Back to Work

I am very happy to have Labor Day off today!!  I have a general rule to not think about work at all on the weekends. Although I usually can't help it after about 4pm on Sundays, on account of all the dread that builds up knowing there is only about 5-6 real hours left to the weekend.  Anyway, I have decided that I need to change my rule slightly.  I still WILL NOT think about any "real work" on the weekends.  I WILL NOT think about things that need to be done, or customers that need to be called etc.  But I WILL prepare myself for the upcoming work week by doing the following:

• Prepare lunches the night before
• Prepare all snacks for the week
• Choose outfits and iron them if necessary
• Prepare a dinner menu for the week
• Placing a basket at the "Launch Pad"

By completing the above list on the weekends, at my leisure, I will be making the work week run much more smoothly.

Preparing my lunch the night before will give me no choice but to eat a healthy, correctly portioned lunch.  There will be no scrambling in the morning to just throw something into a tupperware container.  There will be no processed frozen meals high in sodium,  There will be no more of my beloved Nissin Teriyaki Beef Chow Mein noodles.  So cheap, so tasty... yet sadly so unhealthy :/  No running across the street to McDonald's - which I don't even care for, but in the area that I work that is the only choice besides pizza or hoity-toity establishments with high priced grub.  And I have to be totally honest here,  not to toot my own horn or anything, but my cooking and salads are 100 times better than anything I could have delivered.  TOOT TOOT! 

Preparing my snacks for the week will help me tremendously in the weight loss area.  I should be eating a small nutritious snack every 2-3 hours.  I rarely accomplish this due to poor preparation and time management. This will change as of today.  I will measure out my healthy snacks and put them in containers or ziplocks and have them ready to go.  No more sitting at my desk starving until I have the shakes and then downing a whole bag of croutons.  No more wasting money on garbage from the vending machine regretting it... as I eat it.

Having my clothes already picked out and ready to wear will be a super time booster.  Especially as the season changes and it gets lighter out later.  In the late fall and winter I am usually leaving the house for work as the sun comes up.  Which means that I am getting dressed in the dark.  The hubby is still sleeping so I don't like to turn the light on and wake him or even worse, wake the baby in the next room.  So I fumble around in the dark for my day's wardrobe.  I have OFTEN put underwear on inside out, worn a black sock and a brown sock together, one time I even put on two different color shoes of the same style.  (Luckily I had an extra pair of shoes in the car.)  If my clothes are ready, I can just grab the hanger with the whole outfit that has been carefully chosen and ironed and get dressed like a normal person.   

Having a menu of the weeks dinners written out will make my after work routine quicker.  I can prepare as much of the next night's dinner as possible the night before.  Chopping vegetables, making sauces or marinades, making salads, assembling casseroles so the hubby can just throw it in the oven and it will be ready when I get home, (how awesome is that!?)  There will be no last minute decisions on what we will eat and having to stop at the mobbed grocery stores to pick up ingredients after work.  No cereal for dinner, haha!  No unhealthy, "screw it" meals or even worse TAKE OUT or DELIVERY.... NOOOOOOOOO!  No more of that.  By being prepared we will dine on well thought out, easy to prepare, well balanced, healthy meals that the whole family will enjoy.

Now, the Launch Pad.  The Launch Pad is where you take off from.  My launch pad will be the landing outside of my front door.  I plan to have all items that I need for my work day on the Launch Pad the night before,  that way there is no chance of forgetting anything.  To make this even more perfect, I plan to follow a tip I saw over on 365 Days of Organization.

She says: "Place a medium-sized basket by the door you use to leave the house every day. Anything that needs to go out the door with you gets placed into the basket. When you leave the house take the basket with you and put it in the car.  As you run your errands, anything you receive goes into the basket, such as receipts or dry cleaner slips.  When you get home, anything else in the car (cups, wrappers, etc.) go into the basket and you take the basket back into the house with you. Unpack the basket put all the items into their proper place.  When the basket is empty it is placed near the door and the process begins all over again."

With all the extra time I will have left over each morning I may now have time for a nice cup of coffee or tea and a healthy breakfast.

Easy Breezy mornings!  Ain't nothing wrong with that!