Sunday Randoms: One Week Left to Get My Sh*t In Order
The Kids Are Headed Back to School & I’m Headed Into Busy Season
For those of us with school age children (in states that don’t follow the “after Labor Day” start to school) Back to School Week is nearly upon us. I’m doing my best to embrace the seasonality. However, I’m also hitting the end of the runway for spacious reframing before my busy season. Now’s the time I’m turning back to old checklists, looking back at what I managed to complete over the summer, and hoping to implement new practices and behaviors.
If you’re in the same boat, maybe this post will help you too! If not, maybe my silly frenetic nature will still bring you some amusement.
Hitting the Back to School Checklist
I’m not going to share my full list because I think some things are heavily dependent on the type of school (Public vs. Private vs. Home) and the age of the kiddos (Preschool vs. Elementary vs. Middle School vs. High School). But I definitely have repeat items for each year, and I keep a reusable list in Notion for this reason (it ensures I don’t forget to buy new socks, for instance!)
Most important — for me — is reducing decision fatigue. Fall is my busy season at work. So, my resources (especially mental) are pretty depleted. As a result, I lean heavily into automation. Here’s two things I preset.
Daily Clothes Packets
My kiddos’ school requires uniforms, so this is a little easier to manage, but I essentially pre-pair socks, underwear, and uniforms into “packets” each Sunday. This way we can just grab a stack of clothes each day without rummaging around for each item in the appropriate drawers… or the clean laundry pile. I came up with this mid-year last year — around the time I realized I was wasting my time folding the kids’ non-uniform clothes each week. I am 100% one of those moms that lets their kids keep a “clean laundry basket,” and I don’t mind owning it. Now I only bother folding the school uniforms.
Meal Plan for the Kids
I keep a rotating meal plan so that I’m not standing in my kitchen each morning (or night) wondering what I should feed the kids. I’ll subsist on low-carb avocado toast (like a proper Millennial) if I need to, but the kids need balanced meals. Last year I regenerated their meal plan each week, because I wanted a lot of variety in the food combinations and I was still testing out which snacks they liked the most. This year I’m using a quarterly plan that repeats 3 times. I think it will be a good middle ground and reduce my weekly task load.
Before the End of Summer Checklist
I had a brief list of things I wanted to complete before the end of summer. Most of them were really practical things that had been drawn out much too long (😅), and I couldn’t bear the idea of them stretching into the next school year. Things like:
Building the bunk bed my husband and I gave the kids as a Christmas gift.
This was an item I tried to delegate to a handyman but, it’s a little harder to come by those in Nashville than it was in LA. So, I finally caved and built it myself (all hail ratcheting Hex/Allen-wrenches...) I figured the kids needed some adjustment time from their cribs-turned-toddler-beds before school started. (And, yes, I stretched the living hell out of the lifespan of those toddler beds.)
Fixing the garage door remote.
My husband and I spent months calling one another whenever we were coming/going. Or, if we were out together, we’d send someone to the front door of the house to come all the way down to the garage and open it manually (same in reverse to go out). Total pain.
Giving my laundry room a “glow-up”.
I don’t know about you, but my laundry room is the space in my house where all the random things get shoved when the housecleaners are coming…. It’s also the natural home of: Recycling, Cat Litter Box, Paper Shredder, Laundry Machines, Cleaning Supplies, Picnic Items, Water Distillers, Limited Use Kitchen Appliances, etc. I should probably call it the “Utility Room.” But, for all the things it does, and the amount of time I spend in there, it was way too crammed and not at all optimized. Now it’s functioning a bit better.
Part of my glow-up involved adding live plants with grow lights
The list also included routine items like cleaning the fridge, organizing my closet, and detailing the car, as well as fixing that silly thousand dollar mistake and improving my deck life.
Of course, there were some things I didn’t get to
Making Low-Carb Gochujang
This is a fun item I put in the list, but it didn’t pan out. I’ve been slowly amassing the required ingredients to make a low-carb version of the classic Korean chili paste (called Gochujang). However, the lowest carb replacement for the miso (typically made from soybeans) is chickpeas. Unfortunately, chickpea miso was out of stock for a loooong time. I finally got some about a week ago, but I haven’t been able to set aside the time to make the paste — And, being honest, the paste is just the first step of my actual goal: making my favorite summertime Korean dish Bibim Guksu (Spicy Cold Noodles).
Photo and recipe from Meat-Free Keto Creating Proper Blackberry Supports
I have several palettes (whose wood I intend to re-purpose) and I bought a chop-saw — to cut the wood to make the supports — but I never got around to building them. Currently, next year’s floricanes are wound through metal trellises, same as I did last year. This is “okay”, but it’s harder to apply bird netting to the trellises than it would be to a proper blackberry structure. Maybe I’ll get to it in the spring.
Photo and Plan from Homestead and Chill Completing the Laundry Room Glow-Up
I did a lot, but I didn’t get around to addressing the weirdest thing about my laundry room: the cabinets have no cabinet pulls. I don’t know if this was an intentional move by the prior owners or an oversight by the prior owners. I selected some classic pulls that will look nice on the shaker cabinets, but since the cabinets have no pilot holes (meaning, I need to do some drilling before I can attach them), my cabinets are still pull-less. I expect this item to roll-over onto my winter break list.
The lack of cabinet pulls in my laundry room Figuring out a system for the kids schoolwork
If you have wonderful suggestions, feel free to share. I go through spurts where I’m great clearing out the clutter as it’s coming in (math assignment? straight into the recycling. Pretty drawing of a house? straight into the collection box). And I also go through periods where I simply can’t compete with 40 pages of paper entering my household… and everything gets shoved in a reusable tote bag for later appraisal. I have 3 bags’ worth from last year (my former best friend calls these “bags of shame” — I don’t disagree). I guess I’ll have another 3 bags at the end of this year!
Considering Some New Practices
Increasing My Reusable Snack Bags
I’m planning to buy some additional reusable snack bags. Last year there were a few times my ecological concerns lost out against my “time-spent-cleaning-reusable-bags”… I’m proud of my overall reduction of single-use plastic, but cleaning peanut butter from a silicone snack bag mid-week is not at the top of my list. I think I’m going to buy a few more so I can cover all 5 school days without washing. (I like these better than these, for those who are interested, based on ease of cleaning.)
Pre-Packing the Kids’ Snacks
After I buy more reusable bags, and implement my meal plan, I’m thinking I might pre-pack the snacks the same way I pre-packaged the uniforms. I do this for my husband when I’m going out of town, so he can just toss things into the kids’ lunchboxes each day, but it takes a fair amount of time to set up… which is where I always fail at meal prep; it’s just not how I want to spend my weekend. I might try it for a week or two and see how I get on.
What are you reflecting on this season? What are you proud you completed? What new things do you think you’ll try? I love ideas, so I’m always happy to hear yours!
