Hello friends! As promised, here is part two of three of our 2017 goals. Last week I blogged about our process for how we go about setting yearly goals for our family. Today, I’m sharing how Geoff and I go about actually bringing those goals to life and making progress on achieving them.

Quite a few years ago I was reading an article in a parenting magazine written by a mom who described how she and her husband went about keeping their household organized and purposeful by doing one simple thing: a weekly family meeting. At the time, our life felt kind of out of control. We were paying late fees from not paying bills on time, overspending on eating out because we would wait until it was dinnertime to decide what we would eat each evening, going months without a date night out together, frustrated with each other for not communicating commitments happening outside of our house week to week and we would set goals at the beginning of the year and then haphazardly check in with them whenever we thought of it. Sometimes months would go by without revisiting those goals and making a plan for them to happen. We needed a change and the idea of a weekly meeting together seemed like something worth trying. And so, The Schultzes Sunday Night Meeting was born. Recently, we renamed it to be our Sunday Night Reset.

For me, if I can begin Monday with a tidy (or at least semi-tidy) home, groceries in my refrigerator, a plan for meals and on the same page with Geoff as far as our schedule goes, I feel like so much more of a normal, calm, capable and joyful person through the week. Our reset meetings have been SO helpful in the management of our home and business and allow us to live intentionally.

Geoff and I have a lot of things we want to do in our marriage and in our family. Especially since having kids, time has a way of flying by faster than we ever thought (it’s still hard to believe we will have a seven year old this summer!). We’ve found that without a little organization and intentional planning, the things we want to do together and the memories we want to make…they just don’t happen either at all or as often as we’d like. Trips and dates to take, traditions to make and carry on year to year, activities to do with the kids…all really fun stuff! Our Sunday night reset is a big reason that we are able to intentionally press on toward the life we desire to live with each other and for our children.

Let’s get to it!

The first Sunday of a new month, we follow an agenda that includes:

1. Budget Review from the month prior.
2. Calendar Review. We choose dates for our date night out, date night in and French Toast Friday (a morning that we have a set of friends over for french toast or another meal). We also look at the month ahead and make note of any trips or events, as well as which days we have sessions or weddings to photograph.
3. Review prior month goals to see where we landed and strike-through those we accomplished on our list that we created at the beginning of the year.
4. Determine monthly goals (again, pulling from our master list of goals for the year).

Week to week includes the following agenda items:

1. Pay bills.
2. Budget Check-In.
3. Calendar Review (noting trips/events, as well as choosing which evenings to work and which days to exercise).
4. Meal Plan (actually, I end up doing this on Saturday at some point, as I do my grocery shopping Sunday late afternoon).
5. Plan for my Wednesday Mama Day (I pull from a note I keep in my phone of ideas for fun things to do with the kids).
6. Weekend Plans and Projects (typically pulling items from our monthly goals). I understand that some people prefer to be spontaneous and let things happen as they would happen on the weekends…but for us, we need at least a loose plan. Otherwise, we find the whole weekend has gone by and we haven’t done anything that we wanted to do).
7. Discussion (for anything that requires a more in depth conversation…a current discussion item for us is making plans for Crew’s 4th birthday).
8. Individual To-Do’s for the week (Me – get a babysitter for date night; Geoff – install the new car seat, etc.).
9. Prayer (answered prayers and prayer requests). We’re not the best at praying together and out loud throughout the week unless it is dinner time, so intentionally including focused prayer time at the end of our reset works for us.

If you are wanting to implement a Sunday Night Reset into your household/life, here are a few tips of things you can do to set yourself up for success:

1. Time it right.
   Sunday nights are ideal for us, as it doesn’t cut into our weekend. And for us, with three little kids, waiting until they are down to sleep for the night is imperative…especially if we want it to be enjoyable!
2. Keep organized.
   Keep a folder handy during the week that you can toss bills to be paid, paperwork to be completed, etc.
3. Make it enjoyable.
   For Geoff and I, we find enjoyment in our meetings with homemade lattes, a little bit of chocolate (I recommend those sea salt dark chocolate covered almonds from Trader Joe’s!) and some fun music. If you aren’t a natural lover of organization and goal setting, this tip will be really important for you to keep motivated to do it week to week! Try to make it something that you can look forward to and that won’t be a drag. If you don’t have children and can get out of the house, maybe you’d most enjoy doing your meeting at your favorite coffee shop. It might just become one of your favorite family traditions!

I hope this was helpful! If you have any questions about our Sunday Night Resets, please don’t hesitate to ask! Also, if you would like a free copy of the worksheets we created (changed to be more generic), you can sign up to receive them below!

 

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