Happy Monday!

Here is a glimpse into our weekend (and a few of my favorite tips too!)

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1. Operation: Finish Organizing Garage

• I am the mama of the two most passionate little basketball players on the planet. They play all day and all night. We have a basketball hoop in our driveway but since our cars used that space for parking, the basketball playing always required an adult to move the cars first. At the beginning of the year, we made a goal to clean out the garage in such a way that we could fit both cars. We simply wanted to provide an opportunity to encourage the interests of our little boys. And fitting two cars in a typical Floridian suburban garage is no small undertaking. But we did it earlier this month and finished the last of it on Friday evening. Sounds like a super sexy date night to me. 😉
• TIP: Find simple ways to encourage the interests of your children. This was an easy, inexpensive investment into our littles’ growing love for basketball. (And well worth the horrible task of hanging shelves in straight cinderblock. Ack.)
• TIP: My biggest organization tip for any space is to pull out all of the stuff and sort. Be ruthless. Have a “trash” pile, “donate” pile and a “keep” pile. When you are finished sorting, go through the “keep” pile at least one more time. We had to be ruthless with what we kept in the garage because the space is so tight but again, very much worth the effort.
• Question: What’s your favorite organization tip?

2. Rest

• If your family is anything like our family, you go a 100 mph during the week. We are a culture that finds rest hard to come by and will quickly list all the reasons why we just cannot slow down, even on the weekends. My advice: Plan your weekends. Not for the sake of adding more to your schedule, but for the sake of finding real rest, for making real room for rest. I have found that if we are not intentional in finding rest we will fill our time with tasks or tv, neither of which qualify as real rest. You know what is quality rest? Donuts & the beach. So we did that. All day long.
• TIP: Listen to this sermon by Tim Keller about work and rest, it has helped transform the way I view rest.
• TIP: At the beginning of the week when you plan out your week’s tasks and appointments, spend a few extra minutes planning what rest will look like for you and your family.
• Question: Do you plan your rest? How do you find rest in a culture that is so fast-paced and results driven?

3. Weekly Prepping

• Our weeks are full. I want to enjoy all the fullness, the goodness. My favorite way to do that is to enter Monday with a game plan. So Sunday afternoons are spent here. With my meal planner, grocery lister and my Simplified Planner.
• TIP: Make a small checklist for your Sunday prep and work through it each Sunday afternoon or evening. It doesn’t have to take long and in fact, the more regularly you implement this into your weekly rhythm the more natural it will be.
• My Sunday Checklist:
  • Meal Plan / Grocery List
  • Appointments Scheduled
  • Tasks Jotted Down (and assigned a day to do them)
  • Laundry Away
  • House Picked Up
  • Dishes Done
  • Purse Cleaned Out (Please tell me I’m not the only one who has to schedule this…by Sunday my purse is an actual disaster, full of a million receipts that need to be logged in our budgeting app. Ah!)
  • Review Budget (With said receipts from above. 😉 We use the Good Budget app! It’s like the envelope system by Dave Ramsey but it’s digital and it can sync with your spouse!)
• Question: Do you have a Sunday checklist to prepare for the week? If so, what tasks on that list?