A Sunday Well Spent Brings A Week Of Content

A Sunday well spent brings a week of content: A well-known saying that you have likely heard before. But how does this translate in to our lives? It is most definitely something that we really feel and connect with ourselves, and can honestly be a game changer to our upcoming week. So we thought it may be really useful to share some of the things we do in the hope that others may be able to incorporate it in to their routine too and feel the same benefits. The differences that we find it makes include:

• Going into a fresh week with a fresh mindset, feeling ready and energised.
• It brings some calm and order to your life instead of spending most of the time worrying about what’s to come.
• You feel more organised.
• It can help to banish the Sunday blues.
• You don’t go in to Monday with the ‘Monday morning dread.’

So what do we find really helpful to do?

Clean

We know, we know, it sounds boring and we appreciate that by writing this we are at the point of losing some of you but stay with us, we promise it will be worth it. With Sunday still being associated as a day of rest, cleaning is the last thing that people want to have to do, and we must admit we do like to have this done by the time Sunday comes around but it is not always possible. We are not saying we have a spring-clean, but just tidying the bits off from the week to go in to a new week fresh makes all the difference:

• Change your bedding: Is there really anything better than going to sleep at night in fresh bedding? Aah… even the thought relaxes us!
• Tidy: Honestly, coming down to a tidy space the next morning just helps you feel so much more calm and clear to the start the day.
• Clean the bathroom: OK so not very glamorous but there’s something great about waking and getting ready in a fresh bathroom.

Get some down-time

See, it’s not all bad. We may have said get some cleaning done, but we also make sure there’s a lot of fun and happy activities in there too. We try to ensure that we spend some time doing the things that we enjoy, not only as a switch off but also to feel refreshed and ready for a new week. This can be activities such as:

• Seeing Family and Friends
• Going for a walk with the dog (usually to one of our favourite National Trust places)
• Colouring (Wow this one is so good for bringing us back in to the moment and calming the mind)
• Cooking (There really is nothing better than hearty home cooked food is there!)
• Self Care. This is something that Emma especially is really trying to bring in throughout the week when she can. We find that if we are not careful we spend the whole week running around to complete house chores, run a business and look after a toddler, that we end up feeling completely depleted and like we are craving some “me time”. By incorporating some time to slow down, and almost scheduling it in on a Sunday at some point can make the world of difference. Check out our post on self care for some great tips.

Being completely honest, being in lock down has really made us slow down even more, as we are sure it has for so many. So when things do start to get going again we want to ensure we spend even more time doing these things instead of running around quite as much (which is a trap we can definitely get caught up in if we are not careful). Just some of the good things to come out of Coronavirus hey!

Eat well

There is nothing worse than going in to a new week feeling lethargic because you spent the day before being dehydrated and fuelled with processed, sugary foods. We certainly find that if we do not fuel up well on the Sunday, we want to snooze the alarm once it goes off in the morning, we end up wanting more of the immediate feel good food the next morning instead of our healthy breakfast smoothie which this ends up then creeping in to the whole of the day (perhaps you can relate?). The key things we try to follow are:

• Drink a minimum of 2l of water. There is actually a really great calculation that tells you how much you should be drinking for your body water (this is without taking in to account any exercise that you do): Body weight (kg) x 0.033 = litres required per day. Give it a go! Do you get anywhere near what you actually require?
• Have 3 balanced meals planned for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We find that if we don’t do this it is so easy for us to take the attitude of “we can’t be bothered, it’s Sunday” and that’s when the naughty foods creep in. Planning these in advance is also a key to success.

Review

Taking some time to sit in quiet and reflect on the week just gone can be incredibly effective. We find that it is so easy to drift from one week to the next and before you know it, a whole month has flashed by. But by taking the time to review how the week has been, what has worked well and what needs to be done for the coming week, you really feel like you are taking action and making the most of your time. There is something great about the act of just sitting and doing this.

Some questions you could ask yourself include:

• What have I achieved this week compared to the goals that I set myself?
• What have I enjoyed doing?
• What has gone well?
• What hasn’t worked quite so well and what has caused this?
• What would I like to achieve in the coming week?
• What am I grateful for?

Plan

So as some of you well know by now, Emma is all about writing things down and making lists. She tends to use her Bullet Journal for this. She loves nothing more than to sit down on an evening (once the little man is successfully tucked up in bed for the night… sometimes easier said than done with children right!), and plan out the week ahead. This is sometimes in a fancy artistic way if she is feeling inspired and creative (the bullet journal is great for this, and Pinterest has some fab ideas), or sometimes just as simple as writing a list of the things that she’d like to achieve in each category of life e.g business, mummy, personal etc.

Another thing we also make sure that we plan is the food for our week ahead. We actually make sure that this is done before we head out for the weekly food shop. This means that we know exactly what we are buying, saving lots of time when in there and also saving money as we only tend to get what we need. It also means that we are unlikely to make poor choices when it comes to meals in the week as we do not have to spend time thinking about what we are having.

Get ready for your best Sunday yet

So there you have it, that’s what we tend to spend our Sunday’s doing to set us up nicely for the week ahead. We would love to hear your thoughts and what you will look to implement, or for you to share what you find works if you already have something in place.