Monday: Cleaning Bathroom, Desk Work

When I worked in the professional world, I hated Mondays.  As a homemaker, I love Mondays.  I feel surprisingly rested from Sunday, and ready to launch into my work.

On Mondays, I clean my bathroom:  mirrors, toilet, shower walls, sink, tops of the tile and lights where the dust shows, and floor.  I change the rug and handtowel.  It takes me all of 20 minutes, unless the children want to help too.  If I'm feeling energetic, I use the bucket of soapy water to wash the foyer floor too; the rest of my floors are wood and take a different cleaner.

In the afternoon, I do desk work.  I answer emails that I've put off, go through the inbox and pay bills, return phone calls, and arrange our social calendar. We have two inboxes: one at the front door inside this desk where we drop all the mail, and then one on the desk upstairs where the bills go. As I carry the bills upstairs, I sort the rest of the mail into the recycling bin, reading material, coupon stash, or decorating the buffet.

Sometimes things come up that cannot wait until the nearest Monday, but usually, this weekly net works just fine.  My old way of managing the bills was to do a big chunk when I remembered, which meant a good hour or more of balancing checkbooks and paying bills, some of them mortifyingly overdue.  Now, I usually only have one or two bills to deal with per Monday and they all get paid on time.