Inside: Who wants to start the week with a cluttered makeup drawer and sticky fridge handles? Not you. Here’s how to do a Sunday reset that embraces light planning and cleaning for a beautiful week.
Why You Need a Sunday Reset
Ever woken up on Monday, and you’re already behind? The kids forgot to unpack their backpacks and lunches… gross. You didn’t realize you were out of cat food, and now you’ll have to make an annoying last-minute stop. And worst of all, nothing is planned for dinner.
A few hours over the weekend can make sure you never, ever feel like that again. Ever.
No logins, No guilt, no Overwhelm
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When you take time on Sundays to tidy and organize your home, you feel better all week. Walking into a clean, clutter-free space helps relieve stress and clear your mind. You know this. A pretty and tidy space just feels better.
And , once you get in the habit of this you might find that you actually enjoy this process. There’s something nice and restful about getting things in order for the week ahead.
Remember: we are not deep cleaning!
Light Cleaning
The Sunday reset isn’t about deep cleaning – it’s about light tidying and maintenance. This includes things like:
- Quickly tidying up clutter and making beds
- Wiping down kitchen and bathroom counters
- Touching up floors by sweeping, vacuuming or mopping
- Doing a load or two of laundry
- Emptying trash bins and taking out recycling
- Light dusting of surfaces
Nothing crazy, just the basics to create a clean slate.
Plan Ahead for Next Week
Nobody likes the feeling of having appointments sneak up on you. A few minutes on Sunday can help prevent this.
Part of your routine needs to be about looking ahead.
This includes:
- Meal planning and (maybe!) prepping ingredients to have breakfasts and lunches ready to go
- Laying out clothes for the workweek (having a pretty capsule wardrobe makes this easy!)
- Prepping kids’ lunches and backpacks for the school week
- Planning projects or tasks you want to accomplis
Meal Prep
Getting ahead on meal prep makes it so much easier to eat homemade all week long. Use part of your Sunday to do some quick kitchen tasks:
- Chop veggies and wash fruits for snacks
- Precook plain chicken or steak for salads later
- Make granola, muffins, or something else that will work for breakfasts.
I consider this an “extra” for when I have the time. If you never meal prep on Sundays, don’t worry about it at all.
Light Decluttering + Tidying
As a general rule, if you have to make an area look worse (such as taking all the books off a bookshelf, emptying a drawer, etc), it’s too much for a Sunday reset. Keep it light!
- Clear off kitchen counters put away anything sitting out
- Delete random files on your computer desktop
- Gather up clutter from living spaces and return items to their homes
- Do a quick pass through each room and put stray items back in place
- Put away any laundry sitting out
- Quickly tidy your office space if you work from home
Think of what surface level stuff you can do to make your spaces look neat and calm.
Laundry Catch Up
This is not an in-depth do all your laundry situation. Just make sure you’re ready for the week. If not, get that load done now.
Don’t worry about deep cleaning things like curtains, rugs, or rarely worn items. A little laundry maintenance will get you through the week feeling put together.
FAQs
All the other days of the week! Here’s my 15-minutes a day deep cleaning routine (you’ll love it!), and a way to structure the non-cleaning chores around the rest of the week.
Just whatever comes before your first workday/ return to the normal routine. Saturday morning can work well too. 😊
My Routine (Keeping it Realistic)
I don’t do everything on this list, and neither should you! This should be a 2-hour routine, tops.
Here’s my Sunday reset list:
- wash master bedroom towels and sheets
- finalize next week’s meal plan
- write down next week’s meals/ appointments/ schedule and put it on the fridge
- organize the fridge and wipe it down so it’s pretty inside
- tidy living room and clean coffee table
- make overnight oats for the week
- make kids’ lunches for the week
That’s it!
Tips for Success:
Here are some actionable tips for making the Sunday reset a success:
- Schedule it in your calendar to treat it like an important appointment. You have to make this a priority.
- Involve family. They should help you!
- Tackle one area or task at a time to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
- Set a timer for each task to stay on track.
- Put on some upbeat music to make chores more enjoyable
- Focus on quick tidying tasks – don’t worry about deep cleaning. EVER!
- Remind yourself of the benefits you’ll gain from a calm, ordered home
- Allow yourself grace – don’t worry about perfection!
- Stick with a simple routine that you can easily do every week. A long unfinished list gets you nowhere.
Doing this may feel like an extra chore at first. But over time you’ll realize that’s one of those things that makes your life easier, even if it seems harder in the beginning.
You deserve to start each week feeling calm and with a pretty house.. The Sunday reset helps make that possible.
Love,
I don’t know… I already do all of this over a weekend and still have cleaning to do the rest of the week…
My system Mon-Sun;
Mon: laundry sort, was and dry. In winter it rains so I use the dryer but some things can’t go with the rest so because of the heat and the shrinking so once again sort out once the cycle is done. In summer I will hang out the clothes this isn’t a fast process at all especially in winter.
Usually I will start in the morning after first load of laundry with cleaning the kitchen, unpack and reload dishwasher etc.
Next make all the beds, tidy up the rooms of the house followed by vacuum all rooms.
Next clean all the bathrooms.
Take out garbage bag.
In between this checking the dryer and lightly sort and fold what is already dry.
By this time it is already 4-5pm. (Time to take down the laundry in summer)or last load of drying in dryer. I usually have 3 loads… so this will be load 3.
Then start packing away hand was dishes and unpack dishwasher.
Sometimes I still need to cook because I am vegetarian and my husband isn’t so there are two different menus…
Tue: Clean kitchen, sort out fridge, wash towels, make beds & tidy up.
Wipe down bathrooms clean toilets.
Hang out or dry towels.
Make grocery list.
Do grocery shopping.
Come back home unpack everything.
Start folding previous day’s laundry.
Unpack dishwasher.
Take down towels/either out of dryer
Start cooking dinner.
Wed: another load of laundry same process.
Dry towels
Cleaning kitchen
Make beds and tidy up.
Bathrooms same process
Start ironing
Fold and pack away
Unpack dishwasher and the rest washed by hands.
Usually in the evening I would either need to prepare dinner again or if not I would start chopping veg to freeze.
Thur; clean kitchen again, but microwave and oven also.
Dry towels
Make beds and tidy up
Bathrooms same process
Run errands.
Cook dinner
Fri; another load of laundry same process,
Clean kitchen
Make beds and tidy up
Clean bathrooms
Vacuum wash floors
Dry laundry in between or hang out.
Unpack dishwasher
Sort laundry after drying
Cook dinner
Fold some of the laundry.
Sat; exhausted sleep in.
Clean kitchen
Make the beds and tidy up
Go to the shops if in need of things.
Cook dinner if needed
Sun; clean kitchen, strip the beds and wash linen.
Make the beds and tidy up
Dry and roughly folded linen for ironing on Wed.
Fold what didn’t get folded on Fri
Unpack dishwasher
Cook dinner.
And this is the schedule –
LOVE this! This is exactly what I needed after being in a homemaking funk. Thanks!
hi Rachel! i’m glad it helped you!
thank you!!
you are so welcome! hope this helps! 🙂
I am obsessed with these pictures! Can you please create a digital Grandmacore coffee table book 😂 Grandmacore For All Seasons
LOVE this idea!
ladies! I can do this! I’ll just upload and upscale the images a bit into a PDF 🙂