Routines

I am a creature that enjoys even a false sense of security. I like to plan, list, schedule. In addition to a work digital calendar and Google calendar, I also use a paper planner (#pashfam for life)! Knowing that different things work for different folks, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been using pre and post COVID to order a senseless world.

Cooking: We cook twice a week. We used to supplement cooking with pretty regular restaurant sojourns 1-3 times per week, but I don’t really want to dine in a restaurant until we have Medicare for All, so I know my cooks, bartenders, and wait staff can actually get medical care if/when they get ill. The pre-pandemic routine was one big cooking project on Sunday, like a soup or stew or braise or casserole, that we’d eat for a few weeknight dinners. Then a weeknight meal, usually cooked on Wednesday, but flexible to account for leftovers. That meal needs to be a recipe that comes together in under an hour. We would usually grocery shop some time on the weekend, so food planning would happen on Friday or Saturday.

Post-pandemic, much is the same. Still a Sunday/Wednesday cooking schedule but with a less flexible Saturday grocery shopping trip. We get takeout/delivery on Fridays, because one day a week I like to think about food but not do any labor for it. I’m glad we had figured out what works for us pre-pandemic because otherwise I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through a lot of last year.

The other thing I’ve worked on a routine for is cleaning. Without a cleaning routine, I always think “oh, I should clean” as a running worry. Tasks, ideas, chores, pretty much everything needs a container, and that’s wisdom straight from people who know a lot more than I do. I grew up with a chore schedule (three kids, three sections of the house on rotation, kitchen cleaning was always the worst – read, most work), so I figured we ought to try out a cleaning schedule for our current living situation.

We currently have a one week cleaning, one week nothing setup. We call the cleaning weekend “chore weekend”, and it’s often a time that I feel motivated enough to do another project – for example making a large Costco run, cleaning out a closet, puttering around outside to sweep up leaves and the like. The non-cleaning weekend is lovingly referred to as “degenerate” or “degen” weekend, nomenclature courtesy of the hilarious show Letterkenny. This is our pre and post pandemic setup.

The weeks we clean, we always hit the most heavily used portions of the house: the kitchen and both bathrooms. Anywhere that collects food or hair draws my eye and needs as much love as I can stand to give. We have a cadence to clean those heavy hitters + something else. In rotation, the something else is “the upstairs”, “the downstairs” and “everything”. The everything weekend is “deep clean weekend”, which happens about every six weeks.

Since we’ve been at this spot for a while, I know that on normal cleaning weekends, the chore takes about two and a half hours of my partner and me working together. The deep clean is a four to four and a half hour project (dusting is so much damn work). It feels good to know the weeks that we’re cleaning, I can block out a bit of time on Saturday mornings to absolutely blast music (this last weekend: Ari Lennox) and give my living space the attention it needs to feel safe and homey.

There are other micro routines I have (e.g. how I use my calendars, how I wind down at night, how I schedule calling my various family members) but this post has gotten long enough. I can share in the future if there’s interest! But I’m curious: what routines do you have? How have they changed with the pandemic? How do you evaluate if something is working for you or needs to be tweaked or tossed?