I mentioned in my Finish It Friday post last week that I’m trying something new—cleaning during the week instead of on the weekends. One of my underlying motivations for doing this is to create bigger blocks of time on the weekends to work on projects and goals. One of my big goals for the year is to freshen up my home with some decorating and reorganizing projects. So I have lots of DIY projects in my future. Since I work full time Monday through Friday, the best time for me to really dig into these bigger projects is on the weekends. Any breathing room I can create in my weekend schedule will help me make more progress on my goals.

Moving tasks from the weekend to weeknights has meant creating fresh routines—and I’m finding this process to be very energizing. It’s a bit like the feeling I get when I organize and declutter. There’s an energy that comes from moving things around, whether it’s physical things, or tasks and activities. When you move things around in your schedule, you let go of tasks or activities that no longer matter and give priority to tasks that matter more. And that feels pretty darn good.

Want to get reenergized with new routines of your own? Here are some ideas to get you started.

Set goals

Start with one goal or change in mind.

When I want to change something in my life, it helps if I have bigger purpose or an underlying reason for making the change before I start. So start by identifying just one goal or reason for changing-up your routine. For example, my underlying goal for changing my weeknight routine was to create more time on the weekends to focus on DIY projects which supports one of my primary goals for 2012. What’s one of your goals for 2012? Start there.

Identify one step you can take on a regular basis that will move you closer to your goal.

That one step is the task you incorporate into your new routine. My step is doing a weekend task (cleaning) during the week to free up time on the weekends. What if your goal is to is to get more organized this year? Well, you could do as I did and rearrange your weekday schedule to handle some of your recurring weekly tasks like cleaning, meal planning, grocery shopping, running errands or doing laundry, during the week, and free up bigger blocks of time to organize on the weekends. Or you could carve out fifteen minutes each weekday to declutter or make progress on an organizing project, which would allow you to make ongoing progress over the course of the entire week. Either way, you’re building organizing into your new routine, or making a habit out of making progress on your goals. Pretty exciting stuff, right?

CalendarDecide when.

The key for me when changing up my routines is to decide when I will do my new routine. In other words, I need to decide where my new routine will fit into my existing schedule. For example, we selected Mondays as our new cleaning night, and we fit cleaning right in between afternoon activities and dinner. When everyone gets home from their afternoon activities, I make a veggie pot pie for dinner. While it bakes, we clean the house. It’s working great. And the best part is that this change is motivating me to change up other things in my schedule and create even more time on the weekends for my other projects and goals. Good
stuff!

I’d love to hear from you. What new projects or goals are you working on this year? How are you fitting goal related activities into your daily and weekly routines? Thanks for sharing!

Aby