Years ago, a friend of mine was in grad school. She had her work load, she had a part-time job, she had her apartment to take care of.
She decided that Sundays were going to be no-work days. No school work. No job work (which was easy—her employer wasn’t open on the weekends). No chores. She was going to work her butt off the rest of the week and take Sundays off.
I was impressed by how she stuck to that.
I have tried to do that occasionally. There was a while—also years ago—that I was able to do it, and it was great! The main sticking point for me was meal planning and grocery shopping, which I have done on Sundays for a long time. I pushed that back to Saturday, but more recently, as long as we have what we need to get us through breakfast and lunch on Monday, shopping on the way home from work on Mondays is better. Less crowded.
The other thing that was nice about making Sunday the no-work day (instead of Saturday) is that it really cleared up about 80% of the Sunday crunch feeling. There still had to be reasonable bedtime and there was still work on Monday morning, but without needing to get done All The Stuff, Sundays were much more pleasant.
It’s worth it to have a little bit more to do on other days to have that one day of free time, guilt-free. To-do list-free.
I have not at all been in this habit lately. But I’m thinking that it might be a good thing to revisit. I’m thinking, as a household of three now (instead of one or two), we can look at the next week’s calendar on Saturday, make a list of what needs to get done when and by whom, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll all have a work-free Sunday.
Today? No. But next week? Maybe…
An excellent idea!