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“You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working.” (Exodus 23:12, NLT).
A light bulb went off when I read this verse the other day. For so long, I’ve been ingrained in the 5-day workweek. Five days on, two days off. I worked it for years, and now that I’m home, I still abide by it. Sure, I do a little work on Saturday, but for the most part, I look at it as a leisure day--my day off. Perhaps you view it the same way.
What if we didn’t? What if we looked at our week as six days of work, with only one day off (Sunday), instead of two? How much more productive would we be? How much more would we enjoy and truly savor our day of rest?
So this Saturday, I set out to go about my day just like I do Monday through Friday. The routine was a little looser, but I still accomplished the usual daily work. It actually felt kind of good to have more structure on Saturday. I am really enjoying resting on Sunday.
The drawback of using Saturday as another workday is less leisure time with our families. My husband (also on a day off) told me he felt like he hadn’t spent much quality time with me the whole day. So balance is called for. Take lots of breaks to visit with your spouse. If you want to take the entire day off for family fun, go for it. But if you want to use the bulk of your Saturday to get some work done (and save the family fun for Sunday), you’ll enjoy the increased productivity—and you’ll really enjoy a day of rest!
Do you use your Saturdays for work or play, or a little of both?
If you have a Messy Monday tip for getting it together, please link to your homemaking post. As a courtesy, please link back to Moms In Need of Mercy. I will leave links open for 24 hours. Have a great day!
I do a little of both. I'm trying to get the majority of my 'normal' cleaning done so I have the day to work on other projects. Some Saturdays we hit it hard to get a project done and other Saturdays we have breakfast as a family and still do some work, but it's more leisurely.
ReplyDeleteGreat Reminder! Thanks!
Saturdays are "my run around and get the errands done that I can't do during the week" days. Thankfully my little ones love to go to the stores!
ReplyDeleteI do take a 2-day weekend, but I'm hoping to change that with the beginning of Spring. I'm hoping to work out in the yard on Saturdays.
ReplyDeleteWe use our Saturdays for big projects...but if we don't have any to do, we've decided to work until noon and then take the rest of the day to do something with our family. I use the rest of the week for "regular" housework.
ReplyDeleteI havent looked into the actual dates of this, but (approx?) 50 years ago, people worked 6 day weeks. I found that very interesting and would like to investigte further how that changed and why.
ReplyDeleteFirst time delurker here! Love your blog..love love love...cannot tell you how inspiring it is to me at least!
ReplyDeleteWe ie-hubster and 2 yr old son live in Dubai-UAE. The weekend in this part of the world is fri/sat with sunday being the first day of the working week. Fridays here are the church/mosque days for most families. after which everybody lives it up. As i do too and for me that means, no cooking-ceaning-putting out fires, as soon as I am out of church. A large majority of us eat out whole fridays, mainly because eating out is cheap here (oil/fuel being dirt cheap). I simply dont cook on firdays which extends up to saturday lunch too.The weekdays are very labour intensive for me in terms of cleaning, I need to vacumn and mop everyday because of the desert which causes fine dust to collect everywhere easily. But fri, no cleaning either-bliss! Sometimes I miss saturdays too unless there has been a sandstorm,which is a pain.
For us saturday is for catching up on outdoor errands incl grocery and haircuts etc. The only major work I do on sat is menu planning-grocery shopping followed by a marathon wash-chop-slice-dice-marinate-freeze project. I do this with every veg/meat I buy, bag them up in ziplocs and store away for the whole week. With yrs of practise now, I take no more than 2-3 hours. A bit like one-month freezer cooking for many mommies for example. This has given me soooo much comfort and convenience, all i have to do is pull out the reqd meat/veggie ziploc bag from the fridge and accomplish fab cooking throughout the week.
ps- we do not buy canned goods at all simply because almost all of Indian/asian cooking requires cooking from scratch and so I am kinda forced to chop and store fresh produce. Our Indian curries dont do well with canned goods! :)Perhaps some of you could try this tip...it is a big time/energy saver!
Cheers,
harshika
dubai