Cara (00:00.482)

Welcome to the Purpose Dream Mom Show episode 523. As we are in our back to school series, we are going to talk about a Sunday reset that you can do that’s gonna help the back to school season and beyond feel really good. We are gonna talk about how you can spend 30 to 60 minutes each Sunday, and again, caveat, it’s always just a calendar, right? You could do it Friday, Saturday, but I do mine on Sundays, making a plan that’s gonna help you feel more prepared, less overwhelmed, and ready for the week ahead. If you’ve ever started Monday feeling already behind, the laundry

overflowing, you forgot that somebody needed that permission slip signed, a homework thing is due. What are we having for dinner? And then by Tuesday you’re like, what am I doing? You’re gonna love this, right? You’re gonna love this episode. Show notes are at a purpose of your mom.com. pack is 523. And for years, I would think like I can’t wait for Monday. Monday’s my fresh start. Monday’s when I’m gonna get it all done. I would have that Monday mentality. But what I’ve realized is that when I start my weekly process on Sunday,

Not by I gotta take my whole day, right? It’s the only thing I’m doing, I’m spending hours, etc. And sometimes, and I’ll talk a little bit about this today, too. Like sometimes I start things on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I was able to get things done and start my runway in a way that I didn’t need to waste Monday morning getting things done. I was able to just get started.

That’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Not about spending your whole Sunday meal prepping, right? We are gonna talk about meal prepping, but that’s not it, right? It’s simple reset routines that you can start on Friday if you like. And I’ll tell you which ones I start Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to get it together. We call it the Sunday reset because sometimes it just happens on Sunday, but again, you can start early. Now Mondays feel really hard because we’re coming off a little bit lack of a routine, right? We’ve got less structure. They’re full of activities for us, right? We’re running

The soccer field and this and that. and and for me too, once cheer comp season starts, January through April, like my weekends are so challenging because we’re traveling. and even if we’re just traveling an hour, I think the closest we’ve ever been is 30 minutes, you know, and the furthest, like you know, Florida. So we’re traveling a lot. So having to come back and then just start in is a struggle because what I found when I was struggling, and maybe you find the same, is that most of us don’t.

Cara (02:24.296)

Have a time management problem, we have a transition problem. We’re not transitioning from the weekend to the weekday in an effective system that lets us feel good. Schedules are different, you’re staying up later, you’re waking up earlier or later, depending on what your weekend is. It’s spontaneous, right? Mondays hit.

Time for school, everybody, right? We gotta jump out of bed. Now I gotta get back on with work. now the activities. Look how busy the calendar is. I’ve got 800 appointments, right? Let’s get all the meals ready. I’ve got deadlines. I’ve got things to do. And when you don’t reset over the weekend in a systemized way, again, it’s not spending the whole day, like we’re still having fun, but systemized way, Monday becomes decision overload. And we already know that our brain doesn’t want to do this. A little preparation over the weekend is what’s going to help us have less stress tomorrow. So I have a five-part Sunday reset.

But again, I want to talk about why I do some things before Sunday and why I do them on Sundays. Some things I like to start early. My weekly planning, I like to start on Fridays. My meals in particular. If I haven’t done my week my monthly meal plan, I like to make my meal plan on Fridays, shop on Saturdays, cook on Sundays. I want to stretch them out. So I want you to think about all the things I’m talking about today and think how can I make this work for my life? You don’t have to do them all on Sunday, but you can do them in chunks. And that’s the thing. We’re gonna have you focus.

Focus on five different priorities today that are gonna help the week feel better, especially with the changing in the different schedules. And I know for us too, we might get stuff a lot of days off in September for holidays. we start and then it’s Labor Day and then we stop, you write like so it’s important that we’re looking at schedule. All right, step one of your routine, and again, this part I do on Fridays, and I do this part on Fridays, but again, Sunday mentality, because I want to get ahead of anything I need to solve scheduling-wise. If I notice that

Both my kids have an activity the same time or day. I don’t want to wait till Sunday to figure out how we’re getting them there. So on Fridays, I will look at my schedule for the next week and review it. So if we have an overlap, if I need help, if I need to my husband and I have to schedule things, I have work, he has a meeting, etc., we can talk about it early. But you can do these things in 10 minutes on a Sunday as well. But I I just want to say this is one of those things I start early. I want you to look at the week. Pull out your calendar, your work calendar, your personal calendar, your kids’ activities calendar, your partner’s calendar, sync them all together. What are

Cara (04:43.246)

The school events I have. One of the reasons this is helpful to do for the back to school season is because when stuff comes up, you want to schedule. Now, I found this in May Cember much much more helpful than I always needed in September, but we’ve got con my kids play as multiple instruments, she’s in choir. Different concerts, different days. Sometimes the concerts are at night, but in spring concert season, I don’t know if anyone else experienced this. again, my daughter plays the cello, the trombone, and she’s in choir. They’re doing concerts at the schools, so they’ll bust them to some of the other elementary schools to play. right. So she needs to be in her concert.

Concert wear multiple times. So it helps. But look at the school events you have going on. I also want you to see what practices based on your kids’ schedule and what they’re doing. We try typically try to keep it to one sportslash activity at a time, not counting my kids’ stuff they do at school, like a before school or after school club, because they’re right away. because my kids have decided to pick intensive sports. Now, last spring my son played baseball, travel baseball for the first time. He does not, he did not have a great experience. He does not want to play in the fall. Fine with me. So we’re trying soccer. It’s new, it’s a new schedule.

It’s not a travel team, just rec. So I think it’ll be one practicer in the week and weekends, but how schedule yet. My daughter does competitive cheer. That’s three practices a week, right? And then even more when we get to comp season. So I need to make sure I’m looking because sometimes it’ll be like, yes, practices Monday, Thursdays, but also here’s a pop-up practice on a Friday, right? Like those things just change and happen. She also does private lessons. So it’s just trying to fit all of it in is important. What kind of meetings do you have going on? What’s your work schedule look like? this is gonna be different.

a different need for you depending on your type of work, right? But I have a variable schedule, which means every day is a little bit different. Now I have standing calls and appointments that I do for purpose different mom, but I also have two other jobs. So I run a website over at MacaroniKid where I help parents find local events and I market with businesses. And I work and teach character development lessons with a company, a nonprofit called Girls Empowered. I have three work schedules to go around. Now, while I most of my APDM stuff is pretty consistent, I do a lot of calls for MacaroniKid.

Where I’ll call the karate studio and we’re on the phone for 20 minutes talking about how we can work together and da da da. So every week is different. I need to check my schedule to make sure I’m not double booked and to make sure I have time and space for things. I also want you to see if you have any appointments, especially the back school season. We gotta go to the dentist, we gotta go to the eye doctor, we gotta get all these things done. Take 10 minutes and look at your schedule. I promise future you will thank you.

Cara (07:15.746)

When you’re doing that, I want you to also ask yourself a couple questions. Is this week feel different for any reason? I

Feel like once I adapted that mentality of like every week is different, I felt less frustrated when it was different. So what does make this week different? We’re some places I might feel a little extra rushed. I noticed that, and this has happened to us a couple times with after school programs. So I let my kids the school programs are great, they’re free. so I let my kids do a lot of them. But sometimes we have to say no. For example, my daughter wanted to do art club last year, it was on Thursdays. Now she has practice, she had cheer practice six to eight on

Thursdays, and she started doing private lessons a half hour before. So she had to be at cheer at 5 30, which means we have to we live five minutes from the gym, so that’s good, but we’d have to eat dinner early, like all those things. So when art club came up and it ended at five, it was from four to five. She was like, I was so proud of her because she was Mom, I just think it’s too much to put on my schedule to have things on both the edges. I was Yes, it is. I’m glad you recognize that, right? But there are some times where it happens that way. There are some times where one kid has a thing and another kid has a thing, right? So where am I gonna be rushed? Identify it early.

So that you can wrap your brain around it and what’s going to need a little bit of extra preparation? Where am I going to have to, look, we have two days in a row of soccer. I need to watch the uniform two days in a row. Where do those things happen? Then I want you to go through the planning process. Now I have a planning process that we teach in the Purpose Tripper Mom Club. you know, it’s a Sunday, a weekly planning process. But I want you to think about what are the things I got to get done. Go through and ask yourself, what are those top priorities? We call them your growth goals that need to get the most of my time. What are the things

Things I have to accomplish for work, my Q1s, and I have to make sure I prioritize those. Where do my personal goals fit in? Remember those? We gotta put those in too. And what are some family responsibilities? Now I talked to them blue in the face about theme time blocking, so you can go back and listen to episodes about that. I want you to assign these different tasks, your habits, your actions towards your goals, all of those things to specific days and to specific time blocks. I want you to say from 12 to 3 on Thursday, I’m gonna work on this work project or this personal goal.

Cara (09:22.544)

This way you’re not working off a huge to-do list. You have a realistic prioritized plan.

Every task doesn’t have to happen on Monday. And I know we think it does. It’s the new week. I gotta get it done. It doesn’t. When you’re looking and you have I use a simple Google Doc for my planner. When I’m looking homelessly at the week, I can look at after my appointments and I can be like, all right, this is the time I have. This is where it’s gonna fit. Once your plan feels settled, your body, your nervous system will regulate a bit, and then it’s time to do some of the other things. Meals. All right, we don’t need Pinterest worthy meals sometimes. We just gotta make it happen. Now, when I am in like my zone, I’m doing a month.

Dinner plan. I sit, I make all my dinner plans for the whole month. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to worry about it. then on Sundays when I go shopping and I’m meal prepping and everything, it’s just easy, it’s done. But if you have it and you’re looking at the week, I want you to ask yourself, what are we what are we eating for the week? Plan your meals now.

I loathe making dinner. Now I here is this funny. I like to bake a lot. I enjoy making bread. I like cooking when it’s not pressured. There’s something about dinner. There’s something about having to decide what everyone’s gonna eat that stresses me out and makes it not enjoyable. So if I can sit on Sunday and ask myself these questions and not to think about it, chef’s kiss. Love it, right? So

The question becomes, what’s for dinner? Now here’s how I would start with that. I would look at your week and I would say, All right, where are my practice nights? Where are my busy nights? And I would write S on them for slow cooker. Because if I know that we gotta be out on the field early, and this this actually happened, my son doesn’t play football anymore, but he played football two years ago. And you know, it was a lot. Football’s a lot. If you’ve ever had kids who play football, especially in August, it’s four nights a week, six to eight, and you’re like, What? But to get your pads on, you gotta be there by like 5:30 to be able to get your parking, to get your pads on, to get

Cara (11:12.112)

my god, it’s a whole thing. So we started eating early bird dinners after that. And I honestly I love it. Like we eat early and and I don’t hate it at all because we gotta be where we gotta be most of the time by six. So I want you to ask yourself, if we have a practice night, we have something busy, I’m gonna be home from work late, etc. Put just SC on there. Okay, so you know for a fact you need a slow cooker meal to make it easy. So you can dump it in the morning and go.

Then I also want you to look through and ask yourself which meals can I have leftover nights? If I’m making, so today, for example, I’m making like a honey barbecue chicken in the crock pot because it’s 105 degrees today, and I was like, I’m not putting my oven on. So I know that we’ll have leftovers for that. So I might put honey barbecue chicken today, leftovers tomorrow. That’s how I typically do it. If I’m making a meal, then the next day we eat leftovers of it. It is what it is. Maybe your family doesn’t like that. So you decide which are my leftover nights, and then what do we have?

Have that I can make. Where is dinner gonna go? Reducing the daily meal decisions saves so much mental energy. Because then you take that and you’re like, all right, well, what groceries do I need? I’m gonna go on Sunday to go get them all. And I know the grocery store on Sunday is not great, so automate that out, delegate that to a meal service if you don’t feel like going to the store, get some Instacart in here. But I’m gonna go and get that done. I’m gonna have my meals planned, I’m gonna be grocery shopped so that I’m not worrying about it. So, and and here, I’ll tell you, I did not think.

do this today.

I’ve not been following my systems. It’s I’m like summer mode, right? So I’m like ready to get back on. So I realized I’m like, we need have dinner this morning or last night. I was like, what should we do? So I I knew I had chicken thighs in the freezer. and I didn’t feel like going grocery shopping yet. Because I was like, I’m trying to extend my grocery budget, like eat from what we have. So I took the girl the chicken thighs out and I like, I’ll figure that out tomorrow. So this morning I’m sitting there and I’m like, what are we gonna have for dinner? Again, not following my system. And I was like, we’ll do like I do like a honey garlic chicken. It’s just like honey.

Cara (13:08.068)

Garlic, soy sauce. Easy. Shred it, put it with some rice bowls, right? Good. So I’m like, cool. So just now, before I started recording this episode, I took the crock pot out, put the chicken in, started putting the spices in the honey, and I’m like, ugh, we don’t have any soy sauce, do we? Now

I can only laugh because my husband w did go to the grocery store this morning because he needed something. And he texted me and said, What do you need? And I was like, I don’t know because I wasn’t following a system. If I had just tak followed my system, if I had pre planned what was for dinner and he had said, What do you need, he could have grabbed the soy sauce, right? So instead I like, Alright, well I already put the honey in there and then I found a thing of barbecue sauce. I honey, barbecue, chicken, it is so that’ll be what’s for dinner. But thinking through those processes allows you to not be stressed out and it saves the men’s load.

The other thing I highly recommend you do on Sundays is a home reset. This will take a little bit longer, 15-20 minutes. Choose your most high impact filled tasks. Laundry is a big one for me. Now my kids will do their own laundry, but sometimes they don’t. Their main responsibility is when I know I’m low on something, I have to like do my laundry or say I need laundry done or something. Because we get to moments where I don’t know how many underwear and here it is. And that’s a you problem because you should have said something, right? So

Laundry. Get the laundry done. Do a kitchen reset. The kitchen is where you spend the most time of your day. So clean off your flat surfaces. make sure that the kitchen counters ready to go so that your homework station is ready to go, right? Make sure the backpacks are filled, cleaned, whatever you do for the week. get the water bottles filled and in the fridge. Do these things to make less decisions tomorrow. Also don’t forget charging your devices. You know, my kids’ Chromebooks need to be charged for school and how often we forget to put them on or if they don’t get on. Sometimes we have such busy weeks.

That like Fridays, we’ll come home. This happened to us like multiple times last year. That’s why I knew the year was bananas. We would come home Fridays, we’d have to run out to do something. So backpacks didn’t even get unpacked. And then if we didn’t unpack them right away, they just kind of sat there. And then I was like, crud, the lunches are still in here from Friday, right? Like, and then Sunday we’re trying to charge the Chromebooks. Like it happens to all of us, but spend a little bit of time, Kara talked myself too, getting that ready. If you want to pack any lunches, meal prep any of those things. I want you to focus on the space.

Cara (15:22.992)

That you’re gonna use on Monday to make the week feel lighter and delegate. Your kids can help, your kids can charge their own devices. You know, I make my kids plug with their stuff in, and if their stuff is not plugged in, they get in trouble at school. That’s a that’s a personal consequence, right? Like it’s not my my job is not to plug in your computer, right? That’s your job. And so I think helping your kids be more independent that way also takes the load off you.

Cara (16:06.434)

Now before you close out your Sunday, you’ve done a little meal prep, you’ve got some things planned, you got the clothes ready for the week, reset yourself. Take a breath, right? How am I feeling?

Like, what do I need this week to feel like my best self? Is there places I can build in some rest and some margin and some joy for myself? What help do I need to be able to feel successful this week? What else would make this week feel like a win? Your weekly planning isn’t just about the productivity. It’s about being intentional so you can go into the week feeling good.

The secret ingredient here with the Sunday plan though is flexibility because it’s gonna happen. Every Sunday is a little bit different. Now, we typically, if we’re in town, we go to church, we come home, we do these things, but my daughter has practice Sundays. So Sundays feel a little bit different sometimes. Sometimes my son’s gonna have a soccer game, like things are just gonna feel different. And I think one of the mistakes I notice mom’s making is we make the schedule and there’s no margin for real life. Kids getting sick.

Meetings going long, having to do work. sometimes I have so I do Sunday planning every Sunday night at 8 30. Now that I’m helping run the Girl Scout Council in my town, I am leading Sunday meetings once a month. It’s it’s gonna change things up. Sometimes my meetings gonna go long, someone’s gonna want to talk to me, things like that. So instead of planning out every single minute, I want you to leave some margin. A successful week, it is not one where everything goes perfect. It’s where your plan can bend and you can get back on track.

Don’t let your Sunday reset just feel like another chore. Make it fun. One of the things that gets me through doing anything in my home is my AirPods and my book.

Cara (17:41.292)

Put on a book, get in some music, romanticize it, right? If you’re sitting there with your planner, like grab your coffee, get a candle, like make it fun. Include your kids in it too. Put some fun music on. Dance around while you’re doing it. When planning becomes a ritual instead of a task I’ve got to get done, you’re more likely to stick with it. Before you jump into your Sunday reset, just a couple things I wanna throw out that that can make it easier and some mistakes to avoid. One, doing it all on Sunday, right? I don’t do it all on Sunday.

I maybe map it out over the week. Maybe Saturday I’m like, let’s do all the laundry Saturday and pick out the clothes for the week. Maybe Saturday I do my meal plan instead. Friday I look at the calendar, right? So don’t feel like you have to do the quote Sunday reset on Sunday. You can stretch it out. The goal is not to exhaust yourself. It’s to prepare. And if you have a Sunday where you have the time to do it, do it on a Sunday. If you don’t spread it out. I also don’t want you to make unrealistic plans. I’m gonna do 15 hours of prep and get everything ready on a Sunday, because you know you’re not gonna do that, right?

I always will be like, I’ll do that over the weekend. No, I’m not, right? So make it realistic for yourself. Give yourself some breathing room. And make sure you’re not ignoring the other priorities you need. When it comes to resetting, don’t forget that fifth part of your ritual. What do I need? That will allow you to remember that this isn’t just about gotta get it all done. It’s about enjoying a system for you.

Cara (19:08.662)

This week I want you to not work to build a perfect routine. Set aside just thirty minutes, right? And see what you can get done. Put in five minute timers. Review my calendar. Okay.

See how long it takes you too. Because the the first time you do it is gonna take much longer until you create systems, right? Plan out my week. Plan out my meals, tidy my high impact spaces and check in. And then see how Monday feels. Now this episode’s airing on a Monday, so you have the whole week to think about what you want this to look like. Remember that planning, it’s not about controlling every moment of your day. It’s about reducing the number of decisions you have to make. It is a gift. Sunday reset is a gift. Less stress, more clarity.

You’re gonna be like, thank you, Kara, from last week, who did this. All right. Check out show notes at a purpose of her mom.com slash podcast 523 and have a great week.

Cara (20:04.918)

Recording