Hello!  It’s Wendy from Pretty Well Organized here to share a few tips for how to prepare for the week ahead and make the work week less stressful and more enjoyable!

Sunday afternoons we spend just a couple hours preparing everything we need for the week ahead. After trying several different types of planning, this process has proven to save us time tenfold over any other process or amount of planning.

The first thing I do is take inventory of what we have going on in our calendar.  I use my own custom created planner to keep track of activities.

{available here}

Simply reviewing our plans for the week helps put me at ease.  Knowing what we all have going on is a simple an necessary first step.  I take note of any travel my husband or I have during the week {which isn’t every week–but usually one of us travels at least once a month}. Second, I inventory all after work/school activities we have.  This week we have the following activities:

– Dance Class (daughter)

– Swim Day at School (daughter)

– Small Group (mom)

To prepare for these activities, on Sunday, I pack the bags we need for each activity. Does this mean we have a few bags stacked in our back entry? You bet. Does it save me from the constant bag unpack/repack polka? Absolutely.  And that’s good for everyone!

I start by making sure I have everything I need for Dance Class, since that is a Monday after school activity. For dance, my daughter needs her uniform: pink tights, pink leotard and pink ballet slippers.  Since we generally do most laundry on Saturdays or Sunday morning before church, I pull these items out of the laundry basket {which are folded!} and slip them into the dance bag.  I check to make sure we have enough hair ties and a comb and we are ready for dance.

Wednesday is a big day for us.  My daughter goes to school, where they have water day each Wednesday, and I have Small Group at church in the evening, which I drive straight too from work. Sunday nights I layout my small group book and my study Bible by the backdoor and pack my daughter’s water day bag.  In the water day bag, I pack: a change of clothes, underwear, shoes, sunglasses, a towel and a wet bag for her to put the damp clothes in after they play.  She goes to school in her swimsuit, a cover up and water shoes.

Next up, putting together outfits for my daughter in cute little dividers in her room. I wrote a post about this once before, which you can read here. I set out an outfit for each day for my daughter, including her swimsuit outfit for Wednesday water day.  This is SUPER easy because I generally pull clothes for her school days directly out of the laundry basket.  After I set out clothes for the week, then I put away her laundry.  This saves time over putting away all the laundry only to pull out 5 days worth of clothes afterwards.

Lastly, we take a look at our eMeals subscription.  eMeals is a meal planning service that costs about $1 a week and comes with a meal plan and consolidated grocery list.  We select meals {usually ~5 depending on our schedule} and jot down which meal goes on which day in my planner.  We then buy the grocery list and meal planning is done.  It’s incredibly easy and I would recommend it to anyone.

There you have it! A quick hour of prep and each night is planned out!  I add our little gal’s cleaned blanket to the back entry and we are ready for the week! Easy and stress free.

Hope you have a Pretty Well Organized week as well!

Wendy