Sunday night.

It's about 10:15 and we're finally settled for the evening. A load of laundry is going, the football game is on, the Bub is back in bed for the third (!!) time tonight. ;)

Most Sunday nights, I try to do a few things to make the start to our week a little less stressful. It's not much, and it's not so much organizing us for the week as it is clearing our minds of clutter.

Some Sundays I do more than others, but most I do my best to do a few things, so when we walk up the stairs for bed tonight, we leave a fairly clean space behind us. And Monday morning when we walk down the stairs and are greeted with that decluttered space, it makes a BIG difference in how we start the day.

Oh yeah, and it stays like this for about 15 minutes into Monday morning, but it still is important to me. ;)

I clear the island and kitchen table of the clutter that piles up during the week:
I do my best to put it all away, but even if some of it is just placed out of sight, that's OK. Walking into the kitchen Monday morning with clean surfaces makes me feel like I can breathe.

I make sure there are no dishes in the sink. I try to wipe it down as well, but if I can at least get it cleared out, that's good enough for me most Sundays:
The sink is fairly clean tonight -- I mean, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know sometimes I clean up before pics, sometimes I don't. I wasn't about to put a nasty sink out there for y'all to see. No way Joe-say.

I love the hum of the dishwasher. It is a relaxing sound to me for some reason -- probably because it's the sound of technology doing the work for me, and that ROCKS:
I put away as many toys as I can:

By putting away toys I mean, throw them in any bin, bucket or container possible so for one evening we aren't endangering our lives by walking around them. :)

I'm pretty good at keeping things off these stairs, but as I pick up on Sunday evenings, I tend to stack. By the end of the night, I need to have every. single. thing. gone so when I walk up for the final time, there's nothing left for me to worry about:

I try to vacuum the main areas like our family room and kitchen:

That way the tufts of fur and crumbs can start fresh on Monday morning. Nice.

And as I sit and blog, the coffee table is cleared, even if it means everything is just thrown into the basket:

Have I mentioned baskets rule?

Not all of these things happen every Sunday evening. And I only focus on the living areas on our main floor. Sometimes I do more, sometimes much, much less. But even if it's a clean sink or coffee table, it changes my outlook on Monday morning.

Starting the week with a clean slate is what starts my week with a clear head. What do you do to prepare for the week?

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