My Weekly Home Reset Routine (and how to make one for yourself)
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ How a Weekly Home Reset Routine will save you time and energy and help you keep a manageable home
⋒ Jess’ exact weekly home reset routine
⋒ Steps for creating your own weekly home reset routine
If you didn’t know, one of the Hustle Sanely 5 habits is tidying for 15 minutes. That holds me accountable to spending 15ish minutes every day tidying our home to help keep it a calm and peaceful environment. The daily tidy for 15 is the foundation of what makes this Weekly Home Reset work well for me.
Because I do little things around the house each day, I never feel “behind” on housework and I never feel like I’m spending all of my time and energy keeping up with our home.
Now let me be clear – the purpose of “Tidy for 15” and my Weekly Home Reset routine isn’t to have a Pinterest-perfect looking home. Our home still looks like people live there – and I like that. These routines just help keep the house functional for the family.
I’ve found that I prefer doing little maintenance every day and then dedicating a little more time once a week to maintaining our home – I used to do a massive clean on the weekends but I would always put it off and dreaded it because it felt like such a daunting task to clean the whole house at once.
So now I have my tidy for 15 routine, which I’ve shared on the blog before but we’ll recap it:
I set a timer for 15 minutes every day (otherwise I will get carried away and spend an hour tidying because I am one of those weirdos who enjoys cleaning and organizing) and focus on one room of the house to do a mini deep clean of that room. So if it’s a bathroom, I’ll wipe down the counters, tub, and toilet for example. You’d be amazed and how much you can knock out in 15 minutes.
Here is my current tidy for 15 weekly batch schedule:
Monday: bedroom + bathroom
Tuesday: guest bath + laundry room
Wednesday: kitchen
Thursday: office + nursery
Friday: I replace my tidy for 15 with my Weekly Home Reset routine
Saturday: living + dining room
And most Sundays I am a potato and focus on living and being instead of doing so I don’t follow any sort of hardcore schedule.
So now that you know how I do my tidy for 15, which, like I said earlier, is a stepping stone or building block for the Home Reset Routine, let’s talk more about my Weekly Home Reset Routine!
It’s basically what it sounds like – once a week, I take like 30-60 minutes to reset our home. This process used to take me 3-4 hours on the weekend when I didn’t do the daily tidy for 15. That’s why I keep saying that the daily tidy for 15 is such a crucial first step to nailing a weekly reset routine.
I like to do my Weekly Home Reset Routine on Fridays because I typically don’t work on Fridays (unless we’re in launch mode or something) so I tend to like to use Fridays to focus on life things. I call it my “life admin day.” I spend a chunk of time every Friday closing open loops from my personal catch-all task list and I try to schedule the majority of my appointments on Fridays (you know like therapy, nails, hair, etc.). I usually do my home reset routine on Friday mornings after my morning routine and my workout.
Like I said, it doesn’t take more than an hour.
And here’s the thing about that – an hour might sound like a lot of time to dedicate to this but having these tasks done and attended to winds up saving me SO much time and energy throughout the week because I’m not spending brain power thinking about each one of these and I’m not stressing out about any of them because I know they have a place in my week to get done.
So what tasks are part of my Weekly Home Reset Routine?
Tidy all rooms
Water plants
Wash all bedding
Empty all trash bins
Fill up my vitamin container
Plan meals + order groceries
So let’s break each one of those tasks down really quick because I know the Hustle Sanely Squad appreciates a concrete example. For each one I’ll tell you how long it takes me and what I do:
Tidy all rooms
This takes the longest of all my Weekly Home Reset tasks – clocking in at about 20-25 minutes. So I basically walk through the house and just see what needs to be tended to and do it. It’s kind of like a time that I can just see any open loops in the house that need to be closed. I don’t have a list of things I do – it’s literally what I see with my naked eye that needs to be done. Maybe it’s sorting mail that go left behind on the counter and washing the baseboards in the hallways. Just whatever I see that needs to be done.
Water plants
This takes me like 5-10 minutes. And I’ll be the first to tell you – I’m not a plant care expert. I have found what keeps my plants alive and I just roll with it. I used to put all of our plants in the bathtub to water them but turns out when you live in a 1930s home, the piping isn’t that great and doesn’t love to have dirt rined down it every week, lol.
So now, I put a big beach towel down in my office to protect our wood floors, carry all of my plants that need to be watered in there, spray them with my plant spray (which is water, thieves essential oil, and purification essential oil), and then water them wih my watering can.
I like to do them all together on the floor in one place because when I ued to walk around to each plant in every room, sometimes certain plants would leak when I watered them and it was just messy.
Wash all bedding
This one is hard to say how long it takes because as I’m sure you can imagine, I don’t stand over the washer and wait for it to be done, lol. I do this throughout the day while I’m doing other things. But I wash our comforter first, then our bedding/the couch blankets, then Everly’s bedding.
If I’m out of the house, I’ll communicate to Adam that I need his help switching the loads around.
Empty all trash bins
This takes under 5 minutes. I just go into every room that has a trash bin and empty it into our main trash bin in the kitchen and then take that one out to the big trash bin outside.
Fill up vitamin container
This takes like 2-3 minutes and it’s exactly what it sounds like. I take my little weekly vitamin holder and add in all of my vitamins and supplements for the week. Just opening that is so much easier than reaching for like 3-5 bottles of different pills every morning.
Plan meals + order groceries
This usually takes me 15-20 minutes – mostly because we are VERY simple when it comes to our meals around here.
Adam and I have 2 shared notes in the Notes app on our phones that help with this process.
01. A list of meals that we have made and liked (including links to recipes if applicable)
02. A “live” running grocery list – which I’ve shared about before. I have it broken down into different grocery categories and anytime we are using something in the kitchen throughout the week and it runs out, we just go put it on this shared note. This keeps me from staring at a blank grocery list and wondering what we need from the store for the week. So I open the first note with the meal ideas, pick 4-5 dinners, and add everything we need for those meals to our shared grocery list. If nothing is speaking to me from our list, I’ll open Pinterest and search for new meals. Then I order our groceries through Amazon Fresh (free delivery for Prime members) to be delivered on Friday night or Saturday morning – depending on our plans for the weekend.
We don’t plan out our breakfasts and lunches because we both usually eat the same thing for those meals – avocado toast with an egg is my go-to breakfast and a soup, salad, or snack plate is my go-to lunch. Also, we eat out for dinner usually once a week and host Taco Tuesday once a week so that covers 2 nights which is why I only plan 4-5 dinners.
So, to wrap this up here’s how you can create your own Weekly Home Reset Routine:
~ Make a list of tasks that need to be done around your home every week
If this feels overwhelming to just sit down and do, jot them down as you’re doing them instead. Start a note on your phone called “Weekly Chores” and go through your regular life for 1-2 weeks. As you do a chore that you know you do every week, add it to the list!
~ Figure out a time during your week to batch these tasks
Next, look at your weekly schedule (remember to sign up for the How to Plan a Peacefully Productive Week Workshop if you need support here) and play a little schedule Tetris – decide where a Home Reset Routine can fit into your week. And hey, remember to honor your season! Maybe you don’t have an hour chunk that you can dedicate to one right now – so break it up into 2-30 minute chunks if you need to. Your routines are meant to support you.
~ Delegate if you need to
A lot of the time, as women especially, we can tend to think it’s our responsibility to carry the bulk of the burden of maintaining the home. FAKE NEWS, Y’ALL. Get your family involved by assigning certain tasks to specific people. Maybe your 6-year-old can help with watering the plants. Or you can tell your husband that every Friday, it would really help you out if he went around and emptied all the trash bins.
If you desire more help around the house, ask for it, instead of resenting everyone for not taking initiative on their own… because no one wins in that scenario.
And it really is that simple! Don’t forget that our schedules and routines are tools, not chains so if your season changes (like you go from having a newborn to a toddler for example) shift things so that the weekly home reset routine doesn’t feel like a burden but like a blessing that keeps your home running smoothly.
If you need help building a schedule,
our How to Plan a Peacefully Productive Week Workshop is only $49!
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