Dear reader,
This advice comes from a woman who always used to hate Sundays. I am a rather active person so when it comes to relaxing all day… I tend to become a little mad. I work between ten and thirteen hours every Saturday so Sundays should be “rest-days” but I can’t manage to rest one entire day. That is the reason why I decided to divide my Sundays into “half rest” and “half organization”. We will call them the HRHO Sundays and in this post, I will share with you what I do a typical HRHO Sunday!
One hour cleaning-session
Before going into this cleaning session, I would like to clarify something: I do not clean my whole apartment in only one hour a week. I would advise you, everyday, to spend ten to twenty minutes cleaning both in the morning and in the evening (you can set a timer in order not to spend more than ten minutes doing chores – laundry, dishes, tidying &c.-). You should as well clean as you go, which means there is never anything lying on the sofa or on the table. Ten minutes is not long but will add up and do wonders when comes Sunday. In the end, who wants to spend the entire day cleaning?
Then, you can wake-up gently and spend one hour (while you listen to a podcast) cleaning mirrors, watering plants (mine only require to be watered once a week), cleaning the floors and dusting. If your house is not enormous and you have spent twenty minutes cleaning everyday, one hour should be enough.
Answer those “less important” emails
Everyday, you probably answer your emails, the ones you really need to give an answer to. However, those “less important” email, the ones for which “you have time” tend to add up and you end up some day being either too late or overloaded with emails that became “very important” through the weeks. That is why I would recommend flagging all these emails along the week and taking twenty/fifty-five minutes to answer on Sunday morning.
Take care of your appearance
It always seems quite superficial, but it does matter, Ladies. I know you would like to lay on the couch all day, but you will probably feel awful by five p.m. I personally do not put thousands of products on my skin so it does not have to take ages ( I personally spend 45 minutes in the bathroom to do EVERYTHING), but I think you should take an hour to do what makes you feel good. If you’ve been avoiding shaving but feel like you would feel better if you did, do it. The same is true for a face-mask or nail polish. You have an extra-amount of time so use it in order to feel better all week long. Maybe you feel like doing nothing today, but you will feel better tomorrow if you actually get up and do something.
Plan for the week
I can’t stress that enough. Planning is essential to success. You do not have to go crazy with it, the notes on your phone can be enough but have at least a weekly to-do list. Know exactly when you have appointments that week, look at how much time you need to go there, and plan the day. When appointments are planned, you can then write all the things you would like to do that week (not more than ten “small things” or 6 “bigger things”), put two to three of them in each available day (days without important appointments already) and voilà: you have your weekly to-do list ready and a clear idea of what your life should look like.
Spend time with your loved ones
Sundays are not only organization-days but love-days. These are days on which you have time, so use it. Take a coffee with your mother, spend time talking with your significant other or playing with your little brother. The idea is to spend time with people you love and share good vibrations with them. Watching Netflix alone, eating pizza seems cool, right? But spending time with people you love will make you feel far better during the week (which does not mean you can’t watch an episode and eat pizza, balance in everything, remember?).
RELAX
I gave you advice today, some clues on how you could possibly turn your Sundays into something interesting and useful rather than a useless-despair-day. I have personally spent so much time hating those days and my goal here is to give you a good reason to wake-up smiling every Sunday. However, if you love spending these days doing absolutely nothing all day and that makes you genuinely happy, there is nothing wrong here. I simply want you all to feel good on this rather odd day, and I want you to relax.
Hoping you feel a little better about Sundays,
TABOULOT Camille
The English-speaking Frenchie 