The Next Step

Once the idea of a more structured daily routine started taking shape,it was time to start breaking things down a little more.
In it's basic form, my daily plan worked regardless if I was working an early shift (off work at 5 or 6pm) or a late one (off at 10pm). On my days off, usually a day or two during the week, sometimes weekends, I would try to cram everything else in. Cleaning the house, running errands, tending to the dogs, meal planning, visiting with my family, etc. With my days off being so full of *stuff* I never really felt like I had time to just relax and do something just for fun.

Expanding the daily plan into parts, and sprinkling in a few extra things each day was the answer.

Certain days were designated to certain activities, errands or chores and then everything was broken down from there.

With my days off and work shifts never being the same week to week, the idea of assigning things to Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays wouldn't work. Instead, my days were broken down like this...

Work Day 1
Work Day 2
Work Day 3
Work Day 4
Work day 5
Day off 1
Day off 2

Weeks always began on Mondays to correspond to my work schedule. Our work weeks are Mon-Sun instead of Sun-Mon like on a calendar. The days may not always fall in the perfect order, so the week could look like WD (work day) 1, WD 2, DO1, WD3, WD4, WD5, DO2

From there I assigned things to each day. No matter how the weeks fell, I could still keep up with the things is assigned to do each day. For things that need to be done the day before DO1,(market & errand day), menu planning for example, they just get plugged in on the appropriate day as needed.

Work Day 1 -
Work Day 2
Work Day 3
Work Day 4
Work day 5
Day off 1
Day off 2

Menu planning - day before DO1.

On the last day of each week, either DO2 or WD5...I take 15 minutes to plan the upcoming week. Most working girls utilize some sort of planning calendar ( I will go into this in more detail later)...I am no exception...I LOVE a good old paper planner. I'm old school like that...it's just how I roll. So I grab my planner and check for any appointments, events, or anything extra and plug it into my weekly plan. Then I plug in the rest of my week according to my work schedule.

Once the week was planned out, it was easy to move on from there.

Next up...more details on the weekly plan. Homekeeping, errands, acivities, and free time!!!