068. Lost Your Routines? Two Easy Ways to Re-Ground Your Home This July

When school ends and schedules go loosy-goosy, even the most organized households can start to feel wobbly. 😅

If July has you buried in pool towels, half-done projects, and that vague “I’m forgetting something…” feeling, today’s episode is your reset button.

I’m sharing two simple systems I rely on whenever life feels floaty:

1. The Simple Single – how choosing one purposeful task a day brings instant focus (and why your brain loves it).
2. Autopilot Routines – a step-by-step way to turn recurring chores into self-running habits so you’re not reinventing the wheel every week.

🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn:

🔹 Why summer’s lack of guardrails often triggers clutter

🔹 A brain-dump exercise that keeps you from spinning your wheels

🔹 How to triage your to-do list (delete and delegate) in minutes

🔹 The “Autopilot” template I use to schedule laundry, meals & errands (with plenty of wiggle room for spontaneous fun)

Links & Resources

• Click here to see an example of my Autopilot Tasks list
• Free wait-list for my mini-workshop “Declutter Your Kitchen in a Weekend” → fireflybridge.com/update
• Episode 058, "How Everyone In My House Is Able To Find Stuff (Usually)"

Get on the wait list for my FREE class: 3 Steps to Painlessly Declutter your Kitchen in just a Weekend! This is how you get no-cry mornings and calm evenings in your kitchen. And I'll show you how you can do it in just a weekend without overwhelm and without getting stuck. And, of course, you'll learn how to make sure the clutter doesn't come back with minimal effort. Go to https://fireflybridge.com/update and get on the wait list!

Connect with me:

You can find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireflybridgeorganizing
Here's my website: https://fireflybridge.com

Call or text me: 305-563-2292

Email me: zeenat@fireflybridge.com

Transcript

I went to the grocery store this morning, and it must have been, like, 450 degrees outside. Like, I didn’t think I was going to make it to the front door of the Publix. So hot! When that the automatic door slid open, I practically fell inside and took this big gasp of air, like the air conditioning was saving my life. 

But what I noticed in that burning hot walk from the car to the door was that Summer has a smell. Have you noticed that? Like in the heat, in the sun, there’s a summery smell in the air. I remember that smell from every summer that we’ve lived here in Miami. 

And I also remember how summer can start off really strong. I have a plan, we have a schedule. I’ve got the camp forms lined up, I’m doing groceries on schedule, I’ve got the annual check-ups in our calendars.

But then, it’s 5:17pm on a Tuesday in late July. And what’s for dinner is still a mystery for me.

We’ve got wet pool towels sun-drying across every chair and the permission slip that I swore I’d turn in for this week’s Summer Camp field trip is still in the cupholder in my car.

And all of a sudden, summer freedom feels more like summer free-fall. Like I’m floating a little bit because the schedule that I had at the start of the summer has slipped, and even though I’ve still got work, our household feels a little less settled.

There’s more clutter, and later nights, more meals to figure out since there’s no school. It might feel like things are starting to slip out of control, and you kind of have to figure this out before school starts again. 

So today we’re going to anchor your days with two little strategies that are going to take you from this ‘floating’ feeling to being more focused.
So today we’re tapping into Pillar 4 of Organizing for Beautiful Living which is Work to Live Well. And that’s all about getting the right things done, and Pillar 5 is Thrive Daily because we organize our homes to stay grounded and calm so we can thrive in our spaces, ok?.
Now in May of this year, a poll of millennial parents came out where about 1 in 3 of these parents say that summer is actually their most stressful season. 
Why? Well nearly half of them say that they’re juggling work while the kids are suddenly home all day, and roughly four-in-ten of those parents point to the simple fact that their regular household routines just vanish the minute that school’s out.
I sort of feel that whether you have kids living at home, maybe you’re an empty nester, or maybe you’re expecting your first child, or you don’t have kids at all, I find that summer just has a different cadence to it, right? Things are a little looser. The days are longer.
So losing the regular household routines I think are not reserved only for parents. All our houses start to feel a little more cluttered, and we start to feel less grounded, a little bit like we’re floating from one thing to the next instead of keeping to the routines and schedules we’ve been used to during the rest of the year.
So why does this floating start to happen?
Well if you have kids, then while the kids are out of school, all your schedules shift weekly.
Or maybe there are vacations and visitors in your house, and so your routines dissolve.
And you know long daylight hours lead to later bedtimes, so now there’s a morning lag that you’ve got to deal with.
The result of all this is that decision fatigue spikes, like you get tired of having to make decisions about all these different things that are happening in your household right now, and your surface clutter multiplies.
Like I said, this was a common occurrence for me. And I have 2 simple strategies, 2 simple ways to re-ground your home this summer.
Strategy 1 is The Simple Single.

You’ve heard me explain how the Simple Single helps everyone in my house find their stuff in Episode 58. I’ll put the link to that episode in the show notes so you can take a quick listen. 

And here, I’m using that same concept of the Simple Single to get grounded again. And it’s simply this: 
Pick one anchor task each morning. A simple single anchor task.
It should be something you really need to get done, right? Like, it’s going to make you feel accomplished, feel good, if the only thing that you get totally done today is this one anchor task. 
So maybe it’s print the camp forms and fill them out, or return an Amazon box, clear the kitchen island, buy new bug spray. Or maybe it’s just take a shower. Listen, I know how it is, ok? No judgment here.
So each day, have one anchor task. 
Then decide when you’re going to get it done. Maybe you just want to bang it out first thing in the morning so you don’t have to think about it anymore, or you might block a 15-minute window in your calendar, with an alert that’ll pop up and all that.
And just do it. Do that thing. Get that one task done.
Now, for me, it was enough that I just got it done. But for you, maybe you might want to micro-celebrate that. Maybe you’ll feel great when you check it off your to-do list, or scratch it off. A lot of people like to do that. Or maybe you just want to text a friend and let them know you got it done!
Why does this work to re-ground you and your home and the entire household?
Well, because it reduces your mental load and decision fatigue. You’ve chosen one thing that is going to make you feel good about getting it done today.
That builds your confidence momentum, right? And just one task is a small hill to climb, versus looking at the entire week in front of you and seeing a mountain of to-dos.
So the one anchor task a day also keeps tasks that are higher priority more visible within all of this summer unpredictability.
And Strategy 2 is Getting Your Tasks Done On Autopilot

This is how I stopped spinning my wheels and actually got stuff done in the summers, right? Because sometimes, once I got my anchor task done, I still didn’t feel fully grounded because there were still so many other things that had to get done each week.

So how do you wrap your head around the rest of the tasks that you want to do each week without drowning in decision fatigue? 

Well, you put all these other tasks on Autopilot, and it’s pretty easy to do this.

Step 1 is to do a Brain Dump
You’re going to give yourself 5 minutes, and you’re just going to write down every recurring task, for home and for work, onto one list. Recurring tasks. Things that you have to do on a weekly basis.
Laundry, pay bills, place your grocery order, or go and get groceries, run that weekly report, give the dog his medications, make sure the kids fill out their reading logs, and so on.
Now this should be a brain dump. Don’t overthink it, just throw everything down on here.
You’ll find that some of the tasks you write down are anchor tasks, those might pop up, and others are just recurring things, and you could have a list of 20 tasks, or 50 or more written down when you’re done.
Step 2 is to Triage that Brain Dump list
Skim down that list, and go ahead and Delete the non-essential stuff. It’s summer. Do you really need to clean out the garage now? Or could it wait until the weather is a little milder? 
So you’ll either delete, and then you’ll continue to skim, and you will Delegate any shareable tasks. So if your mom can drop the donations off this week when she’s on her way to do her groceries, then ask for her help. If someone else can watch the kids in the pool while you go and get the groceries for a couple of hours, go ahead and ask them.
By the way, you want to be ruthless about deleting stuff that isn’t necessary for you to get done: If it doesn’t keep the boat afloat or move it forward, it’s gone. You want to have to do as few of these recurring tasks or chores, right, as possible each week. So if you don’t need to clean the full guest bathroom every single week cause you’re not going to have guests over, then delete that and just you know clean the toilet and the sink. If you can have the groceries delivered instead of you spending the 2 hours going there, doing the shopping and coming home, then delete “go get groceries” from your list and you’re just adding ‘order groceries’. You just want the essential tasks on your list, ok?
And Step 3 is to Batch & Assign Days
So batch your tasks like-with-like. So maybe all “kitchen” tasks will be on Tuesday, all your admin tasks for work on Thursday, and all your errands will be on Friday afternoon.
Choose realistic days to get these tasks done that respect your energy levels, right?
I mean, don’t ask me to clean the kitchen on a Sunday morning. That’s not a high energy time for me, and it’ll take me twice as long to get it done than any other time, and I’ll be super grumpy doing it too.
If you happen to miss a task on a particular day, then just slide it to another day, there’s no shame in that.
So the idea is that for each day of the week, you’re going to end up with a list of tasks that you’ll repeat each week on that day. It’s not an infinite list, it’s a very contained one.
If you want to see mine, I’ll put a link in the show notes and you can grab it. It’s super simple, just a bullet-point list under each day.
So there’s no more decision fatigue every day of the summer anymore! You wake up, you see what you’re going to be doing, and it becomes automatic, on autopilot.
Monday is towels day, Friday is groceries. 
The Autopilot list isn’t about being rigid, though. It’s about removing 100 tiny decisions, so you can think a bit more clearly.

You can print out your Autopilot list out and post it in the kitchen, or next to your computer.

Or you can put each recurring task on your phone’s Reminders app let’s say, or write them into your paper planner.


And here’s how you’ll use your Autopilot List to really get these tasks on autopilot for you, so you’re not floating around anymore, unsure about what to do next, or what the schedule should be to get the family room decluttered before your guests arrive.
In the morning, maybe while you’re having breakfast, glance at your autopilot list to confirm today’s routine, your autopilot tasks.
Then, name your Simple Single one Anchor task, which is going to guarantee you a forward movement, a forward win.
And in the evening, you do your quick 2×5 tidy like we talked about in Episode 66. That resets the stage for tomorrow. OK?
So here’s a Tiny Challenge for you to get this going:
Tonight, after the kids are in bed, do a 5-minute Brain Dump of every repeating task you can think of during the summer.
Then, tomorrow morning, choose your first Simple Single Anchor task, and either do it right away, or put time in your calendar to commit to getting it done.


OK?
Doing the triage of the tasks and batching and scheduling them will take about 10 minutes, tops, and you can do that afterwards.
So think about what you’ve done when you set this into motion - your daily Simple Single Anchor Task, and your weekly Autopilot list. You are moving from floating to flowing. From wondering how and when you’re going to get dinner made, to knowing you’ve got groceries in the fridge and pantry to pull together a simple meal anytime! And you can do that without sacrificing summer spontaneity. 
So a quick recap of how to re-ground your home this summer if you’ve lost your routines a bit:
First, choose a daily Simple Single Anchor task, and complete it.
And second, create your weekly Autopilot Tasks list to reduce decision fatigue during the summers when your schedules are looser, and your house is feeling a little more cluttered and disorganized.
You’ll do that by doing a big brain dump of every recurring task you can think of that you need to get done every week.
You  delete any unnecessary tasks - like, really, delete anything that isn’t essential to you and our family right now - and then delegate what you’re able to to lighten your load.
And then batch like-with-like tasks and assign a day to each of these batches.

Be flexible. Do what feels right for you and your family. I mean, I don’t do all our laundry on a single day of the week. Instead, I do small loads almost every day so that the loads are quicker and simpler to manage. So I do towels on Monday, usually, and sheets on Friday usually. But everything is flexible. If I don’t get to the sheets on Friday, then they’ll make it to the washer on Saturday. 
But simply having a list of autopilot tasks to refer to means that I’m not having to remember each of these things, or having to decide each day which of these tasks to do, ok?
So let me remind you that if you need a deeper kitchen reset, then join the wait-list for my free class ‘3 Simple Steps to Declutter Your Kitchen in Just a Weekend’ at fireflybridge.com/update.
Thanks for listening today! I’m Zee, and I am cheering you on. I’ll see you on the next episode.