Staying on track with a Sunday Basket

It’s mid semester time around here, which is when everything starts to feel a little (or a lot!) out of control in the academic season.  In addition to regular life, I just traveled to four states in four weeks for dance competitions, including organizing one in New Mexico (but a few hours from where I live), which meant my weekends were pretty full as well! 

For me, a key part of making this work is setting up systems at home to ensure that we eat, get to bed on time, aren’t scrambling for masks or clean clothes in the morning, and are generally on track to move through the week without things falling through the cracks.  The main part of this system is my Sunday Basket, an Organize 365 product that I’ve mentioned before as part of my planning system. However, I realized I’ve never really described how I use this product, so I thought I’d take some time to do that in this blog post.

So, what is a Sunday Basket? The basic components are a box and slash pockets.  There are 1.0 slash pockets with weekly actionables (the five colored ones in the front), and 2.0 slash pockets for larger projects. I love these slash pockets and use them for all kinds of things beyond their original design, as they are a great way to keep randomly sized sheets of paper together (a list, an index card, an invitation, a bill, etc.) and also portable!

Throughout the week, as the deluge of random paper comes in (via mail, backpacks, etc.) I throw it all in my Sunday Basket.  By the end of the week, it usually looks something like this, a little crazy:

Then, each week, I sort it all out into the 1.0 or 2.0 folders, or if it can wait, just leave it in the Sunday Basket! A key part of this is having a set time to do the Sunday Basket, although it can also be flexible–I tend to do mine on Friday evenings if I’ll be home for the weekend (since I run errands and do home projects on the weekend), and Sunday if I’m away. This takes about 1.5-2 hours, although I’ve also learned to speed this up or slow it down as time allows.  When I’m done, my Sunday Basket looks more like this (for a hot second until I start tossing stuff in it again!)

Of course the real benefit isn’t having a nice looking basket (I keep it in a kitchen cabinet so I don’t see it anyway) but the mental relief of having everything sorted and planned for the week for home, so when I have a full day at work, I don’t return to a scramble at home. 

If this sounds appealing to you, I encourage you to give the Sunday Basket a try! Do you already use a Sunday Basket? Do you think it would work for you? I’d love to hear how in the comments!