the Trello board. If you’ve ever heard of the Class Keeper app by my friend Denise Albright. That’s one. That’s a great one. You can take a picture of it and put it in. Store it in Class Keeper for them. Go ahead and do that. That way it’s I’m not getting rid of this beautiful stick drawing that you made. It’s we’re just going to take a picture of it for now because we don’t have the space for it. And if you want this picture again, I can print it back out, scan it, etc.. Hopefully this helps. I know kids are really tricky, but again, everything comes down to what the system is for it. And the other thing.

Cara Harvey 00:07:02 Time limit, putting a time limit on making the decision. Today we are going to put on a little bit of music and we’re going to go through stuffed animals. Okay. Now this is the box we have for moving. So we have to decide which stuffies are going to come on the move with us. When the box is filled though, the box is filled up. So we want to make sure we pick the ones we love the most. When this music goes off though, we need to be done. So let’s see if we can beat the clock. Let’s see if we can raise the clock and race the song and get done faster. That’s how I would explain it to my kids, right? That was my mom’s voice. That’s how I would explain it to my kids and and that would hopefully help. And hopefully, Stephanie, it helps you or anybody else listening. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:07:52 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 purpose for Mom 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. Next up on our Ask Me Anything. This one’s from Darlene and Darlene asked how I menu plan. And I’m so glad you asked because I was just thinking about talking about this series because I really feel like I have a system that works really well for us. It’s very simple, and if your family doesn’t eat leftovers like mine, it might not work, but I’m going to share it with you.

Cara Harvey 00:08:52 I have found this love of cooking ingredients. Maybe not as much dinners, but, you know, breads, muffins, bagels. Like, I just love cooking this year. I got my sourdough started last week, so I officially am a sourdough mom. It’s just wonderful, right? But dinner vexes me. Sometimes. Dinner feels like a lot of pressure. What are we eating? When are we eating things like that? We often will eat dinner. I’m going to throw all this out there first. We often eat dinner in like, a charcuterie fashion, if you will. My kids can make their own charcuterie plates. My son will put like turkey cheese. He doesn’t like bread. So turkey cheese, olives, pickles, strawberries. You know, he likes salad or romaine lettuce with ranch. But his salad, you know, salad. He’ll make his own plate if he doesn’t want to eat the option that we have. But then he has to make it. And then there’s often times that we meal prep in bulk and then reheat.

Cara Harvey 00:09:42 So we are a big reheat family. It works for us. But I’m gonna talk to you about how I menu plan because I’m about to do it for you. I highly recommend you do a whole month at a time. I’m going to talk about dinner, then we’ll go back to breakfast and lunch. What I do first is I open up a Google doc that has a calendar in it. I’ve saved mine from last year, so I now have. Once June hits, I will. And it’s July when this is airing, but it’s May when I’m recording. I’ll officially have 12 months of menus done, which is just so fun to think about. we also eat really simple. Okay, but here are my steps. You’re going to take your Google doc. You’re going to set it up like a calendar. All right. And just like in my planning process, what I put in are the things that we have that impact dinner. Last Friday, we had my daughter’s cheer banquet. I didn’t need to make dinner.

Cara Harvey 00:10:21 We’re going out for my husband’s birthday. Didn’t need to make dinner. I don’t put sports in there, which I think maybe I should because I’m like, oh, that would be like, we need a quick dinner or we need to eat it like 4 or 430. But I’m not gonna lie, all of my dinners are quick because of what I’m going to talk to you about, about how a meal prep and plan, like nothing’s taking me hours to make, I can I can make everything I have in 40 minutes or less. So I’m not too concerned about about the time, but I put in anything that’s going to impact dinner. We’re going to a baseball game, you know, etcetera, minor league games. We’ll eat dinner there, those going first, then my goal is and I’ve gotten off this the past two months, so I’m excited to get back on this for the summer is I like to try one new recipe a week that I’ve never either made before, or it’s been a while since I’ve made it.

Cara Harvey 00:11:05 Now we eat pretty quote unquote macro friendly in my house. We like to eat high protein meals. My husband and I and I will say this with the kids. I took this picky eating course when my kids were little, and it’s helped me ish because I’m not consistent. It would have helped if I was more consistent, but the phrase that really helped was mom and dad decide what and when we eat, you decide how much. And so the way that I like plate my kids food when it’s dinner is they get what we normally eat. So if I make taco mac and cheese as a favorite for my daughter, not as much my son, but my daughter, right? If I’m making taco mac and cheese, everyone’s gonna get taco mac and cheese on their plate. But my kids might get secondary sides that are like their safe foods, right? Like, I just mentioned those things my son eats the cheese, the salad, whatever. We might have different side dishes to make sure that they’re getting something they want to eat.

Cara Harvey 00:11:51 But the other option is this is it. The other thing we do is like, you wait for your next eating opportunity so you can say that you’re done with dinner. Totally fine with me. My kids have actually like a really healthy relationship with food, which, as someone who’s been overweight since I was about ten, I look at them and I’m like, is this, is this what a healthy relationship with food is like? My kids will have ice cream and they’ll be like, my belly is full and then they won’t finish it. And I’m like, I’ve never, is that real? I would love to be like you. One day I’m working on I’m working on it, but you know what I mean. Like, so we’ve also worked really hard on. You don’t have to finish your plate, but listen to your belly. Like, if your belly is full, your belly is full. And I’ve seen the fruits of that, like I mentioned, like my kids will put down ice cream.

Cara Harvey 00:12:29 Like that’s a big deal. Like they will stop eating a cupcake if they’re full. And I’m really pleased with that. But I will say, hey, at the end of the meal, eating opportunity is done until this time, and then they can have something else to eat in like an hour and a half or two hours or things like that, so they can have another snack. So it’s not like, oh, I’m done, but in 20 minutes I want dessert type of a thing. Okay, so those are just our rules. Guidelines, things what dinner looks like here before we start. So I plan out my food. I try to pick one new ish recipe a week. I follow stay fit mom if you don’t follow. I love Stay fit mom. All the recipes, all the cookbooks. Literally. I’ve never had anything from their cookbook that isn’t delicious, so I just highly recommend it. My kids like it too, and they’re high protein. That’s what I’m saying about protein. They’re high protein foods and they fit into my macros and I feel full and they make a huge portion and they reheat.

Cara Harvey 00:13:18 Great. So anyway, plug for safe and mom love them over there. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll try to pick one recipe that’s like new ish each week that I want to try. So I was actually just looking through I have some recipes from the State Mom cookbook that I’ve never made. There’s like a stuffed shells. My kids have never had stuffed shells. I’ve just never made it. They’re seven and nine and I’ve never made it. But I would like to, so I might look through and pick one of those I haven’t made. Okay, I plop those in first. All right, so that’s four new recipes a month. That is it for me. Then I’m done. So now what I do is I go back to our family favorites. And I tried to pick the ones like the taco mac and cheese sloppy joes. There’s this Tuscan chicken. My kids like to write like those types of things that everybody has spaghetti and meatballs, tacos, you know, etc. so then I go and I put those in because guess what? No one’s going to remember what you cooked three weeks ago, and they’re not going to care in my house at least.

Cara Harvey 00:14:13 So what I’ll do is say I put taco mac and cheese, right? That’s like one of the ones we’ll make. I will write taco mac and cheese in there on whatever day I put it, copy it, and then I’ll put it there again in two weeks. So we’ll eat it twice that month. Copy paste. I will do the same for each of the other recipes. I will then go in and I will put in leftover days. So we eat a lot of leftovers. So if I’m cooking a casserole type dish like a stuffed shells on Sunday, then on Monday we’re going to eat leftovers. On Tuesday I’ll make a new dish. On Wednesday. No. Yes, Monday we’ll eat leftovers. Tuesday we’ll eat a new dish. Wednesday will have leftovers. Thursday I’ll probably put in like an easy, quick food, like the spaghetti and meatballs. I have a good homemade like pizza dough recipe, so maybe we’ll have pizza or something fast or it’s, you know, choose your own. This is where it’s like, just like, let’s reheat some leftovers.

Cara Harvey 00:15:05 What do you guys want to eat? Like, we’ll just piece it together. Friday is another leftovers day, and so is Saturday. Saturday we eat leftovers because we have so many leftovers. So I’m probably making two recipes a week that are like not leftovers, and then one that I might piece together from something else. It works for us. All right. And so I will do the whole month at a time repeating some recipes, and then I print it out. So then dinner is done. And then I also can double make. So if I know that we’re eating taco mac and cheese twice in a month, what I’m going to do is when I go to the grocery store because I’ve already have it planned. So again, I’m system. I’ve taken the step out of writing a grocery list because I’ve already done it. When I meal planned my meal plan, I know what I have to buy. I don’t have to think, oh, what am I making this week? It’s already decided.

Cara Harvey 00:15:48 Decide once, right? And then I’m going to go through and double it. So I’m going to buy double the ground turkey. I know for that one needs some cream cheese. But here’s what’s great. It needs half of a cream cheese bar. Awesome. All by one cream cheese bar. I need, like, tomatoes and I can’t remember anything else that’s in it. Cheese, whatever. So I’ll double the recipe. It takes the exact same amount of time to make double the recipe. Maybe five extra minutes maybe. So I will go ahead and double the recipe, let it cool, freeze it up, and then in two weeks, when it’s time to eat that, I will pull it from the freezer and I don’t even have to make it right. It’s done. I’ve already spent the money on it. I’ve already made it, and I don’t have to think about it. And again, maybe in two weeks we get to it and I have a free schedule and I want to make a fresh taco mac and cheese.

Cara Harvey 00:16:31 Well, then I’ll keep that one in the freezer for next time. Okay, so that’s dinner, breakfast and lunch. When it comes to menu planning, it’s everybody eats kind of what they want ish. So breakfast I pretty much have the same thing. I have two breakfasts or three breakfasts that I like. I like egg whites, cheese, I make bread, it’s delicious. Either sourdough or regular sandwich bread that I make, and a fruit that’s my breakfast. Or I like cottage cheese, some fruit or oatmeal with peanut butter. If you’ve never had peanut butter in your oatmeal. Chef’s kiss. Beautiful. And some fruit. Those are my three preferred breakfasts. I mix and match them. My husband I have no idea actually, what he eats for breakfast. I think he takes a yogurt to work. I don’t actually know. So he takes his breakfast. He does his thing. Again, we are an ingredient type of household, so we always have tons of ingredients around. You just got to make what you want.

Cara Harvey 00:17:15 And then my kids also, you know, I wanted to be that home where like we have one breakfast, but my kids just like different things. And so instead of making it challenging, I know what they like and my meal prep it. So my son’s preferred breakfast are pancakes and fruit or eggs and fruit. We have another rule in our house that we’ve been working on this year with our healthy habits, is that every meal has to have a fruit or a vegetable, so my kids have gotten into that habit. So those are the two that he likes. My daughter likes waffles and fruit cereal. Fruit or scrambled eggs? Fruit. Those are her three. So what I do is I meal prep. So even just before I got on this episode, I noticed my son had one pancake left that I had frozen. So I make them and I freeze them. So while I was eating my own breakfast, I just whipped up some pancakes, got them cooked, and I put them in the freezer so that they’re always there so he can make his own pancakes, because all he has to do is stick one in the microwave.

Cara Harvey 00:18:06 He’s able to do those things and he can have his own breakfast. Waffles. Same thing. Right? I’m teaching them now their own scrambled eggs. They have to do that one with supervision. But we’re getting there and it allows them to be independent. So that’s kind of how we do breakfast. So I really just look at our grocery list. I’ve shared this before on episodes, but we have a shared note, my husband and I. And it has breakfast option or I’m sorry, it has our grocery list on there. And inside that grocery list, it has everything we typically eat in a week and then I’ll go through. I typically do the grocery shopping, but if I’m not around and he’s doing it, we’ll go through and just look in the fridge, in the cabinets and be like, oh, do we need diced tomatoes? Like diced tomatoes is something we use a lot, so it’s always on the list, but sometimes we don’t need it. So if I don’t need it, it gets an asterisk.

Cara Harvey 00:18:42 If I do, it doesn’t. So then that way any of us can shop. So I always have eggs and flour and those things on my list. I just don’t always need it. As for lunch, my daughter has decided she prefers school lunch, so I let her go. With hot lunch, she packs a couple snacks. Cool. I’ll talk about summer in a second. My son likes the exact same thing pretty much every day in his bento box, which is his little charcuterie board. It’s literally hard boiled eggs, a little turkey, some cheese, some olives, some pickles, and a fruit every day. That’s what he likes. So that’s what he has for lunch. It’s easy. He doesn’t mind. I’m not mixing it up. I know he’s gonna eat it now. When we’re home in the summer, it’s a little different on the weeks day of camps. I have to send them with it otherwise. And so I will plan the weeks that they have camps similar to how I plan the school year.

Cara Harvey 00:19:25 But if it’s a day where we’re all home, I might plan. We’ll probably have a little bit more of a lighter lunch, so this will be more charcuterie board style. If a kid wants nuggets, they can. My my kids have been boycotting nuggets lately, which is fine, but like, not fine because it’s an easy lunch. If they want a sandwich or whatever, we’ll just kind of roll with it. I don’t plan lunch out too much. And myself, I eat pretty much the same thing every day. I’m very creature of habit again. I’m really trying to stick to my macros. So now that I know what works, I try to keep it status quo as much as possible. But if you’re curious of my go to lunch, I buy chicken apple sausage from Aldi. They have like a four pack. So this is my lunch Monday through Thursday, and then I’ll mix it up on Fridays. Or like one of the other days of the week with edamame. It’s been my newest on ladies.

Cara Harvey 00:20:06 Fiber is so important, and so I’m trying to find things that are high in fiber. So I like Aldi. I shop at Aldi. They have steamed edamame like in a frozen bag, and one bag is like 70 calories and so much protein and so much fiber. So or not one bag, half of a bag. So I eat half of a bag, half a bag. Edamame every day. Blackberries I found are very high in fiber, so I eat a pint of blackberries every single day. And then I’ll probably have like, grape tomatoes. I like to snack on carrots, cucumbers, and then I might have roast some potatoes or that’s that’s what I’m having for lunch today. I’m trying to think what else I do. So sometimes I’ll have a sandwich. Like if we have sandwich bread, I’ll just make a turkey sandwich for lunch. Keep it simple. We keep lunches very simple. So that’s how I menu plan. Hopefully that gave you some ideas. You know I also, I’ll talk about meal prep real quick, even though you didn’t ask.

Cara Harvey 00:20:52 But I’ve been thinking about this. I cook something every day, and this is one of the reasons I find that I’m not as stressed out about, like getting everything like meal, my meal prep, my weekend meal prep is about 30 to 60 minutes, right? depending on how much I have to make. But it’s because I also take 15 minutes basically every day to make something. So on Monday we were out of chocolate chip cookies. I this year my goal was to transition my kids from less store bought processed foods to more homemade food, like from whole ingredients. And then I’m going to start to transition that over to healthier options like less sugar, like the chocolate chip cookies I make my kids have a cup of sugar and a cup of brown sugar. Like they’re not healthy, but they’re healthier than the Chips Ahoy at the store. So I feel better about it. So I make a ton of frozen. I like flash freeze them, so I make the cookie dough, I roll it up, I stick it in the freezer, already rolled up balls, and I put them in the freezer right, so I can flash freeze them so they don’t get smushed.

Cara Harvey 00:21:46 And then I put them in a freezer bag and they live in my freezer. So every couple of days I’m making like my kids will house them. We actually have to had to hide them at one point because they were going through a dozen a day. Speaking of not healthy. So I have to ration them a little bit, but every 2 to 3 days I’m making another dozen cookies. And they’re homemade, right? But they don’t take as long. They take long the first time I have to make the four dozen, because I make four dozen at a time. That’s what the recipe is. And then freeze them. And then that four dozen bag lasts me two weeks. Rinse and repeat. So Monday I pop some of those in. Now we have cookies. Okay, took me 15 minutes. I don’t even have to do anything since I remade the dough yesterday. We were out of banana bread and we had some perfect banana bread. I make a great banana bread so I went ahead and made some banana bread.

Cara Harvey 00:22:29 Took me 15 minutes. Just now I made some pancakes. Now I also have a list of all the things that I make. So I know, I know for a fact that we are out of bagels, right? So I want to make some bagels next. So that’s my next plan. I also got a gift for my team for my birthday that I haven’t gotten to cook yet, which is a cinnamon bun kit. So that’s on my list. If I have a day where I need to cook something, I’m almost out of my sourdough loaf, so I need to start my sourdough. So every single day I just take 15 minutes and I make something and I freeze it, I freeze it, or I put it somewhere and it really does help because it just allows it to take a little bit less time. I want to pause real quick and tell you about one of my incredible friends, Denise, and what she’s doing over at her site. Denise. Albert, if you’re looking to declutter your busy mom mind and your home, you’ve come to a place.

Cara Harvey 00:23:12 From juggling family schedules, meal planning, budgeting, and more. This is going to help you get all the solutions in one spot. Listen, Denise is a mom of three. She understands what it’s like. And in this digital age, downloading all of your thoughts and your plans to your mind onto paper can make it feel like it’s 1997, right? But we know what it’s like to have a clear head. You can get planners, tools, and her incredible app where you can organize all of your kids photos, artwork, and more. If you’re trying to keep your space cleared and get rid of the paper clutter, you’re going to want to check out all the Denise has to offer. Her app has been a game changer. I will get pictures sent over from the teacher and I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to forget about them so I can store them in the app, label them first grade Isaiah and go back to them every single year. She’s got a solution to keep the kids memories in a place, and not all the paper drawings of the Pokemon that I don’t need anymore.

Cara Harvey 00:24:06 Her Class Keeper app is a game changer. No more piles, no more glue guns to make scrapbooks, and your mom guilt for not having it all beautifully organized. I want you to go over to a purpose driven mom. That’s a purpose of.

Cara Harvey 00:24:20 Her mom keeper. That’s going to link you over to all of Denise’s free printables to get organized in your routines together. All of the incredible journals and planners she has, and her incredible Class Keeper app. That’s a purpose driven mom.

Cara Harvey 00:24:38 All right, I’m going to move through on my next question, because I feel like I took a really long time on that one. Sorry. I was just so passionate about menu planning because I used to complicate it, I think. All right. This one comes from Amy. How do I get important tasks like updating the budget done at the end of a long workday when my brain wants to check out? Great question. I do it in the beginning of the day. Now, I used to think that I would have to do checking in on my goals, planning my day, my budget, reconciling at the end of every day.

Cara Harvey 00:25:02 But I was exhausted and I didn’t want to do it. So I swapped all of those types of important planning tasks to the next morning. I know that it’s nice to close out your day, and I do. I look at my schedule at the end of the night, but in the morning to go through and check off my Trello every morning, one of my things is I finish my workout and while I’m like, cooling off, I just open my computer. I have I reconcile my personal accounts, my business accounts, and anything I have on my business credit card. I just look at all three. I make sure everything’s updated in my app. It takes me five minutes, but I do it in the morning when my brain is fresh, when I’m in a good mood, and when I’m not so tired. What I recommend you do is you make a list of all these important tasks that you really want to get done right. Make sure you have a good list for it and ask yourself, can these be done at a different time of day? If you come find me anytime after 8 p.m., guys, I’m done.

Cara Harvey 00:25:48 We’ve just had a long day. Now I can’t wait for summer. Now, I know this is recording summer, but I’m thinking about school year where we’re at. We’ve had a long day and I’m exhausted. And we just got home. I think about Monday night, right? I had a full workday, did my normal mom stuff. Went to Girl Scouts, led my Girl Scout meeting. Got home at 830. I don’t want to do anything right. Same yesterday. Long day. We went to baseball. By the time we came home, I actually did have things to do. So then I had more things I had to get done. I don’t want to do my administrative tasks. That’s what I call this. So ask yourself, can my administrative tasks be done in the morning? Can they be done at my lunch break? Can I check in different times? If you’re finding that you’re so exhausted at that end of the day that you’re just not doing it at all? One of my audits for your goals is to ask yourself, can I do this at a different time of day? We get so stuck in things, have to look a certain way or be a certain way, or they don’t count.

Cara Harvey 00:26:34 Can you instead move it? That’s just like my my biggest tip. Can I move it or can I delegate it? All right. Let’s get to this last question we have on here. And that’s from Maria. And it’s tips for staying organized with a no school Schedule. Here is what’s happening. Here’s the reality of summer for some of us. Our kids are at camp and it looks like a traditional school year. My kids will do a multiple weeks at camp that look like that for some of us and me. Half the summer they’re home. So what do you do when you have no anchors? Now, I actually attract a lot of people to the Purpose Driven Mom Club that are either empty nesters or grandmas, and they have a more open schedule. And one of the things I make sure I tell them is you have to have anchors in your day. You might not have the traditional anchors that I have of picking my kid up from school, taking them school. But you eat right, so you’ve got anchors.

Cara Harvey 00:27:22 This is important. Recommend you time block. Go into your day and ask yourself, all right I’m going to make a schedule that goes from the time I wake up or even breakfast, right? The time I wake up to breakfast. If you don’t eat right away, then because I don’t eat until about 9:00 and I get up around six, right. So I have that block. Then from the time I have breakfast to lunch, lunch to maybe a midday snack, snack to dinner, dinner to bed, Give yourself and your kids anchors because otherwise the day is going to be like, what are we doing today? Right now, I’ve done a lot of episodes on this that have aired in the past few weeks, so definitely go back and listen to those. But making your kids a visual schedule will help them know what to anchor into. So I use kind of big pieces of paper, and I draw out a schedule that I can put on, like the fridge. I like the big paper, but you could do it smaller and just print it out so they know what’s going on during each time.

Cara Harvey 00:28:10 Block theme them out. Oh, okay. This is our outside time. This is our friends time. This is when when my daughter, for example, she is going to keep her cello over the summer so she can practice. We need to schedule cello time, right. So I might say like twice a week. This is cello time, right? Give anchors. It doesn’t have to be structured. Like now we’re doing reading. Like, maybe you’re not homeschooling and you’re just home, but if you don’t give them some anchors and you don’t give them themes where you say, this is where what’s going to happen in this block, your day is just going to go by in a breeze, and you’re not going to have any structure. If you’re working from home, you need to do the same. I’ve given myself some parameters around when I’m working. Give yourself those boundaries. Listen, this was a really fun ask me anything. I love these types of episodes. I don’t do them a lot.

Cara Harvey 00:28:53 So make sure you’re over in the Facebook group search purpose driven mom, come on over where you can ask your question. Next. Show notes are at a Purpose Driven mom.com for 68. I hope you’re enjoying your summer and we’ll talk 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.