4/3/15: Sunday Basket Instructions by 365 (Week 1)

Week 1: Creating a Sunday Basket 

Reminders and To-Do Lists

Mail

NOTE - THIS IS FROM "40 WEEKS 1 WHOLE HOUSE CHALLENGE" - I DID NOT WRITE THIS

You can make a binder, a bag or a basket. It doesn’t matter. You just need a place for paper to land until you can “deal” with it. ONE place for all the mixed up paper.

Essentially, the Sunday Basket is EVERY piece of paper in your kitchen that you haven’t processed yet. It’s a BIG holding pile in a pretty basket. 

Right now your laundry basket IS your Sunday basket. Now, we are going to pull out items and create systems for each kind of paper. But until you can get to creating the system – your papers are SAFE in these baskets. You can hunt and peck and find what you need.

Let’s talk about what’s in there. Paper is hard, but once you conquer your paper, you will feel SO much more in control of your life!

This how to sort mail post will walk you step by step through how to tackle the mail backlog. Going forward, put all your mail that needs your attention and can wait until Sunday into theSunday basket right away.

Setting up your home office

• mailing supplies
• homework / office supplies
• greeting cards
• a filing system for papers
• addresses
• a place to put kids’ school work
• a place to store memorabilia and photos
• coupons
• a project area
• storage for binders of information

Kids’ school papers

The kitchen is ground zero, home base.

Consider having the following accessible:

I have ONE binder for each child’s artwork and papers that come home from school. Then, at the end of the year pull out things you want to save - report cards, artwork, awards, etc..

Have an office in the corner of the bedroom? That is too far away. You MUST have a home office in your kitchen.  Just the mental deep breath of accepting the kitchen as the hub of your home for food AND planning will be a relief.

Embrace it and make it work for you.

4/2/15: Creating the Sunday Basket

Summer break means Spring Cleaning. However, cleaning my house with the kids home is like shoveling snow in a blizzard. Once a room is clean and you tackle the next room, the first room gets dirty all over again.

Our biggest problem: L A U N D R Y!!!  I want to hire a housekeeper to come in and go through all the laundry in the house, wash it, dry it, fold it and most importantly PUT IT AWAY!!!  Let me save that post for another time though.

Today I had two things on the agenda. 1) Cleaning the floors.  2) Sunday Basket(s)

Lexie and I got on our hands and knees and scrubs the kitchen floors, baseboards, under the stove & frig, under the table & chairs and part of the living room. Adding a little helper made it go fast and it was fun to do it together.

I started the 40 Weeks Whole House Challenge on Monday.  My first thing to do was take every piece of paper in my kitchen and shove it in a basket. However, the kitchen isn't where I keep my papers. It's my bedroom. So I started there - however, I didn't use one basket, I used 3 baskets.

• Basket 1 - Girl Scout crap
• Basket 2 - Family photos and awards
• Basket 3 - Everything else

The goal of the Sunday Basket is to take every paper you collect and just dump it into the basket each week. On Sunday, I go through the basket and sort through the things that are important and the things that can wait.  I altered that a little more and I went out to the store and purchased a file folder where I can put information in their files as I go (or sort it all out on Sunday).

 

I went out and purchased a Open Top File Storage container. I already have the Hanging File Folders.
These will be where I store my actual files. Then I am planning to make the following Oval Metal Pail with Handles into the "Sunday Basket" since it has a nice clean look.

I also went out and purchased these Oval Carry Totes for storing the cleaning supplies - for those Work for Hire chores:

Time to get my butt up and off this computer so I can get this Activity Center done and post a photo of it!