Life With The Libbys | How We Prep Our Life for Busy Season
A few months ago we wrote a blog post on How We Prep Our Business in the Off Season and today I thought I would share how we prep our personal life & home for our busy season. I know it's a weird concept to think about but there are so many things we like to check off our list as well as establish a routine for before our busy season starts so I thought I would share for anyone interested.
Establish a Wellness Routine
This is a big one for me! If you've been following along, you know since the beginning of 2023 I started the 5 AM Club and also care deeply about my personal fitness. These routines have become non-negotiable for me and I know they set me up to be my best self - both personally as a mom, wife, friend, daughter and as a business owner & photographer. These routines may be more challenging once busy season starts but the foundation for them in my life is solid and I know they are not going to be put on the back burner.
Another routine we love as a family is meal prepping! We cook at home 95% of the time so we use this meal planner to prep our grocery list for the week. I know once summer hits, we will embrace some spontaneity and eat out more which I love! We also take advantage of Whole Foods delivery or Hannaford to Go during our extra busy weeks. These are great ways to outsource if you're going through a busy season. Sometimes you have to evaluate your time value and a 1hr trip to the grocery store could be better spent.
Systemize Our Home
Yep. I know it sounds silly, but running your home like you run a business has it's benefits! One thing that definitely gets put on the back burner during our busy season is cleaning. Ugh. I dread it just thinking about it. But what we did this off season is break up our household cleaning duties into days of the week to make it more manageable and consistent. For example: Mondays we wash our bedding & Thursdays we vacuum (I promise we do more than this but this is just an example). We add it to our calendar on repeat so we know exactly what needs to get done each day.
We also try to do a deep clean and tackle any big organization when were in our slow season. This winter we cleaned our basement and reorganized everything. I also have on my list to do this week to clean out our entire pantry and give it cleaning & declutter!
We planted our garden and got *most* of our outdoor work underway.
This is another great place to outsource. In the past we have used a cleaning company and LOVED it. We may even do this again if things get crazy. We also hired a lawn company to handle our rental property as last year that was a struggle for Cole to manage that on top of our house / his work. These small little outsourcing make a big difference in our time.
Childcare
Last year was our first season as new parents and we honestly didn't know what to expect. We had help 3 days a week and then obviously coverage on wedding days. We realized that this year, we need an extra day to get some work done. We're lucky enough to have family help out a few days and weekends in addition to a nanny 2 days a week. Setting up everyones schedule months in advance brings peace as we head into the off season knowing childcare is already scheduled.
I don't know if other parents find this but working from home is becoming increasingly harder as she gets older. We're starting to explore daycare options for the fall because even though our office is above the garage and tucked away she struggles being home knowing we are home too. We're hoping to get some fun scheduled activities for her to do with the nanny to get out of the house and exploring.
We intend to take Sunday & Monday off as our "weekend" and now that we have a family it's even more important that we really spend this time off and with each other.
Fostering Our Relationships
Oooh, this is a big one. Quality time is my love language and unfortunately in wedding season, there just isn't enough hours in the day to do all of the things. But making sure we make time for our marriage, our daughter, our family and our friendships is so so important. This is truly what fills our cup up so making sure I schedule my girls nights, date nights, mornings with G, and catch ups with my Mom is so important. I definitely have to be more intentional with my time and lose the spontaneity of a last minute meet up for drinks on a Friday night (I mean, did I ever do that?!) but making time for the people in my life is an absolute priority.
Beyond just my personal relationships, this means my professional relationships too. I talked about in my How We Prep Our Business in the Off Season blog post about connecting with vendors in the off season. I think this is equally important during busy season too. We may not have as much free time but checking in on our vendor friends or meeting up for a quick coffee can do the soul some good. I feel like my vendor friends are my co-workers and sometimes getting together to talk shop or not, can help us all lift each other up in a season of busy.
Each year we get a little more efficient and learn new things as our life and business continues to evolve. But I'd love to hear from any other seasonal business owners or friends in the wedding industry - is there anything you do to prep your life for the busy season?
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